Lords gets selected as Book of the Month by Bakersfield Chicana Book Club - By N.L. Belardes

When I heard that my book Lords: Part One was selected by Bakersfield's Chicana Book Club as their book of the month, I got all watery-eyed… What could I say? Three different people from the club wrote me kind letters, excited letters, fond letters about their selection. After reading them I felt like I broke new ground as a dual ethnic who embraces his Chicano side.

I stood recently and with knees shaking read my "Immigration Interrogation" poem to thousands at Beach Park. It was exciting time covering such events, let alone participating. I felt like I had climbed a cultural hill by reading that poem. But had I reached the top? And will I ever? Such are the issues many dual ethnics face: how to be accepted by the cultures you believe you are a part of.

I’d grown up thinking I was white even though my dark-skinned father always looked like he just spent three weeks in a tanning bed. Why did he embrace Americanization to the point of discarding his own skin color in front of his children? He carried the truck driver cowboy swagger as if he himself stepped from a John Wayne film. He was the cowboy hero, the gunslinger, the tough guy, the rescuer of damsels, the betrother of coffee shops, and the womanizer that women fell for when they watched heroes like Paul Newman in Hud on the big screen. Only, his horse was a truck carrying Petroleum instead of sticks of dynamite.

Is being a cowboy just a form of Machismo?

He made my mother buy me boots as a kid and told me I needed to wear a cowboy hat to be a real man. He might have succeeded had he not disappeared like many fathers of broken homes. His truck and swagger took him far away, mostly in just the distance between himself and his culture and the cultures I explored on my own.

So I found my own path.

Eventually that path came to writing and a deep exploration of self through historical studies and an examination of what it means to be dual ethnic, rather than just white. I’m more Latino than I am anything… and I know enough of what it is to be white to give up a focus on exploring that side of myself—for now at least.

To be embraced by fellow Chicanas and Chicanos is a triumph in self-exploration. I was on the right path after all, I can tell myself with confidence…

(Read more on Bakotopia)

*Note: A big thanks also to Matt Munoz, Gonzalo Santos, Bo Caballero... all people who when I see them, make me feel like I am the person I am.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Friday, September 01, 2006. You can leave your response.