Cafe Hitch-hike

2023-05-14

The stories are out there, begging to be seen and heard

I just read a book by a distant relative that was their form of telling our story or at least one version of it. The relative is a historian who wrote a book about the settlement of Latinos in the American midwest. There are already books about the topic that are mostly written for scholarly audiences, though not too many, and the relative is not the first book on the topic. It is, however, the first book that I’ve ever seen that literally tells the story all of my grandparents when they settled in my hometown.

I choked up in different ways. First, it was absolutely beautiful that my relative was able to go beyond what I could ever do in telling their/ our story, especially of our Spanish-speaking grandparents and some who came before them. The relative dove into records, newspaper clippings, oral interviews, and other things to get some documentation to support their points.

The grand irony is their book, if it were written for a children’s audience, would be banned in my state’s public schools. I feel like sending a message to them, “Hey, D., your book can be banned here!”. They would be upset at the ban itself, but would feel proud that their work provoked ire. The relative wasn’t telling lies. If anything, they were telling an untold story.

The relative succeeded in telling the story almost in a way that I suggested at https://hitch-hike.diaryland.com/180401_34.html back in 2018. When we’re told not to or to water it down, we have to find our own opening somehow or somewhere, I concluded. The relative sure did, and I am cheering for them…

…through my tears of joy and grief. Through my anger. Through the sense of bleakness of reading about the way people had to fight so many losing battles just to get a morsel of ___________. The blank can be jobs; opportunities; respect; representation they had rights to receive as citizens of the US and that locale; and recognition of their humanity.

…through my frustration. I remembered the awful rivalries and treatment of each other within the community. How they judged each other so harshly and in so many ridiculous ways.

There’s also the frustration that this story won’t be heard by those who need to know it the most: the young people in that area who don’t think we can be more than laborers, housekeepers and sanitation workers, bad guys and gals in movies, some sort of criminal, or parents at too early of an age.

A big part of it because they don’t know how to find these stories, or that they are out there.

I heard family folklore about its history, but I found the actual history through a dissertation and then a couple of books about one of my ancestors from the southwest. I was so fortunate to had found it. The first time I skimmed it was while I flew home, over the darkening Hill Country and on my way back east. I cried and someone in a seat across the aisle asked if something was wrong. No, nothing was wrong. Something was right, and (once again) the easiest way to express it was through tears.

I gradually figured there was more than the family story we knew growing up. I told my family multiple times they weren’t always problematic or brawling drunks; there was more to us. I was able to say more for sure because I wanted it and we eventually found each other. I could, at least, truly take the family story (and truths) beyond the excuses our parents gave us about who we were.

The relative was one of the few of us from the hometown who went on to earn advanced college degrees. I’m the holdout because I didn’t get my doctorate (hahahha), but we have another who did the same. No, I didn’t get the doctorate but I’m confident to say I have one in life, and they’ve been riding me to do earn one for real.

I once said those without voices need to find places to tell their stories. I still believe it. Now, I affirm people need to know that the stories are out there, begging to be seen and heard. I can only hope they yearn to find them, or for the stories find them.

downwind | upstream