Tag: Mexican-American

  • For a former attorney, now young adult author, representation is key

    For a former attorney, now young adult author, representation is key

     

    Author Francisco Stork (Courtesy Francisco Stork)

    Francisco Stork’s youth was so compelling that it makes for a great novel.

    He was born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1953 to a single mother from a middle class family in Tampico (a city on the Gulf of Mexico). She was sent to live in a convent in Monterrey, because her father did not want anyone to know that she was going to have a child out of wedlock.

    Six years later, his mother married a retired man more twenty years her senior, named Charles Stork, and he adopted Francisco and gave him his last name. After some time, Charles decided to bring the family to the United States for more opportunities. The three of them moved to El Paso, Texas when Francisco was nine. When Francisco was 13, Charles died in an automobile accident, and Francisco and his mom moved to the public housing projects of El Paso. Because of Francisco’s phenomenal grades, he was able to obtain scholarships to attend prestigious schools such as, Harvard and later Columbia Law School, which would change the direction of his life.

    It was not until his late 40’s, while working full-time as an attorney, that Stork wrote his first fiction novel for adults. By the time he was working on his second book, his two children were teenagers, so he started reaching back into the riveting memories of his youth and wrote them down. Today, he’s a young adult fiction author of seven novels. His last book, “Disappeared,” hit shelves this fall.

    “I like writing about young people,” says the author, now 64, who lives in a town outside Wellesley, Mass. There are a lot of important decisions that are made at that age.”

    For his first young adult book, “Behind the Eyes” (2006), he wanted to share his experiences growing up in El Paso and living in the projects.

    “My kids had a very comfortable life,” says Stork. “I told the story of a young man in El Paso who gets in trouble with gangs. He was smart just like I was but was afraid to show he was smart.”

    This plot parallels his own life.

    “When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a writer, because I loved to read,” says Stork. “In high school, I started keeping a journal. I started enjoying being alone and writing things.”

    He says writing about personal situations became a habit for him that continued with him through graduate school and has lasted his entire life.

    “I was always guided by things to help me become a writer,” says Stork, adding that writing also provided a sense of self-acceptance for him. “You feel like your self-worth is validated.”

    Although, Stork’s first love and passion has always been writing, when he was studying Latin American literature at Harvard, he later decided to pursue a career in real estate law.

    “I didn’t see any relevance to some of the topics I was asked to write about it,” says Stork about his time at Harvard. “I thought maybe if I did something more practical to make a living, I could write on the side.”

    However, little did he know how time consuming the law profession would be. It was 25 years later that he was finally able to write.

    “Eventually, I found my way to the public sector, and the last 15 years I worked in affordable housing,” says Stork. “It was a job that was 9 to 5, and I had some time to write. It was challenging, but it was doing that job that I was able to write most of my books – almost all, except the last, were written when I was a lawyer.”

    He say a lot of the stories were in him for a long time like little seeds, and then somehow they eventually blossomed.

    “Usually the character comes first, and then I imagine a person growing inside of me,” explains Stork.

    In his book, “The Memory of Light” (2016), he wrote about a teenage girl recovering from depression after a suicide attempt. This is also a topic close to the author’s heart.

    “Depression started when I was a teenager, and it continued through my life,” says Stork. “Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder…In this book, I wanted to focus on the recovery aspect – that hasn’t been covered too much – the day to day to getting better. I poured into that book all of my experiences – it took me four years. It had to be hopeful so that if it fell into the hands of a young person with depression, it would turn them in the right direction.”

    What helped him recover?

    “I had my family, my wife and my kids – I really didn’t have an option to be out of commission – they depended on me,” says Stork. “A lot of what helped me was trying to understand that it was an illness. When you have thoughts of not being worthy – [I now understand] that’s from the illness.”

    For Stork, representation is also very important.

    “All my characters are Mexican-American – first or second generation,” he says. “Some are poor, some are smart, some have struggles – it’s really all over the spectrum. Hopefully I’m showing that these are human beings that happen to be Mexican – the race is not the focus, but an integral part…My hope is that the book becomes a space where young people see themselves reflected.”

    His latest novel, “Disappeared,” came right after the one about the girl with depression. The idea for it came during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign.

    “There were stories of Mexicans raping and killing young women, and I was sort of amazed at the number of people who kind of rallied behind this opposition to the undocumented immigrant, and the picture that was being painted of Mexicans,” says Stork. “I felt angry and wanted to do something with that anger… I wanted to show how complex the Mexican society was.”

    So Stork decided to write about a fictional brother and sister in Juarez, and the factual topic of femicide happening all over Mexico and Latin America –thousands of women and girls have gone missing, or been killed, for more than two decades.

    “As a writer, the most important thing is that you enable the reader to go into the world of the novel and become a part of it,” says Stork. “What would be great is that if the novel brings a greater understanding of the people that are sometimes hated. We don’t understand the world they come from. We don’t realize how technologically advanced Mexico is, for example…The disrespect of women that led to all these killings of women – these feelings are also in the U.S. – which we are seeing now.”

    He’s already thinking that his next book is going to talk about the same brother and sister, and their life now in the U.S.

    What would be the most important piece of life advice he’d like to give his younger self?

    “I would tell my younger self to concentrate on the enjoyment of the work itself. Don’t worry about the rewards – which may come or not come – just do your best. Do something that you enjoy, and something that is useful for others. Whatever happens after that is up to God and is in His hands…”

  • A life dedicated to sharing the importance of our national parks

    A life dedicated to sharing the importance of our national parks

    Roberto Moreno, founder of ALPINO Mountain Sports Foundation and the Camp Moreno Project. (Courtesy Roberto Moreno)
    Roberto Moreno, founder of ALPINO Mountain Sports Foundation and the Camp Moreno Project. (Courtesy Roberto Moreno)

    Throughout his life, Roberto Moreno has worn many hats from mountain real estate developer to journalist to mountain hotelier. However at 68, his lifelong mission is not even near completion.

    For more than half a century, he’s been introducing the Latino community to the benefits of the outdoors and to embrace our national parks as a way of life. In 2006, he founded a Colorado-based non-profit the ALPINO Mountain Sports Foundation. Under the umbrella of the National Park Service, he also oversees the Camp Moreno Project with his wife, Louise, since 2008. Together, they have created overnight mountain recreation experiences for more than 28,500 Colorado, Arizona and Texas multicultural children and families. The project operates in seven national parks out  West, including Saguaro and the Grand Canyon.

    Last September, Moreno was honored as one of the major contributors to Rocky Mountain National Park for the park’s 100-year celebration as part of a permanent exhibit.

    “The exhibit, located at the History Colorado Center – our State History Museum – features a section devoted to my contributions to Rocky Mountain National Park,” says Moreno, who resides in Denver. “It features a continually running video and a historical  pictorial of my history with the park…I’m the only Latino to ever receive such recognition.

    Moreno’s love affair with the outdoors began because of his father, a U.S. World War II vet born in Mexico. One day in 1956, when Moreno was 9, he remembers his father coming home very excited.

    “He just happened to see the movie, ‘The Long, Long Trailer,’ with Lucille Ball and Cuban actor Desi Arnaz  where they went to Western destinations, like Yosemite National Park,” says Moreno, whose parents were campesinos. “My dad said, ‘If Ricky Ricardo can go camping, so can we.’ From that day forward, we went to Yosemite every single year.”

    Moreno says that experience led to him falling in love with the outdoors and make him want to share the experience with others who might not otherwise think about it as an option.

    “Camping is one of the less expensive ways of getting involved in the outdoors,” says Moreno. “There’s a tremendous amount of interest in the Latino community, but if you don’t grow up in it, you end up developing ridiculous stereotypes that it’s very hard and life threatening. A lot of it revolves around fear –  you don’t want to be the only Latino family at a campground.”

    Through his camp program, Moreno says he tries to make families understand the fundamental value of the outdoors to families and teach them how to replicate the experience on their own.

    “Having quality time together, and convincing people that we should be taking advantage of it, because it belongs to all of us.” he adds. “We are a program that shows how you can be a camping family for less than $200. How you can shop garage sales to get the basic materials you need. All of my grandkids now are involved in the outdoors. When my family gets together, the experiences that mean the most to them is the times we spent outdoors.”

    Alpino
    Roberto Moreno at one of his mountain getaways with 30 kids and their families. (Courtesy Alpino Mountain Foundation)

    He says he only wishes he had more finances and resources to be able to provide for the demand that’s out there.

    “We have waiting lists,” says Moreno, who wants to plan a camping trip to one of the national parks in the Northeast if possible in the near future.

    But he will continue sharing his knowledge about parks one family at a time, because he understands how it impacted his life for the better.

    “It makes you understand that you have options,” says Moreno. “It makes you understand that there’s a world out there that’s bigger than the one that you were born into. In my case, it was East LA. I wanted to be part of [the outside] world. It’s with some pride that because of my father that happened to see a movie that I started on a path that has ruled my life, and why I’m so dedicated to this whole problem of exclusivity…If we don’t have a way to make [the parks] resonate with people of color, if they’re not relevant to their life, they won’t support them financially, and they are not going to feel any obligation to protect them.”

    Looking back on his long career, what does Moreno wish he knew when he was younger?

    “I wish as a younger person, I’d have had more faith in my interpersonal skills,” he says. “One of the reasons why I focused on print journalism, rather than television, was that growing up in East LA, I had an accent…When I went to Columbia University, I had to decide whether I wanted to study print or broadcast journalism, and I chose print because I thought I’d have more impact, but I would have liked to give broadcast a shot…I probably didn’t have as much confidence as I do now. Over the years, I realized that I became pretty good at public speaking, and I even became a keynote speaker. I probably would have liked to explore that side of me a little. That’s my one regret, but it’s been a blast.”

  • “La Bamba,” “Zoot Suit” writer on the importance of building community

    “La Bamba,” “Zoot Suit” writer on the importance of building community

    Luis Valdez (Courtesy El Teatro Campesino)
    Luis Valdez (Courtesy El Teatro Campesino)

    Do you remember reading the play, “Zoot Suit” in high school or watching the movie “La Bamba” (1987), based on the life of 1950’s rocker Ritchie Valens, starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Esai Morales? They were both written by multi-award winning playwright and director, Luis Valdez.

    He is also the founder of the longest running Chicano theater in the U.S. El Teatro Campesino is located in the rural community of San Juan Bautista, Calif. – approximately 150 miles northwest from where he was born to migrant farm worker parents.

    “I was born in 1940 in a labor camp in Delano…the west side of Delano was separated by the railroad tracks,” says Valdez, now 74. “The Asians, Mexicans, and African Americans were on the west side, and the White people lived on the east side of the tracks.”

    Valdez says he remembers understanding as early as age six, that he was born into a segregated land.

    Years later, in 1955, he remembers the segregation continued. There was a young man who was called “C.C.” who decided to sit in the middle of the movie theater and not in the section designated for “non-whites.”

    “The police took him away,” says Valdez. “There was no law – it was custom. They released him, and the following week, a whole group went and sat in the middle of the theater. Years later, I went to work with the UFW [United Farm Workers], and my mom said, ‘Don’t you know who C.C. is? He is Cesar Chavez.”

    It was in 1965, while volunteering with the UFW, that Valdez founded El Teatro Campesino – a theater troupe for farm workers and students. The theater, he says, served as a way to inform, educate and also provide laughter during very hard times for strikers.

    ElTeatroCampesino
    El Teatro Campesino performing in the 1960’s. (Courtesy El Teatro Campesino)

    “I’ve seen the evolution of theater, film and television,” says Valdez regarding his continually growing work with El Teatro Campesino, which still continues today. “My focus has been on historical periods so people can know who we are today…now we’re focused on developing the young.”

    Valdez says it was school that changed the trajectory of his life. It was his mom who sent him and his brother to school one day with their lunches packed in a little brown paper bag – a luxury, he says, in those days.

    “I used to take care of my little bag, but one day my bag was missing,” Valdez remembers back to the first grade. “My teacher said, ‘I took it. It’s for a mask I’m making for a play.’ I forgave her for the bag, and the next week, I auditioned and I got my first part in a play – a monkey. I was looking forward to my first debut in front of the world on a Monday. I told my mom, and she said, ‘We’re leaving Friday. We were being evicted.”

    Valdez says he was six and devastated. However, that episode in his life was crucial, because it gave him the insatiable desire to pursue theater for the rest of his life.

    “It was at San Jose State University that I began to write and produce,” says Valdez. “I wrote my first full-length play there, and just last month, my son produced ‘Zoot Suit’ – it ran two weeks. It’s come full circle – 50 years after I graduated.”

    What piece of life advice would Valdez tell his younger self if he could?

    “I would tell my young self, and others, that it’s important to develop people skills…It comes with giving respect when respect is due. Genius is not an excuse to mistreat other people. A true genius is a genius of compassion and humility…I’m happy to say that El Teatro Campesino is composed of 12 people who have been together the past 40 years. They have had other careers but are still pitching in and helping out. In an odd way, that keeps us young. That’s a great feeling. It’s amazing to me. They’ve become maestras and maestros in their own right…We got a slow start incorporating women into the group, but some of our greatest collaborators have been with women. I would talk to my younger self about the importance of that…These are lessons they I’ve learned along the way. We are all human, and we all have a heart.

  • Award-winning author celebrates 60 and how writing saved her from her emotions

    Award-winning author celebrates 60 and how writing saved her from her emotions

    "I always wanted to jump out of a cake," says Sandra Cisneros.  (Photo/Tracy Boyer)
    “I always wanted to jump out of a cake,” says Sandra Cisneros. (Photo/Tracy Boyer)

    On a typical day, Sandra Cisneros likes to wake up gently, without an alarm clock, around 9:30am. She stays in her pajamas until 1pm, and then starts writing on her covered terrace until sunset, while surrounded by her five small dogs. Her peaceful lifestyle mirrors her delicate demeanor.

    Sandra running on her birthday in Mexico. (Photo/Macarena Hernandez)
    Sandra running on her birthday in Mexico. (Photo/Macarena Hernandez)

    This past Saturday night, however, was a bit out of the ordinary. Cisneros went out on the town dressed up as a cake.

    The award-winning author of several books, including “The House on Mango Street” and her most recent “Have You Seen Marie,” explains this behavior is unlike her normally introverted self, but she was celebrating an important milestone — turning 60.

    “I have never felt younger or happier – now I can take care of me,” she says. “It’s a good time.”

    The Chicago-born Mexican-American has always lived a very busy, even if quiet, life.

    “I started writing when I was in middle school,” remembers Cisneros about how it all started. “I was in the Chicago Public Library looking through the card catalog. You could tell which cards were fingered more often than others. I was looking at a very soft dogeared card. I thought, ‘This book must be very loved.’ I wanted my own card to be loved and dirty from people touching it – from so many readers looking for it – it was very clear from a young age.”

    She says she’s not sure she she chose her life-long career, but it found her.

    “It was always inside me,” says the graceful Cisneros. “It was a way in dealing with my emotions. I didn’t have a way to handle all the stimulus before that. I didn’t see it as a career it was more of medicine.”

    Cisneros explains that ever since she was a young child, she often felt overwhelmed by stimuli around her.

    “I can’t go, to this day, to a supermarket,” she says. “I can’t filter things the way other people can. I didn’t realize that my experience was not common. My mom used to say I was a baby and used to make me feel bad. The only one who understood it was my father.”

    She explains although she often felt like an outsider in her exterior world, she says she always had a rich interior world, and writing made her feel less lonely.

    “When I don’t have art, my machine stops – it helps balance my life,” says Cisneros, who received her first national award by the time she was 30.

    She says thanks to her mom who thought she would become a secretary (her father thought she would marry and become a housewife), she took typing in high school.

    “I knew that I couldn’t depend on marrying somebody,” says Cisneros who never married or had children. “Women need to control their money, and they need to control their fertility. It’s your body, and it’s your life. Nobody should get in the way of that.”

    In addition to earning an MFA in 1978 and becoming an accomplished writer, Cisneros has held various creative writing teaching positions around the country, and founded two organizations that serve writers: the Macondo Foundation (now administered by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center) and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation, which she recently closed down.

    After struggling with her emotions throughout her life, she made it her mission to help students going through the same.

    “I tell students – the ones that are sensitive – that they have a very important job to be artists,” says Cisneros. “It’s a wonderful thing, and someone needs to be able to translate that for those who cannot.”

    She says her sensitivity has not diminished as an adult.

    “I have to not be around a lot of people, except when I have to be,” says Cisneros. “I have to rest before I go in public…It drains me.”

    After living nearly three decades in San Antonio, Texas, and the past two years in Mexico, Cisneros says she has finally sold her house in Texas and is looking for a new house to be based across the border — where she says she feels the most at home.

    “Part of me living in Mexico is finding my retreat to be more private, and do more writing,” says Cisneros, who just finished writing a personal collection of stories called “A House of My Own,” which will be published in October 2015. “It’s all about finding what I need…I know my needs now that I’m older. I think i’m going to be traveling more globally and collaborating with different people. I want to grow.”

    And what is the most important piece of life advice she would give her younger self?

    “I would tell my younger self not to get so hung up on the men in my life,” says the author. “I had so many men in my life, and now I wish I had more, and I would not get all hung up on one. They are such babies. I didn’t find men who were very mature…You have to find someone where you are the beloved. That’s the only way to settle. Forget about the others. I always take their age and divide it by two. I need to find someone who is 100 years old!” [laughing]

  • Tejano sculptor says he’s always ready for his next challenge

    Tejano sculptor says he’s always ready for his next challenge

    Armando Hinojosa (Photo/David Hinojosa)
    Armando Hinojosa (Photo/David Hinojosa)

    Armando Hinojosa is a proud Texan, born and raised in the southwestern city of Laredo. His family has inhabited the Lone Star State as early as 1755.

    He calls himself “a Tejano,” because his father came from Mexico and married his American mother, who was a direct descendant of the founder of Laredo, Don Tomas Sanchez. But perhaps what makes him even more proud, is the fact he dedicates each day to carrying on his late father’s work as an artist – and he does so with love and careful attention to the slightest detail.

    With more than 40 years of experience, the 70-year-old has sculpted bronze pieces for Sea World, Boy Scouts of America, as well as the largest monument at any state capitol in the nation – the 11-piece, life-size, Tejano monument in Austin. On September 6, his statue of Gil Steinke will be unveiled. He was the head football coach at A&I University for 22 years and the first to recruit Black and Hispanic players, according to Hinojosa.

    Hinojosa working on the Tejano Monument. (Photo/David Hinojosa)
    Hinojosa working on the Tejano Monument. (Photo/David Hinojosa)

    “I love all my projects, and I put my whole heart in each one, but the one that has given me the most respect is the Tejano Monument,” he says. “Three-fourths of the Tejano Monument is made up of Hispanics…We were here before any Anglos were here. We’ve been here for 500 years.”

    The energetic Tejano says every project he receives is a new challenge for him. Although, he loves every piece he works on and puts his full attention on each one, he never dwells on the past once he’s done.

    “I gotta move on,” he says. “I gotta work for the future now. I’m ready for something new.”

    Hinojosa excitedly mentions the Cotulla Convention Center in South Texas has already booked him to make a life-size sculpture of the city’s founder, Joseph Cotulla.

    “I do everything in clay,” says the busy sculptor. “You can buy it green, grey, or brown. Then I send it to the foundry where they make a mold…a five foot statue will cost about $30,000 and three months to make, but it’ll last forever.”

    He explains it took him 12 years to finish the Tejano Monument, because it took that long to raise the funds.

    Ever since graduating college, teaching had been Hinojosa’s primary source of income.

    “I married my wife, and we had three kids,” remembers Hinojosa, stating fondly that his wife was an award-winning teacher. “I was a teacher seven or eight years, then I started in the arts.”

    After opening up his own gallery and running it for about five years,  he says he went back to teaching another 10 years, at the end of which he was hired as Dean of Art for a new arts high school in Laredo.

    “I was there for 20 years. I would get up at six in the morning, work in my studio till eight, then go to school,” recounts Hinojosa. “I was never lazy. I was doing both, but when I got the Tejano Monument, I quit and I’ve been doing art since.”

    These days he spends his days sculpting, and his nights painting cowboy or Mexican themes, with either watercolors or oils. He says he is often reminded of when he first started his career with his dad.

    “He would paint billboards,” says Hinojosa. “My dad would draw the letters, and I would paint the inside….Then I went to high school. While other people had jobs in stores, I was helping my dad paint the signs outside.”

    He says his talented dad is still known throughout Laredo by his first name, Geronimo. Years ago, he had been hired to do props for Hollywood, but he didn’t go, because he didn’t know English. Geronimo only had a sixth grade education, but Hinojosa is very grateful for the invaluable lessons he passed down to him.

    “Have a dream and stick to it,” Hinojosa says is one of those lessons. “You have to pay your dues. You have to keep at it. When I first started, I didn’t paint or sculpt like I do now. I was born with it, but I also learned from my dad.”