Where Are You From: Letters to My Son
Autor Tomás Q. Morínen Limba Engleză Paperback – 29 feb 2024
Starting in New Jersey during a long-distance teaching position before his son’s birth and spanning to the present day, Morín shares his experiences with racism to sketch for his son ways to respond to bigotry that won’t sacrifice his dignity or his spirit. He also challenges his young son, and the reader by extension, to reassess their perception of the world and the language we use to understand and label our surroundings. Hovering over Morín’s bold vision for shaking off the chains of injustice is a quartet of literary angels: Baldwin and Dostoevsky, Ellison and Camus. Where Are You From is a poignant and gripping testament that speaks to all the sons and daughters of America.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496237767
ISBN-10: 1496237765
Pagini: 130
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 mm
Greutate: 0.18 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 1496237765
Pagini: 130
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 mm
Greutate: 0.18 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
Tomás Q. Morín is the author of several books, including the memoir Let Me Count the Ways (Nebraska, 2022), winner of the 2022 Writers’ League of Texas Nonfiction Book Award; the poetry collections Machete, A Larger Country, and Patient Zero; and other books. He is on the faculty at Rice University.
Extras
Letter from a Sub-Sub-Basement
1
My son,
I am a man uneven. My right shoulder drops. A grin shows my
teeth don’t line up. One ear is higher than the other. And my foot,
my left foot . . . I should start with my toes. There are blisters and
they hurt. There’s a story there. My left foot is wider than the
right. Not by much, mind you. But enough. (And the right foot
is longer than the left!) Come look if you don’t believe me. Now,
I’m not a freak, some mismatched toy of God. No one would ever
know any of this if I didn’t tell them. The naked eye hasn’t been
made that could tell the difference between my feet. Not even an
eye wearing clothes could do it.
How do I know? I sold shoes once upon a time. During the
holidays. We had a tool called the Brannock Device. I didn’t know
that’s what it was called, though. It was invented in the ’20s. Should
I say 1920s? Maybe I should. You’ll start high school in 2033, and
so the 2020s will be closest to you.
But toes!
I was going to tell you a story about toes. I hope you have your
mother’s pinky toes. Like a compass needle, they point true north.
Carrying a baby loosens the ligaments of a mother’s feet.
Find your mother and massage her feet.
And do it often.
I have my father’s toes. Your tío Juan does too. We also have
our father’s hands. My index and pinky fingers curve inward. So
do my pinky and big toes. We humans were fish once. You can see
it in the shape of my flippers. If I wear the wrong shoes and walk
too much, the inside of my tucked pinky toes will blister.
I have stepped on myself all of my life. If we have the same feet,
then that will surely be part of your inheritance.
You’ve seen me grouchy. A blister is an expressway to grouchy.
My patience grows small and hides from me.
In Texas I’ve never worried about feeling this way. But here in
New Jersey, it’s another story. And not just New Jersey. People like
us . . . brown, brown people I mean . . . we’ve been shot, strangled,
tazed, lynched, and beaten while living happily. Grouchy is almost
an invitation to be snuffed out. So I’m trying to be careful here in
Madison because, well, I want to meet you. If I survive the next
sixteen weeks, then I can do that.
The first time I walked to Stop & Shop for groceries, the sun
was high. I thought a marvelous mile of bright light would cure
my homesickness. I had not met you yet, but I had, really.
Who says meeting can only happen in the air after all?
I knew your mother’s belly, and so I knew you even if you did
not yet know me.
I digress, but you already know this; you know me to be a lover of
tangents, a tangent machine. You also know that I don’t love them
for their own sake. I’m not one of those simple fools who babble
on and on and never get to the point; by now you know me and
thus have seen that I always circle back around. How could I not?
To do otherwise would be to court the unevenness I loathe, the
very one that lives in my body. Symmetry is my king and queen. An
open circle is no circle; it is merely a letter C that has lost its way.
Okay, I was walking. You love clothes, as your mother and I
do, and if we did anything right, then you do as well, so I will tell
you what I was wearing: gray fleece shorts (with three pockets—always
buy them with three pockets), a light blue tank top, and
my light blue denim Toms shoes. Toms says they are gray, but I
know blue when I see it. If you don’t believe me, check the closet
because I probably still have them. I take care of what I love. Your
tío Juan was the opposite when we were kids. Our abuelo called
him “lumbre.” It means “fire.” I wonder how hot you will burn. I’m
fire too, but I smolder low and long. So I was walking and had left
the edge of campus behind. So far, so good. There were trees and
cars, even a bird singing. I had no reason to expect the day would
carry anything strange. You would think forty-plus years of living
in the South would have taught me better. It didn’t.
I passed a bookstore, Thai and Greek restaurants, a wine store.
It was Anytown, usa. People sat at benches and tables enjoying
their lunch. I brushed off the first person that stared at me for too
long as an aberration. The same with the second. By the fourth
and the fifth, I knew I was not on the receiving end of a seemingly
endless string of unfortunate coincidences. A part of me wanted to
believe that I was, though. That is what this country does to you;
it makes you think that what is real and obvious in front of you
could not be so. It starts when you’re young. Ask your tío Juan
if he remembers when he was a little boy and I punched him in
the face with his own fist and said, Stop hitting yourself. Why are
you hitting yourself? People will tell us, Stop being paranoid. You see
racism everywhere. Give people a chance. If they ever tell you that,
mijo, tell them my favorite line from The Outlaw Josey Wales: “Don’t
piss down my back and tell me it’s rainin’.”
The men looked at me as if they had seen my face on a wanted
poster. The women stared at me like you would at a dog with muddy
paws that just ran in the house. There was an old woman who I
thought was going to fall over. She was short, so she kept leaning
her head back and back to take in the totality of my body. Her
eyes were like coasters. I bet you her neck hurt for days. When
her masseuse asked her how she hurt her neck, I wonder if she
was honest and said what she was really thinking: I was staring at
this giant beaner in town. In Texas I am an invisible man. In this
tiny town of northern New Jersey, I am anything but when people
wonder where I am from.
1
My son,
I am a man uneven. My right shoulder drops. A grin shows my
teeth don’t line up. One ear is higher than the other. And my foot,
my left foot . . . I should start with my toes. There are blisters and
they hurt. There’s a story there. My left foot is wider than the
right. Not by much, mind you. But enough. (And the right foot
is longer than the left!) Come look if you don’t believe me. Now,
I’m not a freak, some mismatched toy of God. No one would ever
know any of this if I didn’t tell them. The naked eye hasn’t been
made that could tell the difference between my feet. Not even an
eye wearing clothes could do it.
How do I know? I sold shoes once upon a time. During the
holidays. We had a tool called the Brannock Device. I didn’t know
that’s what it was called, though. It was invented in the ’20s. Should
I say 1920s? Maybe I should. You’ll start high school in 2033, and
so the 2020s will be closest to you.
But toes!
I was going to tell you a story about toes. I hope you have your
mother’s pinky toes. Like a compass needle, they point true north.
Carrying a baby loosens the ligaments of a mother’s feet.
Find your mother and massage her feet.
And do it often.
I have my father’s toes. Your tío Juan does too. We also have
our father’s hands. My index and pinky fingers curve inward. So
do my pinky and big toes. We humans were fish once. You can see
it in the shape of my flippers. If I wear the wrong shoes and walk
too much, the inside of my tucked pinky toes will blister.
I have stepped on myself all of my life. If we have the same feet,
then that will surely be part of your inheritance.
You’ve seen me grouchy. A blister is an expressway to grouchy.
My patience grows small and hides from me.
In Texas I’ve never worried about feeling this way. But here in
New Jersey, it’s another story. And not just New Jersey. People like
us . . . brown, brown people I mean . . . we’ve been shot, strangled,
tazed, lynched, and beaten while living happily. Grouchy is almost
an invitation to be snuffed out. So I’m trying to be careful here in
Madison because, well, I want to meet you. If I survive the next
sixteen weeks, then I can do that.
The first time I walked to Stop & Shop for groceries, the sun
was high. I thought a marvelous mile of bright light would cure
my homesickness. I had not met you yet, but I had, really.
Who says meeting can only happen in the air after all?
I knew your mother’s belly, and so I knew you even if you did
not yet know me.
I digress, but you already know this; you know me to be a lover of
tangents, a tangent machine. You also know that I don’t love them
for their own sake. I’m not one of those simple fools who babble
on and on and never get to the point; by now you know me and
thus have seen that I always circle back around. How could I not?
To do otherwise would be to court the unevenness I loathe, the
very one that lives in my body. Symmetry is my king and queen. An
open circle is no circle; it is merely a letter C that has lost its way.
Okay, I was walking. You love clothes, as your mother and I
do, and if we did anything right, then you do as well, so I will tell
you what I was wearing: gray fleece shorts (with three pockets—always
buy them with three pockets), a light blue tank top, and
my light blue denim Toms shoes. Toms says they are gray, but I
know blue when I see it. If you don’t believe me, check the closet
because I probably still have them. I take care of what I love. Your
tío Juan was the opposite when we were kids. Our abuelo called
him “lumbre.” It means “fire.” I wonder how hot you will burn. I’m
fire too, but I smolder low and long. So I was walking and had left
the edge of campus behind. So far, so good. There were trees and
cars, even a bird singing. I had no reason to expect the day would
carry anything strange. You would think forty-plus years of living
in the South would have taught me better. It didn’t.
I passed a bookstore, Thai and Greek restaurants, a wine store.
It was Anytown, usa. People sat at benches and tables enjoying
their lunch. I brushed off the first person that stared at me for too
long as an aberration. The same with the second. By the fourth
and the fifth, I knew I was not on the receiving end of a seemingly
endless string of unfortunate coincidences. A part of me wanted to
believe that I was, though. That is what this country does to you;
it makes you think that what is real and obvious in front of you
could not be so. It starts when you’re young. Ask your tío Juan
if he remembers when he was a little boy and I punched him in
the face with his own fist and said, Stop hitting yourself. Why are
you hitting yourself? People will tell us, Stop being paranoid. You see
racism everywhere. Give people a chance. If they ever tell you that,
mijo, tell them my favorite line from The Outlaw Josey Wales: “Don’t
piss down my back and tell me it’s rainin’.”
The men looked at me as if they had seen my face on a wanted
poster. The women stared at me like you would at a dog with muddy
paws that just ran in the house. There was an old woman who I
thought was going to fall over. She was short, so she kept leaning
her head back and back to take in the totality of my body. Her
eyes were like coasters. I bet you her neck hurt for days. When
her masseuse asked her how she hurt her neck, I wonder if she
was honest and said what she was really thinking: I was staring at
this giant beaner in town. In Texas I am an invisible man. In this
tiny town of northern New Jersey, I am anything but when people
wonder where I am from.
Cuprins
Letter from a Sub-Sub-Basement
I Am What I Yam
A Wall Is Indeed a Wall
The Loves We Share
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
I Am What I Yam
A Wall Is Indeed a Wall
The Loves We Share
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Recenzii
“A vast, poetic, and heartfelt collection, grappling through politics, culture, and art with what it may mean to be Mexican American under late-stage capitalism. Tomás Q. Morín’s work will never fail to astound you. At once playful, informative, and devastating.”—Fernando A. Flores, author of Valleyesque and Tears of the Trufflepig
Descriere
In this touching and personal collection of letters to his young son, Tomás Q. Morín meditates on love, the body, and the future his son will have to face.