Francisco Stork’s Blog

I was invited last week to talk to the 7th and 8th graders of Indian Ridge Middle School in El Paso, Texas. I work hard during the year trying to get invited to at least one El Paso school. First and foremost is the food. Mexican food restaurants on every corner. All of them with a grandmother or two cooking in the back. I grew up in El Paso and the setting for Behind the Eyes (at least the first part of the story) is in El Paso. A large part of my first novel, The Way of the Jaguar also takes place in El Paso. So it makes perfect sense to have someone like me spend a couple of days with El Paso kids. Now I have to tell you right away that these speaking engagements are hard work. At Indian Ridge, met with seven group of kids each day (each group for an hour). There was half an hour off for lunch where, you guessed it, I had tacos. What I try to do during these little talks is talk a little about my life and my books and how the two play off each other, how something actual gets transformed by the imagination into fiction. My favorite part, however, is when I get the kids to write for a few minutes. We pretend that we are writing in a journal that no one will read. I’ll read what they write but I don’t know them so it’s like writing for themselves. The question that elicits the deepest responses is this one: “What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you.” I tell them to write for five minutes without lifting their pencils from the paper, without thinking. Just write. Sometimes, one or two will volunteer to read out loud what they wrote. I bring the hundred of sheets of paper home and I read them. I read about death and divorces. I read about abuse and addiction. I read about rejection and failure. Their writings are a reminder of to me of what a young person of fourteen and fifteen is capable of thinking, feeling, enduring. Their writings are a reminder to me of why I write.

At a recent conference at Rutger’s University, one of the students asked me if I ever felt restricted by being a Latino writer. Funny that the first thing that came to my mind was to say that I did not consider myself a Latino Writer. I went on to say that the main characters in my novels were Latino and that I thought that the main characters in all future novels would be Latino (more specifically, Chicanos or persons of Mexican ancestry) and in that sense reflect issues peculiar to the Latino community in the United States. But later, on the long train ride back to Boston, I reflected on my answer. I’m not really sure what I would call myself. I was born in Mexico of two Mexican parents (later adopted by Charles Stork, a naturalized American citizen born in Holland). I came to the United States when I was nine and have been here ever since. I have one remaining aunt (on my mother’s side) and two cousins left in Mexico. I suppose then that I fit under the definitiion of a Latino writer. Why then the quick negative response? It wasn’t a negative, defensive, I’m-offended kind of response. I am very proud of my heritage and culture and the peculiar tugs and pulls that course through my veins by virtue of my birthplace, my native language, my genes, my culture and history. The quick response, I think, was due to a flash interpretation that the question “do you feel limited as a Latino writer” meant “do you feel constrained to write about “Latino issues” whatever they may be. And my “I don’t consider myself a Latino Writer” answer really meant: I don’t feel that I should or that I am only able to write or that I am somehow for the sake of publication, more inclined to write about “Latino issues.” Latino issues are what? The alienation and disenfranchisement of immigrants; stories that describe the food we eat and the fiestas we celebrate? I think that if I want to be a good Latino writer I have to be a good writer first. My interest is the human soul and the human condition. My main characters will be Latino but they haven’t always been poor people struggling to survive across the border. Some of them have been successful individuals who like many other successful individuals have come to realize that success is not all it is cracked up to be. Whatever good I can achieve for the social problems that affect Latinos will come as a result of being a good writer - someone who portrays Latino characters as believable human beings. To recognize ourselves in the soul of another - isnt’t that a good to be valued? And so yes, I am a Latino writer although I don’t see myself as one. And yes, I would like my books to be read and perhaps to inspire young Latino kids because many of them are like me and many of them need good role models, but still, I’m just someone trying to tell a good story and, if I’m fortunate, maybe I will bring a flicker, glimmer of truth and beauty to our world.