A Message from the Director in Five Scenes

I. All I have ever wanted is a ranch with some chickens on it. Maybe I would get some bantams because I love how their black feathers glisten in blue; perhaps I would get some white chickens so that I could marvel at the beauty of the image after the rainfall; perhaps I would get some of those chickens that lay green eggs and maybe Dr. Seuss and I could share a laugh. But, I hate myself because I could never keep fighting cocks; there is a part of me that wishes I could be at peace with the pageantry of el palenque but I suppose it says much about me that I have left that part of Mexico behind.

II. I became a professor because I wanted to change the world. I was part of that wave of Chicanos who entered the academy with passion and zeal, the idealism of the missionary. For most of us there are personal and professional reasons for what we do. The simple fact is that many of us found ourselves, bits and pieces undiscovered in the high school curriculum, in college. As a young Chicano growing up in West Texas, I never once read a literary work by a US Latino in either middle or high school. As staggering as it may seem, considering the demographics of West Texas, I knew absolutely nothing of Latina/o literature or history. For me the solution began at the University of Texas at Austin where I first read Latina/o authors and poets and where I first learned about Latino history. In gaining that sense of cultural empowerment, I started to understand my place in the world. This knowledge opened doors to the outside world of academe, and more importantly it opened doors to the inner world of the soul that allowed me psychologically and spiritually to become a whole person.

III. In the sun-draped and wind-swept mountain passes of northern Chihuahua, a stone-throw away from the border, my parents ask me what I do. I tell them that I am working on a book on Chicano children and adolescent literature, that I am also working on a book project of American and British writers in Mexico. I tell them that I write poetic pieces of Mexico, that I take photographs that are artistic renderings of the land and the people. They look at me for a while because I have answered in academic-speak, in a sense I have given them my vita. I pause for a while and think about what I have done. My parents immigrated to the US when I was three years old. I look into the distance; the wind has disappeared as well as the sun. A hard rain falls and the mountaintops begin to catch the rain. Soon the arroyos will roil with water. I think about what I do and I say: I work with stories because even though there is nothing new under the sun we have not come close to knowing all those stories under that same sun. I tell them that there are stories where the sun is a man and some where the sun is a woman. I tell them that there are stories where the stars mean one thing and there are stories where the stars mean other things and yet more stories where the stars mean many other things. I tell them there are stories where the earth is a turtle. I tell them there are stories where the earth is a dragon. In the end I talk about the sun and the moon and the stars and the earth; all I do is talk about different stories.

IV. My Introduction to Ethnic Studies class meets at Lemonjello’s; it is a small class, the reason why students go to liberal arts colleges and why professors teach there. We sit down and one of my students asks a question. She wants to know what it feels like to be a black student at Hope College. I look at my open book. We are supposed to cover Equiano today. We’re on a strict schedule trying to cover as much primary literature and history as possible. Before I can say anything, one of the other students is answering. A litany list follows as she talk about the joys and pains of being a black student at Hope College, as she talks about being singled out in class by professors, as she talks about being alone in their rooms as students. Another student talks, quietly first and then with more and more force as the anger finds its elemental aliment, about the little hurts, about how hard it is to find hair products, about not finding the hair products at a local store but still being followed as if she was going to steal what she could not even use, about how her hair means the world to her but how the hair means she must constantly explain she is not a felon. The students are quiet for a few minutes. Then they talk about some of the nuances of intercultural contact and sexual politics. I blush a couple times and start writing down all the different topics that they are covering: heterosexuality, homosexuality, exoticization, and all the different ways in which students segregate themselves racially in public but desegregate in the privacy of their bedrooms. I blush a couple more times and luckily for me the conversation is changing. A student now talks about her grandfather who came from Latin America. Another student talks about her grandfather who was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp and finally yet another student puts up his hands and says that he is from Columbus, Ohio, which makes him the most foreign of all. They each talk about how they would love to share their stories in other places but rarely find a venue. One of the other students talks about how different it is to be Latina at Hope College. She talks about how you can fit in, pass so to speak. She gets angry because it is not obvious to all that she is Latina. She gets angry when people call her Hispanic. At this, the student who raised the question in the first place wonders out loud how one is to know what to call somebody else. In the end, I am not sure they all agree but we have gone past our time. The students pick up their belongings and exit the door. I smile as they all leave together still talking about our topic of conversation.

V. The Ethnic Studies minor is about finding honesty in the world and being at peace with it. It relies on a very simple idea: that communication, knowledge, education, and stories bring amor y paz to the world. In a flattening world there is much need for this. An Ethnic Studies minor provides the tools for understanding the special gift that is intercultural communication—the ability to provide information as well as excite the soul at the same time. This special gift will prove useful in future endeavors, and I am thoroughly convinced that students who gain these skills will be wonderful successes.
I believe these qualities are indispensable, because I also know that these very good students have a view of their larger mission in life, a view of how their scholarship and teaching affect our society and our world. The person Ethnic Studies minors want to become is a rarity in this flattening world; in a word, a Citizen, a participant and an activist who strives daily, both locally and globally, in the pursuit of justice and equality. More than anything I find this quest a beautiful and majestic endeavor, a proper way to live out one’s life in the pursuit for truth and justice.

-Jesús A. Montaño