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e plurbus unum or maybe an outsider to all. My complexity, my strength.

15 May 2007 14:58 (Edited: 15 May 2007 14:58)

Legal Alien
by
Pat Mora (1942- )




Bi-lingual, Bi-cultural,

able to slip from "How's life?"

to "Me'stan volviendo loca,"

able to sit in a paneled office

drafting memos in smooth English

able to order in fluent Spanish

at a Mexican restaurant,

American but hyphenated,

viewed by Anglos as perhaps exotic,

perhaps inferior, definitely different,

viewed by Mexicans as alien

(their eyes say, "You may speak

Spanish but you're not like me"),

an American to Mexicans

a Mexican to Americans

a handy token

sliding back and forth

between the fringes of both worlds

by smiling

by masking the discomfort

of being pre-judged

Bi-laterally.


***************************************



Extranjera legal




Pat Mora (1942- )




Bi-lingue, bi-cultural,

capaz de deslizarse de "How's life?"

a "Me'stan volviendo loca,"

capaz de ocupar un despacho bien apuntado,

redactando memorandums en inglés liso,

capaz de ordenar la cena

en español fluido en restaurante mexicano,

americana pero con guión,

vista por los anglos como exótica,

quizás inferior, obviamente distinta,

vista por mexicanos como extranjera

(sus ojos dicen, "Hablas español

pero no eres como yo"),

americana para mexicanos

mexicana para americanos

una ficha servible

pasando de un lado al otro

de los márgenes de dos mundos

sonriéndome

disfrazando la incomodidad

del pre-juicio

bi-lateralmente.


from Chants (Arte Publico Press, 1985)



Wow. I really can relate to this. Except my situation has always been even more complex than that. I've heard the questions...., What Are you? Are you Chinese, Hawaiian, Italian? The people who start speaking to me in Spanish, assuming I don't speak English. The vast majority who never even heard of Czechoslovakia, much less have any clue about where it was or that it is now two countries; the Czech and Slovak republics. And don't even try to explain that while my dad was from there, his dad was from Hungary. Los Angeles is a city of the new and it's pretty funny to listen sometimes to the rabid anti-immigrant crowd who have such a hard time understanding that while they are being so selfish about "their" city, that my mother's side of the family came here legally from Mexico, decades before those "anglo" newcomers did. Whose town is this again?

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula

Hmm. I've never judged anyone by the place their ancestors came from. Show me who you are, earn my respect by being personally deserving of it. You did not choose who your genes came from but it's up to you what kind of life you choose to live.

How was I ever supposed to answer the questionnaires? They make you choose only one. Am I Hispanic? Caucasian? Native American? Wait, where is the line for Eastern European.! Human please, people, I'm a human being! And color? Umm aren't we all different shades of brown? How long have I been in the sun? It varies radically. I'm loving the "canas" I've developed as I've aged. Ha! other women pay good money to do what my hair is doing naturally. It took the eyes of an aficionado of "exotic" to teach me how to best show it off. Funny how every man who's gotten it has used that term admiringly at some point about me. You see why this poem resonates so strongly ?


I went to school in a place where the other kids did not speak Spanish and called me a beaner. Funny, I didn't feel like a "beaner" whatever that is supposed to be. I sure didn't fit in in East LA with the children my mom taught. That was a totally different world. I spoke English, Spanish and French and ate pizza and chow mein and chicken paprikash. I didn't have a quinceneara, but we did have presents from St Nicholas on December 6th. I was and am an American. I am a native born daughter of a native born daughter of this city. In elementary school I was troubled by the lines in the songs about our Pilgrim forefathers and thought.. they weren't My ancestors. But one day it hit me… I was really as much and possibly way more American than the kids who saw me as "not them", because what I am is more truly representative of the ideal and strength of America. Strong people who chose to come here and become the best. Benefitting from the combined wisdom and talents of the whole world. Those who take pride in being only one kind of thing might as well be proud of only having one eye or one leg. Look at all you would lose without that diversity.


My world has only expanded as I have grown up. Thai and Armenian, Argentinian, Indian and Japanese foods and traditions have a place in my life. I know now that my great grandmother on my mother's side was a Yaqui Indian. My cousin in Slovakia has researched the family background enough now to know that northern Italian mercenaries that were rewarded with nobility and land in the Austro Hungarian Empire were likely ancestors of mine as well.


I haven't even touched on the diversities in my life beyond ethnicities. Only my fellow musician friends who have had a wide and varied training in numerous styles of music understand how I can enjoy so many kinds of music, nor how much greater understanding and appreciation I can have for what goes into each one. I don't see people insisting that one must only like the American Impressionist painters from a certain two decade span of time, but I sure see a lot of people making those kinds of assertions about musical styles.


I was the kid whose family was very conservative in a popular culture I was not allowed to partake of. I know about being on the outside of so many different windows of life, always looking in, always wanting to belong, and not being allowed inside or once inside, not being willing to be so narrow minded as to believe that there is no world worth exploring on the outside. I know the joys of being accepted and allowed inside worlds formerly closed to me Forever an outsider, forever much more a part of many worlds than those with limited viewpoints can ever comprehend. It is my greatest heartache and my greatest strength. Those who can see and feel much more passionately, much more deeply than the rest will always feel the hurt the most too, but I don't think we'd ever trade it for the dull, lifeless grays of the mind that has no clue of how much is out there, whatever that limited circle they live in may be.

 

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