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| Rich Villar adjust the mic for Librotraficante and banned book author, MartÃn Espada |
The Decisive Act:On Orwell, Arizona, and 50 For Freedom
They didn't show up, and I shouldn't be surprised. A press release was generated, an emailaddress and phone number was distributed, the messages went to the rightpeople, and my phone didn't ring, and no messages hit my inbox. None of them showed up, and I suppose Ishouldn't be surprised, because there are always more important things to bediscussed, like Mitt Romney's ignorance about the physics of airplane cabinpressure, or striking football referees, or the technical specs behind theiPhone 5.
There will be no articles written, no reporting, no witnessfrom the press (except for what we do onour own, clearly). They've gotto report on the Presidential election, and the issues surrounding our economy,and health care, and illegal immigration. No time for a bunch of rabble rousers talking about banned books, booksyou can still buy on Amazon. Because if you can still buy things on Amazon, then all is well.
Did you know that Amazon once bannedGeorge Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm? Of all the books to ban. Supposedly it was a dispute over rights, but it led to a massiveoutcry—similar, it could be said, to the outcry over Tucson's book ban. But it's okay, Amazon said at the time,because it offered refunds to the buyers. Point being, the technology to control what you read exists. Point being, if Arizona had known thissooner, perhaps they wouldn't have to physically remove any books from theclassroom.
Let's be clear. The issues in Arizona are only peripherally about books. Though it should be said, the firstthing you do—if your aim to disappear a nation—is to throw their literature inthe trash. Burn it, ban it, boxit, just don't read it. And sothey did just that, Arizona: they banned the books, and they boxed the books,and they made the Mexican-American Studies program in Tucson disappear, alongwith their teachers, along with any mention of it in the schools. Ah, but they told us, they reassured us,that the books are not banned. They just can't be used to teach Mexican-Americans about beingMexican-American. And they toldthe rest of their teachers, that any attempt to teach any of the bannedliterature, all 80 titles on the list (it should scare you, to death, thatthere's a banned books list, and that it used to be a curriculum), could resultin their termination, should any complaint about their rabble-rousing contentbe raised by a concerned parent. Or, anyone, really.
This is where the story ended, even after Tony Diaz and thegroup Librotraficante had the audacity to quote the law in public, show itsunconstitutional application toward one group of people, report to us thestudents' discontent, and organize a series of panels and lectures around theyears-long battle between Arizona and the teachers, which is still ongoing inthe courts. They told us about theschool district suing the former teachers for damages. They told us about the threats to otherpeople's jobs, to keep them in line, to silence them. And they (meaning Luis Urrea) told us about the Orwellianimplications of banning books, unbanning Shakespeare, and rewriting history,and covering themselves in doublethink and Newspeak.
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| Aurora Anaya-Cerda, owner of La Casa Azul Bookstore welcomes the SRO crowd, along with Rich Villar |
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| Sergio Troncoso, Tony DÃaz, MartÃn Espada, Melinda Palacio, Luis Alberto Urrea |
What do you think it means when a government entity does notwant you to read a book called 500 Years of Chicano History? Do you honestly believe it has anythingto do with the ideology of the authors? Has anyone in the state of Arizona actually met these authors on thebanned list? They are notconcerned with how well the students do in school. They've admitted that much: despite the success of theprogram in sending children to college, the program was cancelled anyway. The state of Arizona is concerned withwhat, and how, children learn in school. But it is not the facts they're concerned about, specifically. It's the narrative they're worriedabout. The story. They are concerned, as Big Brother wasconcerned, with controlling the past; as Orwell points out to us, whoevercontrols the past controls the future.
The United States has a past that it would like toforget. The United States has, inits past, summarily executed brown people, Hispanics and Latinos from everywalk of life. The trouble forArizona, and everywhere else, is that there are history scholars, activists,students, thinking people, some with U.S. college educations, who had theaudacity to write textbooks, and to think to themselves the following:Hispanics and Latinos did not drop from the clear blue sky, or from somemystical war-drawn border. InArizona, we're actually learning the same story again, about whitewashedhistory, and changed facts, and misleading narrative. We're learning about context, the same kind of context thatcreated activists like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, PedroAlbizu Campos, Lolita Lebron, and James Baldwin, who was also banned inArizona. Today, it'sMexican-Americans. Take you pickas to who's next. Who's due, as itwere. Where the fire will be nexttime.
If Chicanos have a context, and a history, before the adventof white supremacy, before the advent of European conquest or Pax Americana,there might be a reason for them to walk a little straighter, to understandtheir histories in context, to see themselves in a continuum from Aztlan, tozoot suits, to The House on Mango Street. 500 years ago, Chicanos existed. Africa existed. Latinosexisted. They had just differentnames. When will we learn thesenames?
And when will the media learn to write long pieces about thesystemic dismantling of civil rights? When will they show up to poetry readings by authors on the banned list,in community spaces like La Casa Azul bookstore, in other states besidesArizona and Texas? When will theytell you about Latinos uniting against their own genocide? When will they tell you about thecounterspells being cast by poets and writers, the ones who still believe inlanguage, and history, and meaning, and roots?
Maybe when they find themselves being downsized, orcommanded what to say, by their bosses, by their governments, by financialconcerns. Maybe that day isalready here.
What's left for us, poets, Latinos, is to wake up andunderstand what is happening, to understand it in the context of lightning-fastinformation being passed and passed over. We have to speak, and we have to speak often, in new ways and old ways,to keep these fights fresh. And wemust always be ready to tell the world our history, never tiring of the truth,never weary when people tell you they don't get it. Never scared when the media doesn't show up.
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| Rich Villar at La Casa Azul (Luis Urrea posing for another photo in background) |
And we have to remember love: that's what was present in massive amounts last Friday atthe Casa Azul, and in many places around the country, reading banned literatureout loud, casting counterspells into the universe to reverse the trends, defyconventional wisdom, and survive the way we always have. We have to remember love because ourchildren thrive on it, because we thrive on it, because we will not becomeautomatons unless we allow ourselves to be. We have to remember love, because love banishesindifference, and because love will keep us rooted, our histories intact, ourpeople whole.
Remember love, now and until the day you die, by readingevery book that the state of Arizona tells you not to. Read them, and quote from them, andsteep your children in them. Loveevery day, and do not give in to indifference.
While you're at it, write some of these things down.
"To mark the paper was the decisive act."
–George Orwell, 1984
***
Some of Melinda's photos from last weekend's Brooklyn Book Festival
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| Melinda Palacio works the crowd at the Brooklyn Book Festival |
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| Lucrecia Guerrero, Luis Alberto Urrea, Melinda Palacio, Toni Margarita Plummer, and Reyna Grande at the Brooklyn Book Festival |
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| A trip to Brooklyn would not be complete without a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. |
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| Melinda Palacio and Reyna Grande sightsee. |
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| Toni Margarita Plummer and Melinda Palacio |
La Bloga's Melinda Palacio will make a return trip to New York for the Las Comadres y Compadres Writers Conference, Saturday, October 6 in Brooklyn, NY. Don't miss the poetry panel moderated by Rich Villar.
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