With a Book in Their Hands by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Con alma pura y bella,

with a pure heart and radiant soul

Estímulo de dicha

the cause of our ideal,

Sin límite, ideal;

never-ending joy,

Que brillen sus virtudes

May her virtues shine

Constantes como estrella

constant like a star

Que fluyan a raudales

May her good fortunes flow

Las venturanzas de ella,

in torrents

Y Dios la guarde ilesa,

And may God keep

—¡Perlita angelical!

The pearl angel from all harm!

In 1995, doña Herminia’s virtues were bright and animated as she recounted the details of her father’s career as a pioneer journalist and as she remembered her own upbringing and life as a frontier schoolteacher in the land of scarcity and want that was rural New Mexico. These underpinnings of her own experiences, for example the years she taught at the small village of Maes, New Mexico, in the late 1920s, had not left her, and she continued to share them. To my surprise, she was still writing short articles about New Mexico and sending them on to Ana Pacheco’s La Herencia del Norte, a magazine that was just getting started in Santa Fe.

In the moments before completing an interview in which doña Herminia had confirmed so many details in the story of her father’s work as a journalist and poet, she turned to me and asked, “Do you have a copy of my father’s book?” Before I could answer, she pulled one of the five or six copies that remained in her possession seventy years after publication. “I still have some copies,” she remarked, as she handed me the book. Like her father had hoped in his poem, doña Herminia was constant like a star in her concern for disseminating the work of a generation of nuevomexicanos who had committed their energies to the power of la palabra. I treasure my copy of Poesía y prosa, and I am humbled by the ways of books and learning, eternally grateful now for the messy workings of querencia and pura chiripada. My father’s casual observation that there had been a generation of orators and writers who possessed el don de la palabra would have simply evaporated into empty space had it not been for the four or five books from that time that somehow got handed off to me, and had it not been for my great good fortune, a major de pura chiripada, that gave me the privilege to meet and interview doña Herminia Chacón González while she was still entrusted to us, pure of heart and with a radiant soul. These long shots have finally equipped me to understand and explain the importance of books and other useful things in the land of scarcity and want that typified New Mexico in its beginnings.

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