Nepantla Familias by Sergio Troncoso

Author:Sergio Troncoso
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Letter to the Student Who Asks Me How I Managed to Do It

José Antonio Rodríguez

Dear Student,

Sometimes you sit at the front, the reading space a hall with spring-hinged seats, or a small classroom or a large auditorium, one with rising semicircular rows of tables and swivel chairs. Always you are timid but curious enough to ask during the question-and-answer session at the end of the reading some variation of how did I become a writer. Because you’ve already gleaned, from my predominantly autobiographical poetry and prose and my chatting in between pieces, the basics of my past—the Mexican village, the poverty, the journey to the Texas border, the parents’ focus on education, the love of reading and the classroom—I know your question is not about that, not about the mechanics of the craft, not about the discipline of the draft.

Here’s something like what I usually say:

I stumbled around a while, came to writing late, went off to study it. And kept writing and submitting and believing I had something important to say.

Here’s what I don’t say:

I’m not always sure how I did it, or what that means exactly.

* * *

Which is to say, finding myself living in that great metropolis of youthful energy that is Austin, Texas, in my mid-twenties, the last time I was so naïve as to think I could leave my past behind. I am working with the FBI, that very FBI, as a contract linguist, which is a fancy name for transcribing and translating mostly taped phone conversations of suspected criminals smuggling drugs. I’m making okay money, which to me is amazing money because it is more than my father ever made. I’m feeling like the embodiment of the American Dream, which feels like both an embrace and a repudiation of my Mexican parents’ dream for their children. An embrace because I feel I’ve escaped the poverty they lived, the one I, too, lived. I’ve made good on their ultimate objective: to have their children work indoor, kinder, climate-controlled jobs rather than outdoor jobs in the sweltering heat of South Texas. And I’ve lived a law-abiding life, never bringing shame upon the family. And a repudiation because I left my parents’ side, because I didn’t marry and father children, because I left to find a way out of the gay closet in that city where I hear being gay is not so bad.

* * *

Which is to say, I stopped going to church a long time ago.

* * *

Which is to say, believing I have escaped unscathed because I’m enrolled in a weight-training class now and flex for the mirror and pay my own rent and eat out regularly. I dream of a boyfriend, though I’m not sure how that’ll happen, because I’ve never held a man’s hand. Still, this feels like a kind of reinvention, now that I’m on my own, introducing myself as Joe rather than José, ever since a sixth-grade teacher suggested it. It’s been so long, it feels natural.

Which is to say,

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