Yo! by Julia Alvarez

Author:Julia Alvarez
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 1996-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

The student

variation

Lou Castellucci had made good. Tall, handsome with the winning smile of a pro whose team is headed for the championships, Lou had won almost every game he had played in his life. In high school he had been a star football player, taking his small town team to the State championship first time ever.

His high school prowess had won him a full scholarship at a small liberal arts college, where he played less impressively with each succeeding year. But then, football was no longer his game. His attention had been caught by other things. His senior year he became interested in writing and in a tall girl with a mess of pretty blond hair, Penny Ross.

He had not been able to attract Penny’s attention although he had tried to put himself in her way. He had taken The Contemporary Novel on the off-chance that Penny, an English major, might be in the large, popular lecture course. She hadn’t been, but the class had turned out to be Lou’s favorite. He was sorry now that he had so doggedly pursued his computer science major. He envied the kids who were English majors and sat around in black turtlenecks, smoking, and intensely discussed the meaning of a book. They really got into it, and it made Lou feel, listening in on their conversations in the dining hall or lounges, as if he were, well, not that smart, not that sensitive, not that vital a human being.

Spring of his senior year, Lou signed up for a writing workshop. If he could write novels like the ones he had read, he could wow her and anyone else. But it wasn’t just to wow her that he took the course. Writing was the new game he wanted to learn to play. When that guy Updike or that Mailer guy wrote a book, it was a touchdown at the end of each chapter. Sometimes as he read, Lou would catch himself, making a fist, pumping his arm forward as if to say, Go, Mailer, go!

The teacher was supposed to be a known writer but not one Lou had ever heard of. She was a Dominican-American-USA-Latina—or whatever she had explained she was during the first class. Her pretty olive color made Lou think of honey in a jar. Lou had never before known a Hispanic person without ten pounds of shoulder and chest pads on him and a teeth guard in his mouth and a helmet on his head. The couple of Hispanic guys here on the team had an attitude that Lou didn’t like. Christ, it hadn’t been him who made their daddies pick grapes or whatever.

Anyhow that first day, this lady was real friendly. Said she wanted you to call her Yolanda or Yo or whatever you liked and talked about writing as a game you played for the fun of it, not just for the deep meaning. It made Lou feel better sitting in that circle, his big hands sweating all over this poem Yolanda passed out.

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