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"Here I am so beautiful that I get to have my face on the walls"

4/19/2020

Woman draped in Cuban flag, artist unknown. Photo by Shayla Moya

"I love the United States, but it is hard to continue loving this country when you are constantly hit with the reality that it does not love you back."

Reflection on Being Afro-Latina: Cuba vs. US

by Shayla Moya

Growing up as an Afro-Latina with Dominican heritage in the United States, Cuba was always an enigma to me. It was the one country in Latin America that was never truly discussed in depth in terms of history or culture, whether that was at home or in Spanish classes at school. The most I was allowed to know was that it had a Spanish accent unique to their country (as each Caribbean islander does), Celia Cruz comes from there, and it is controlled by a very mean communist dictator. Like any other college student, I was in search for the truth of everything and anything, especially when it came to my AfroLatino roots. After a semester abroad in Costa Rica where I learned about Latin American human rights (mostly the lack of them) and its history, I became obsessed with finding the truth about Cuba. Specifically, how progressive the country was in terms of human rights.

Over a year and a half after my trip to Costa Rica, I boarded on a flight to Cuba for a ten-day academic trip. I was in search of sources and interviews that could help me uncover the evolution of human rights in Cuba from the 1952 regime of Fulgencio Batista to the 2019 presidency of Miguel Diaz Canel through the lens of the historically most oppressed groups in Latin America: women, Afro-Latinx, and LGBTQ+. My intentions were to collect the information I needed, get some on-the-ground insight, and enjoy the warm weather. I never anticipated falling in love with the artwork that covered the streets. It was one of the best welcomes I have received upon arrival to a new country. Walking down the side streets of Havana with my brown skin that was only getting darker with every passing day, I fell in love with the paintings that served as mirrors to my own Afro-Caribbean identity.

I was able to appreciate the majority of the paintings during the walking tour of Havana. They could be found hanging outside art shops located around every corner. I loved how the Afro Cuban art was so in your face for every passerby to see, not in the National Art Museum where people would have to pay to see it. Through these paintings, it was portrayed how the Cuban people appreciated and even proudly identified with their African roots as the blacks located in these paintings were seen draped in the Cuban flag or smoking a cigar. The ones that caught my attention the most were the ones painted on older versions of the national newspaper Granma. “Granma” was also the name of the boat that Fidel Castro and the rest of his guerrilleros arrived to Cuba in at the start of the Revolution. It is a key component of Cuban history so to see a brown skinned woman with an afro that reached the corners of the page, a smile on her face while covering her body in the Cuban flag painted on a copy of the Granma, it screamed to me “THIS is Cuba. I am Cuba. Your country may see me as ugly but here I am so beautiful that I get to have my face on the walls.”

At the end of my trip, after all the warm feelings of love and admiration towards seeing such beautiful Afro Cuban paintings and artwork faded away, all I was left with was envy. It has long been my belief that living in the U.S. and being a person of color is like living in a house but never seeing your picture decorate the walls.

I love the United States, but it is hard to continue loving this country when you are constantly hit with the reality that it does not love you back. Through its artwork, Cuba showed me love. It showed me the beauty of femininity, of being black with an afro, curly hair and pigmented complexion. It is hard to find the beauty in these core parts of my identity in the US when everywhere I look Latinas are portrayed as light skin with straight or wavy hair, if represented at all. Whether it is in People’s “50 Most Beautiful People” only including one designated black women or movies where black women are secondary characters. Even within my own Latino culture, black women in telenovelas are always the maid or the slave. Never the one worthy of the love from a handsome prince charming. Or something as simple as seeing myself on the walls of my university. Like many POC students at my university, I am underrepresented in the current student body and the lack of black dignified alumni on the walls reminds me nothing has changed. Each portrait of an Anglo-Saxon man with his equally white privileged wife standing beside him is reminder to me that a college degree was never meant for me. It is a privilege for me to be walking the halls of the academic buildings that HIS money paid for because a black person could never afford it. The closest I can get to seeing a large group of beautiful black women in American culture is in a rap/reggaeton music video where they are rarely fully clothed, serving as a reminder that is where I am supposed to be.

In Cuba, the paintings of all the Afro Latinas served as a personal reminder that my outer beauty is also seen and appreciated for more than sexual gratification. I was no longer “pretty for a black girl” or “pretty for a dark-skinned Latina” but just pretty. It could be such a simple adjective, but the words attached after it could be the difference between tolerance and acceptance.

While in the US, the closest I get to Afro-loving art is on my Pinterest. Maybe that is why the painting of the black Cuban schoolgirl with the crown on her head has stayed with me. I found this painting while taking an evening stroll with some friends down the streets of downtown Havana. While walking, we came across an art studio who had an artist working on his next masterpiece inside. He invited us in to see the rest of his work and that is when I saw her. She was HUGE with hair that matched the color of the night sky, with rope glued throughout her afro to portray its kinky texture. Her skin was only two shades lighter than her hair, a contrast so subtle it blended beautifully across her face. Her eyes were wide open as she pierced into your soul with the innocence only a child can carry. She was dressed in the white shirt, red overalls and blue handkerchief tied around her neck, the typical Cuban schoolgirl uniform. It was the silver crown so beautifully placed a top of her curly afro that stood out to me the most. She was a Cuban princess in all her glory. The existence of that painting gives me hope that one day all little black girls will be able to proudly wear their crowns. That they will believe in their own beauty that everyone around them tells they have, instead of feeling like people are lying to them. It is hard to believe you are beautiful when you do not match society’s idea of beauty. It is an insecurity I always had growing up, and sometimes still have today.

For me, Cuba is a haven for people of color because we finally get to see our picture on the wall. We see the reflection of our common African ancestors in the artwork, the music, the historical monuments and it is all seen as beautiful. People forget that it is not only about seeing your picture on the wall, but “White America” praising your picture the same way it has been praising the rest of the white historical figures and accomplished individuals for centuries.

Representation matters which is why I work so hard to one day get my picture on the wall to serve as a reminder for all colored girls after me that they will always belong. To be the Afro-Latina draped in a US flag painted on a copy of the New York Times and have it scream “THIS is the United States of America. I am the United States of America. Here I am so beautiful that I get to have my face on the walls.”

Shayla Moya is a senior at Norwich University pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, International Studies and Spanish. An Afro Latina whose parents are originally from the Dominican Republic, she was born and raised in Lowell, MA. She possesses a global perspective through various travel experiences to Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Poland, Czech Republic, Mexico, Cuba, and a semester abroad in Costa Rica. She has genuine passion for international human rights activism, and hopes to continue her education with a Masters in International Human Rights centered in Latin America. This is her first magazine publication with many more to come.

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Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities

4/10/2020

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“…simply returning
to the motherland.”

Excerpt from Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond

By Dr. Alvaro Huerta

Accompanying review by Roberto Haro

Chapter 1 Brief History Notes on Mexican Immigration to the U.S.

The historical ties of Mexican immigrants to the U.S., specifically the Southwest, distinguishes people of Mexican origin from other immigrant groups, especially those from Europe. While Mexican immigrants continue to be demonized and characterized as “criminals,” “drug dealers,” “rapists,” “illegal aliens” and “invaders” by American leaders and millions of white citizens, they have essentially become “foreigners in their own land.”

In his infamous article, “The Hispanic Threat,” (Foreign Policy, 2009), the late Dr. Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard claimed that Latinas/os in general and individuals of Mexican origin in particular represented an existential threat to the U.S. By evaluating the positive contributions of Latinas/os to this country since the mid-1800s, we can easily dismiss racist labels and false narratives by small-minded American leaders, racist scholars and nativist citizens. Moreover, by being objective and critical, we can learn the true history about the actual invaders. For instance, in progressive history books, like Dr. Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, we learn that white Americans gradually migrated into what is now known as Texas during the 1820s (156).

While the Mexican government allowed for whites to settle in this foreign territory, the authorities did so under the assumption that they adopt Mexican customs, learn Spanish and intermarry with the native population. This originally occurred without too much conflict, which reveals the openness of the Mexican government and its people towards the white foreigners. This is not to imply that all whites arrived legally or with permission from the Mexican government, as Gloria Anzaldúa eloquently documents in her 1987 classic book, Borderland / La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

By 1826, according to Takaki, then-President John Quincy Adams offered the Mexican government $1 million for Texas, where the Mexican government refused (156). Once Mexico outlawed slavery in 1830, however, pro-slavery Americans, along with other white settlers, rebelled and formed The Republic of Texas in 1836. By 1845, it was annexed into the United States. It appears to me that the white settlers or gringos took the Mexicans literally when the hosts generously said, “Mi casa es su casa.”

Once the U.S. government annexed Texas, it didn’t take the government long to pursue additional territory via the U.S. imperialist war against Mexico (1846 to 1848), as documented by Chicana/o historians, such as Dr. Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Dr. Deena J. González and Dr. Rudolfo “Rudy” Acuña. Based on Manifest Destiny, this imperialist war represented a bloody and greedy land grab, where, according to Acuña in his classic book, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, this concept represents “…a religious doctrine with roots in Puritan ideas, which continue to influence U.S. thought to this day” (52). After the U.S. forced Mexico to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, by then, Mexico lost half of its territory, according to Anzaldúa (7). Although the Mexicans who decided to reside in the U.S. were protected under the treaty, which included their ancestral lands, the U.S. Congress quickly ratified the treaty.

As a result, the Mexicans in el norte eventually lost their lands through the courts, illegal acts and violent means by the state and white citizens. Writing about the brutal experiences of the disposed Mexicans on this side of the border, Anzaldúa (1987) decries this tragedy: “Con el destierro y el exilo fuimos desuñados, destroncados, destripados—we were jerked out by our roots, truncated, disemboweled, dispossessed, and separated from our identity and our history. Many, under the threat of Anglo terrorism, abandoned their homes and ranches and went to Mexico” (7-8). This cruel history, unfortunately, is not taught in American schools.

Thus, when we think about Mexican immigration to el norte, we must examine it under this historical context. That is, unlike the millions of European immigrants who travelled across an entire ocean to settle in North America, Mexicans have always occupied this land or called it home until it was stolen from them by military force. Moreover, like in the case of Native Americans and the brutal history of broken treaties by the U.S. government, the Mexicans in el norte lost their basic rights due to the broken Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Given their historical memory, this is one reason why the millions of Mexicans who make their journey to the U.S. (with or without legal status), especially to the Southwest, don’t view themselves as law breakers or so-called “illegals.”

Like the homing pigeon, the Mexican is simply returning to the motherland.

Despite the loss of their ancestral lands, the impact or contributions of Mexicans (immigrants, residents and citizens) to American cities, suburbs, rural communities and agricultural fields during the past 170 years has been positive, overall. Moreover, while Mexicans in el norte don’t receive the credit that they deserve, they’ve contributed greatly (and continue to the present) in many areas of American society and its economy. This includes agriculture, music, art, construction, infrastructure, transportation (e.g., railroads, freeways, roads), medicine, mining, ranching, science, the military, the academy and beyond. Essentially, there’s no doubt that individuals of Mexican origin played a key role (to the present) to help make this country into the richest, most advanced and powerful country in the world.

Despite being defeated militarily during the early and mid-1800s and experiencing institutional racism, Mexicans have migrated to this country—along with those who’ve settled prior to the U.S. imperialist war against Mexico—to work, create jobs, study, serve in the military and raise families, etc. For instance, during the second half of the 1800s, Mexican immigrants and their offspring represented a key labor force in agriculture, railroad construction, mining and other key sectors. However, instead of being rewarded for their labor contributions with adequate financial compensation and upward mobility opportunities, they’ve experienced racism (to the present) in the workforce and beyond. According to Takaki, working on white-owned ranches in Texas, “Mexican laborer[s] found themselves in a caste system — a racially stratified occupational hierarchy” (173).

During the most of the 1800s and 1900s, it was very common to see Mexicans and Chicanas/os (Mexican-Americans) employed as laborers or workers, while whites worked as supervisors or managers. This racial hierarchy in the workforce, along with the unequal educational system, has limited the occupational status of Mexican immigrants and Chicanas/os. For instance, Mexican immigrants were relegated to the bottom of the economic workforce, which included toiling under agricultural programs like the Bracero Program—the U.S.-Mexico guest worker program of the mid-20th century. From 1942 to 1964, more than 4.8 million Mexican immigrants legally migrated to this country, representing “cheap,” exploitable labor for agricultural employers for the benefit of American consumers (Gonzales 175). Many of them also worked to build America’s railroad infrastructure.

Despite being conquered and exploited in the workforce, the Mexican people in el norte have a strong tradition of organizing for social and economic justice. According to Takaki, in 1903, “… hundreds of Mexicans and Japanese farm workers went on strike in Oxnard, California” (174). This is just one example, apart from the case of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and Brown Berets of the 1960s and 1970s, where Mexicans and Chicanas/os defended their labor and civil rights through labor strikes, civil disobedience, protests, marches and so on.

Moreover, despite being a racialized minority in this country, Mexicans and Chicanas/os served in the military at higher rates compared to whites. According to Acuña, where he cites Robin Scott, during WWII, while Chicanas/os represented only 2.69 million residents/citizens in the U.S., between 375,000 to 500,000 Chicanos served in the war (243). Despite their contributions and sacrifices, it didn’t stop the U.S. government from implementing “Operation Wetback” in early 1954, where Mexican immigrants and Chicanas/os were deported in mass to Mexico. It’s obvious to me that their military and labor contributions of Chicanas/os, like in the present, weren’t appreciated by the U.S. government.

As a son of Mexican immigrants, this issue is not just an academic exercise for me; it’s also personal. Like millions of her paisanas, while my late mother Carmen toiled in the informal economy as a domestic worker in this country for many decades, privileged whites pursued economic opportunities and leisure activities outside of the household. Similarly, like millions of his paisanos, while my late father Salomon first arrived in this country to pick fruits and vegetables during the Bracero Program, where he was forced to abandon his family and rural community, American families enjoyed the fruits of his labor in their homes and restaurants.

At the end of the day, my late parents never received the adequate financial rewards or benefits of their labor and sacrifice, such as good wages, upward mobility opportunities, educational opportunities and homeownership.

In my expert opinion, based on my interdisciplinary scholarship, civic engagement experience and public policy background, it will take many generations to come for millions of Mexicans and Chicanas/os in el norte to one day obtain the elusive American Dream.

Álvaro Huerta is a faculty member in Urban and Regional Planning and Ethnic and Women’s Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Among numerous publications, he is the author of Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond. Álvaro holds a doctorate in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley and a Masters in Urban Planning and a B.A. in History from UC Los Angeles. For copies: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780761871279/Defending-Latina-o-Immigrant-Communities-The-Xenophobic-Era-of-Trump-and-Beyond. Publisher 35% Discount Code = SPSDS20 (ends 04.10.20).

Huerta: intellectual town crier and change agent

Defending Latina/o Communities:
The xenophobic era of Trump and beyond by Alvaro Huerta

Review by Roberto Haro

Alvaro Huerta has crafted an impressive and valuable book that speaks directly and poignantly to the long-lived biases against Latinos in the United States. His collection of carefully selected essays and their key sources proffers a strong testimonial about the prejudices that developed against this community.

The book begins with two significant commentaries about Huerta’s purpose in preparing the book. The essay by Juan Gómez Quiñones is a tightly written erudite account of the formation and existence of negativity toward Latinos that has plagued them in this country. The foreword by José Calderon blends key aspects of the dilemma posed by this prejudicial phenomenon and the thoughtful, and at times, mirthful approach used by Huerta in presenting this theme.

What sets this collage of materials aside from other accounts of the bigotry against Latinos is the way Huerta blends scholarly documentation with poignant anecdotal information. Too often scholars engage in scrupulous documentation to underpin their narrative presentations and prepare sanitized treatises that are better suited for reading by their academic colleagues than use by a much broader readership. The detachment most academic use to prepare their books results in a cold and lifeless chronicle of attitudes and events. Huerta has, instead, injected much of his keen observations and personal experiences to underscore the problems and challenges.

Mexicans were here long before white Americans traveled to the Southwest. After the Mexican American War of 1842 and the resulting treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexicans were conquered people, forced to adopt different economic, political and social structures enforced by the victors. From 1848 onward, there would be waves of immigrants from Mexico and other parts of the Americas to this country, and especially to the Southwest.

Each new wave would be the result of a “push – pull” dynamic. Enticements from those who needed Latino labor in the US were matched by tragic conditions like famine, revolutions, suppressions and personal danger that forced Latinos from their countries. This duality has enveloped the status of Latinos in America, and erroneously justified abuses, hatred and negative stereotypes. And, as Huerta accentuates in most of his essays, it has marginalized Latinos in this country.

The negative perceptions and biases against Latinos are examined carefully by Huerta in two ways that are commendable. He has done extensive research, most of it well documented, to prepare a series of essays that meticulously focus on the existential phenomenon that projects an undesirable portrait of an abused part of the American society. But at the same time, he has provided an important introspective and personal account and perspective of what Latinos face and endure. Both are used as filters to study and report on the way different structures in American society deal with this oppressed minority. This form of subjugation leads to personal and economic disenfranchisement, and in too many cases, poverty. The schools, the police and the media are examined to reveal their complicity as elements that force an external socialization on Latinos.

As a result, Huerta discusses from a personal vantage point how counter forces in the Latino community develop to challenge and resist abusive assimilation tactics. Yes, gangs and illegal activities arise, but so do positive mores by which Latinos and their families cope with the challenges they face, often from a very hostile larger society. Family life that is strong, healing and supportive is well presented by Huerta as part of his upbringing. Despite the barriers the larger society places in the path of capable Latinos, Huerta through family, friends and mentors, succeeds. That success is critical, and something that needs to be shared with a broad audience.

Part of the marginalization of a minority is a forced type of segregation that result in ghettos. For Latinos, it is the barrios and colonias in which they live, and mainly thrive. The barrios are a refuge, a place where the minority culture exists, nurtures and even protects its members. Huerta gives readers a wonderful trip through these places with his accounts of growing up there and how different elements in the Latino family and culture influence his ambitions, determination, and eventual success. In some of his essays, he presents the harsh life experiences endured by Latinas and Latinos. But he also shares tender moments of self-analysis that surface feelings of rebuff, insecurity, and frustration. Yet, he tells the reader what it is like to know poverty and rejection and still find a path to succeed.

Built into the fabric of the book are the structural problems identified by Huerta that condition and perpetuate the dangers and damages to Latinos. To this day, the xenophobic, mendacious and malicious rantings of an American president contribute to the injustice Latinos face in this country. Such bigotry, if continually vocalized by American leaders, continues to infect the minds, attitudes and behavior of too many people in this country. Huerta is to be admired for raising these unpleasant attitudes that result in prejudicial and even violent behavior toward Latinos and other minorities. But to his credit, he offers different ways to overcome these challenges and find common ground among the different groups in our society. Despite the human rights violations that Huerta mentions, he offers positive and constructive ways to construct an encompassing societal compact that benefits all. And to do this, he offers options and ideas that are welcome and valuable heuristic methods for learning and classroom use.

In his essays, Huerta uses terms that are not just descriptors, but are also definitional and focus on the character and ideology of this minority group. Terms like Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Latinos, Latinx and the politically charged Chicano play an important role in his analysis. He often uses the terms separately, but also finds ways to blend and integrate them to form a compositive of the people about whom he cares and writes. His definitional perspectives add to the richness of the stories he tells and engender a sense of shared experiences that transcend geographical location, and subcultures within the Latinos of America.

Mentors are a critical part of a person’s life, and Huerta identifies a few who made a profound difference in his life. Obviously, José Z. Calderón and Juan Gómez Quiñones come to mind. However, directly and indirectly he calls attention to others, like the brilliant UC Berkeley scholar Ronald Takaki and Dr. Leo Estrada at UCLA, both deceased. Mentors played a critical role in his intellectual and moral development, and helped open his mind to not just exploring, understanding and rationalizing the abuses visited on Latinos, but the conceptualization of portable strategies that can combat these negative biases. And along the way, Huerta has morphed from mentee to mentor. And the proof of that is in the preparation of this valuable and seminal book in which he moves from acolyte participant to the role of intellectual town crier and change agent.

I could go on to explore in more detail some of the essays Alvaro Huerta uses in his book. However, two things auger against that. First, others have already devoted considerable time and effort to describe and explore the various issues in the separate essays. And second, time and space will not allow much further commentary. Suffice to say that Huerta has written a well crafted and researched book that provides a plethora of insights, perspectives and well documented research on the persistent prejudices that challenge Latinos in our country.

Roberto Haro is a retired professor and university senior administrator with career service at major research universities in California, Maryland and New York. Since retiring, he has written thirteen novels, most of which have earned him literary awards for excellence. He lives in Marin County, California.

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Neither love nor imagination can be eradicated

4/7/2020

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"there must have been a time when immense and terrible flying creatures fed on children."

Excerpt from
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

By Michael Zapata

Review by Rosa Martha Villarreal

From Chapter 1

His father was a pirate. He had black skin and was a pirate. Regardless of his occupation, or maybe because of it, he was charming and warmhearted and loved listening to most anybody who had a story to tell. His mother was a servant to an old Spanish sugar plantation family just outside of San Pedro de Macorís. It was said she had Taíno blood in her veins and never lied. She had long, coffee-colored hair and all she had known her entire life was the plantation house where she worked with her mother, the seas of the Antilles, and her parents.

On May 16th, 1916, the American Marines landed on the island and her mother and father were killed in the ensuing guerrilla war waged by the peasant gavilleros against the Marines, who, according to her father, were nothing more than tígueritos hired by greedy American businessmen who wanted to force them off their land to expand the sugar plantations. The night before her parents’ deaths, she had been half-asleep watching an ashy-faced owl perched outside her bedroom window when she heard her parents in the kitchen. She got out of bed. It was nearly midnight.

“We should leave now,” her mother said.

Her father put his finger to his lips and her mother nodded.

“In the morning,” her father whispered.

Her mother and father stood in the kitchen and held each other and she noticed there was blood on her father’s pants. She understood then that her father and mother were gavilleros. When her mother spotted her over her father’s shoulders, she smiled and went to her. Her mother stroked her long, coffee-colored hair, just as she had done when she was a child, and told her that the world was the same as it ever was and not to worry.

First thing in the morning, the American Marines came to their home. They dragged her parents outside, bound their hands, and made them kneel in the sand. She heard the shots while hiding under their little village house where there were small pools of water and dirt and sand and dirty-ashen seashells. Once in a century, her father had told her, the sea f looded the land and for a time neither existed.

Two days later her family’s employers decided to leave for New York City or back to Madrid, she couldn’t remember, but the important thing is they f led to a city that wealthy people have been f leeing to for centuries. The last thing they told her before speeding off in a taxi was that the Antilles were brutal and she was one of the last of a brutal race. She thought of her mother, who had worked for the Spanish family for nearly thirty years. She was sixteen. She didn’t want to go home, so she lived alone in the plantation house for two months, wandering from room to room, eating what was left in the kitchen, cleaning as she had done before, and sleeping for days at a time on a bed that had once belonged to a queen from the House of Bourbon.

One afternoon, she packed her clothes and left the plantation house. She headed west, toward Santo Domingo, sometimes walking for long stretches at a time along the coast which was dotted with estates and villages without names (or rather names she had never known) and sometimes riding in the back of a cart driven by a sugar worker who understood without saying so that she was the daughter of murdered gavilleros. For five weeks she wandered the streets of Santo Domingo, which were like the streets of a labyrinth, and ate fish and bread scraps at the market. At night, she slept on park benches and dreamed of future civilizations and an endless seabed full of strange luminescent creatures.

At the end of five weeks, she met an American in the market who said he was trading with the gavilleros and the American Marines. She didn’t know why, but she told him the story of how the American Marines had killed her parents. He listened without saying a word. When she was done, he said that he was really a pirate. He said that he gave the gavilleros a deep discount and sold shoddy equipment to the American Marines at high prices. He was making money hand over fist. He apologized for talking so much and then he said she was beautiful. He said he had never seen a more beautiful woman in the Caribbean than her. She told him that his Spanish was good, if a little outdated. He said that he also spoke French and some Arabic. The pirate studied her face for a moment and then said he could get her on a ship that would take her to New Orleans. She shook her head.

“Why not?” asked the pirate.

“Americans are greedy tígueritos,” she said, “they’re shit.”

“And me?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe you’re shit. Maybe you’re not shit.”

Still, she thought about her prospects on that occupied island and decided to leave Santo Domingo. On the ship voyage she met a boy who looked out of place. He had deep, sky-black eyes. When she asked the boy where he was from, he said he was from nowhere.

“So, you’re an orphan,” she said.

“An orphan,” he said and smiled politely.

“Like me,” she said.

Like everybody, she thought. Orphans are all the world really has left.

For four days, she lived on the deck of the ship and slept near the orphan boy. She listened as he talked about war and mechanical soldiers and an eternal library that he would one day discover and never leave. He’s mad, thought the servant girl. He spoke Spanish well enough, but sometimes he sang in a language that she didn’t understand. The songs were like a melismatic trance. One morning, in the middle of a song, he stopped singing and told her that the ship was entering the eye of the Gulf of Mexico.
“How do you know where the eye is?” she asked the boy, teasing him.

“Just look,” he said and shrugged.

The sea was deep blue and alien and as vast as the sky. She imagined that in the distant future the end of the world would have its origins there and for some unknown reason this put her at ease. When the ship arrived in New Orleans, the pirate was waiting for her. A few days later, he asked for her hand in marriage and she said yes.

On April 7th, 1920, Maxwell Moreau was born in a one-room apartment near the Barracks Street Wharf. His mother labored for seventeen hours and during painful bursts of activity she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on the smells of coffee and bananas and boiled crawfish and the blows and whistles of faraway ocean liners. This was something, she thought, that all mothers giving birth in New Orleans probably did. When Maxwell Moreau finally came out, the pirate knew that his son would not be a pirate like him, spending his life on the surface of the sea, a loud and violent sea that swelled with creatures and myths and drove men to early deaths or, worse, to an asylum.

He swore to it and told his wife that their son had ochre eyes, which were the pigment of earth.

The baby Maxwell Moreau cried and cried and his mother held him to her breast and whispered son et lumière, which was something her husband had taught her to say in French and which meant sound and light and was everything the earth wasn’t.

The Dominicana and the pirate soon bought a home on Melpomene Avenue. Occasionally, the pirate worked for a wealthy Creole smuggler, often for long periods of time at sea or by river and then by marsh in order to help him hide jugs of Cuban rum in the trunks of cypress trees or guard him as he tried to strike deals with Isleños, laughing or rather pretending to laugh, which was a type of threat, at least according to the pirate who listened to most anybody with a story to tell, especially an inscrutable Isleño. He might as well have pistols for ears and a shotgun for a tongue, he might as well start a gang war, the pirate once told his wife, but he still went and worked for the wealthy Creole smuggler and she still saw him off and waved as he boarded a motorboat. Sometimes, when the wealthy Creole smuggler turned his back to the pirate, he saluted him in mockery of the United States Navy. Then, more often than not, the Dominicana stood and chatted with the wealthy Creole smuggler’s wife in the lilting heat and saunter of the Louisiana sun and watched the trill of fishing boats and egrets drift over the Mississippi River as if they were comets lost in the creation of things.

At three, Maxwell Moreau began to wander. He liked sound and light and he followed it everywhere like how the ancient Hebrews followed celestial clues and iconographic fever dreams in the desert. One day a hornet entered the house on Melpomene Avenue and stung Maxwell. He didn’t cry. In fact, when the hornet flew out the back door and into a garden of sunflowers, Maxwell followed it. The hornet flew into another yard and then another before finally landing on a tree. A dog with a half-black muzzle was chained up to the tree and when it saw Maxwell it began to bark. Maxwell thought that the dog was even more interesting than the hornet. He walked over to the dog, but stopped just short of the length of the chain. The dog barked and barked and Maxwell smiled and smiled. He teased the dog and because Maxwell was canny like Sisyphus he eventually figured out how to untie the dog without the dog biting him. The dog disappeared for some time and Maxwell waited. Just before dusk, the dog returned and lay down near the tree. Then Maxwell lay down near the dog with his body pressed against the earth, a pulsating earth with heartbeats, which were the dog’s heartbeats, and tremors, which were the tremors of the City, and murmurs, which were subterranean rivers slipping into the lower Mississippi. He then slept in complete peace, and this is how his mother found him.

Ages ago, she thought as she picked up her sleeping son and held him close, as close as she ever had, the world must have been covered with abandoned or lost children lying on the earth. She then imagined in horror that a prehistoric f lying creature must have fed on these children. Even though she knew that those kinds of creatures must be extinct, she still imagined that one had been circling vulture-like for her child and that she had arrived just in time. She had no idea where this absurd fear came from and when she returned home with her child she immediately told her husband. He said that her fears were reasonable. He said that there must have been a time when immense and terrible flying creatures fed on children. He said that there might even be a few of the monsters left somewhere in the world, maybe in India or South America.

Of Imaginary Books and The Labyrinth of Catastrophes
A Short Commentary on
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau,
author Michael Zapata

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

I keep making different version of the same drawing: Don Quixote and Gregor Samsa (as a beetle, of course) and my Chihuahua make their way into Borges’s Library of Babel. The rows of books spiral upwards until the colors of the covers become a blur. I get mild episodes of vertigo and can never finish the drawings.

The allusions to Cervantes, Borges, and Kafka are abundant in Michael Zapata’s sensational debut novel, The Lost Book of Adana Moreau (Hanover Square Press, 2020), which weaves a modern tale of dispossession and imaginary books in the poetic language of dreams.

The novel traces the journey of an unpublished manuscript entitled, The Model Earth. The book is a sequel to A Lost City, a science fiction novel written by an exiled Dominican woman named Adana Moreau, whose parents had died in the guerrilla insurrection against the invasion by the U.S. Marines in 1916. The manuscript is among the possessions of deceased historian Benjamin Drower, himself the son of exiles of the Bolshevik purges in Lithuania. A friend of Adana’s son, the enigmatic, genius mathematician Maxwell Moreau, Benjamin’s last wishes are that the manuscript be delivered to Maxwell.

The task falls to Dower’s grandson Saul Drower, an Israeli-born clerk whose parents were murdered in a terrorist attack in Tel Avi, and his best friend Javier Silva, a South American journalist, who, by his own admission is addicted to the catastrophes that people inflict upon other humans. The two friends not only travel through the physical world and its labyrinth of absurd cruelties but the imagined worlds of science fiction. It was science fiction and dispossession that had initially brought Benjamin and Maxwell together as boys. Thus, it is apt that Saul and Javier, young men born of possession, navigate through catastrophe and science fiction to find the elusive Maxwell Moreau.

Zapata’s narrative is like the multiverses of both actual science fiction stories and those of his invented books, the latter which he seems to have found in his dream of the Library of Babel. Like Cervantes, Zapata embedded imaginary books in his imaginary tale, which the readers may vaguely recall, perhaps from those moments when our subconscious mind wanders into a parallel universe: books born of catastrophes, of exile, of grotesque oppression. Philosophically, this novel reveals that, like Dedalus, we are the architects of our own labyrinths of destruction and death, only to be ourselves trapped by these political creations born of vanity and lust. Our political and social constructs can, in the hands of unscrupulous demagogues, devolve into the institutionalized bureaucracies of Kafka’s nightmares where the most inhumane acts are committed not by monsters but ordinary citizens following orders. Yet, as Zapata’s book shows us, neither love nor imagination can be eradicated. Humanity, like a weed, prevails.

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau is a masterpiece of imagination, poetic language, and serious commentary on the human condition. I highly recommend it.

***

Postscript: I finally completed a drawing while writing this commentary. It’s called, “The End of a Quest: Chihuahua, Don Quixote and Gregor Samsa Find the Library of Babel.” In the background is “El Castillo” from the Maya-Toltec City of Chichén Itzá in tribute to one of the books from the Library of Babel which contains a single phrase: “Lo, the pyramid.”

Michael Zapata is a founding editor of the award-winning MAKE Literary Magazine. He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Fiction; the City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Program award; and a Pushcart Nomination. As an educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing drop out students. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa and has lived in New Orleans, Italy, and Ecuador. He currently lives in Chicago with his family.

Rosa Martha Villarreal is a retired Adjunct Professor at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, California, and author of several important novels including Doctor Magdalena, The Stillness of Love and Exile, and Chronicles of Air and Dreams.

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WRITINGS / ESCRITOS

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By Dr. Alvaro Huerta

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Chapter 1 Brief History Notes on Mexican Immigration to the U.S.

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Defending Latina/o Communities:
The xenophobic era of Trump and beyond by Alvaro Huerta

Review by Roberto Haro

Neither love nor imagination can be eradicated

"there must have been a time when immense and terrible flying creatures fed on children."

Excerpt from
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

By Michael Zapata

Review by Rosa Martha Villarreal

Of Imaginary Books and The Labyrinth of Catastrophes
A Short Commentary on
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau,
author Michael Zapata

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

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WRITINGS / ESCRITOS

"Here I am so beautiful that I get to have my face on the walls"

"I love the United States, but it is hard to continue loving this country when you are constantly hit with the reality that it does not love you back."

​Reflection on Being Afro-Latina: Cuba vs. US ​

Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities

​“…simply returningto the motherland.”​

Excerpt from Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond By Dr. Alvaro Huerta ​Accompanying review by Roberto Haro

Chapter 1 Brief History Notes on Mexican Immigration to the U.S.

Huerta: intellectual town crier and change agentDefending Latina/o Communities:The xenophobic era of Trump and beyond ​by Alvaro Huerta

Review by Roberto Haro​

Neither love nor imagination can be eradicated

"there must have been a time when immense and terrible flying creatures fed on children."​Excerpt fromThe Lost Book of Adana Moreau​By Michael ZapataReview by Rosa Martha Villarreal

​​Of Imaginary Books and The Labyrinth of CatastrophesA Short Commentary onThe Lost Book of Adana Moreau, author Michael Zapata By Rosa Martha Villarreal

Archives

Categories

HOME INICIO

​ABOUT SOBRE

SUBMIT ENVIAR

​SUPPORT ​APOYAR

Donate and Make Literature Happen

Reflection on Being Afro-Latina: Cuba vs. US

“…simply returning
to the motherland.”

Excerpt from Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond

By Dr. Alvaro Huerta

Accompanying review by Roberto Haro

Huerta: intellectual town crier and change agent

Defending Latina/o Communities:
The xenophobic era of Trump and beyond by Alvaro Huerta

Review by Roberto Haro

"there must have been a time when immense and terrible flying creatures fed on children."

Excerpt from
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

By Michael Zapata

Review by Rosa Martha Villarreal

Of Imaginary Books and The Labyrinth of Catastrophes
A Short Commentary on
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau,
author Michael Zapata

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

ABOUT SOBRE

SUPPORT
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