The Way to College Podcast - Ep 185 - Dorotea Reyna

Hi, this is Dr. Ossessa Lever. With another episode of the Weigh to College podcast. And I was sharing with my guest, today's guest, that I was just writing an article. Somebody asked me to write an article on the power of storytelling and on my work. And I never anticipated where this work, where the podcast would take me. But in many ways, it's a journey that I think started as an undergraduate and collecting moral histories and listening to stories, but then being able to share them and to tell the stories of others. In my case, it was through research papers and journal articles. And today it's a podcast. And so I'm always excited about hearing the stories that folks share with me. Because it's always new. Somebody knew that I haven't met often. And today is another one of those opportunities. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to let my guests introduce themselves. All right. Dorothea, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners out there? Well, good morning, Jay. Thank you so much for having me. And my name is Dorothea Reina. And I'm the author of the recently published book Los Cedros, Atahanama M.R. Dorothea, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for joining me. I, as with all of my guests, I always ask my guests if they had to identify a starting point for their educational journey. Or would that starting point be for you? For me, my starting point would be the six years I spent at St. Paul's Catholic Elementary School in Mission, Texas. They were very formative years. And with your permission, I would like to read a small part of my book where I describe that experience, because I think it sets up the rest of my educational journey. Absolutely. So this is from chapter four titled Girl. And people might ask why I speak in the third person. And that's because even my character in this book of 12 vignettes, focusing on different characters of my Pueblo, is just one person out of this community. So this is my story. Her parents' choice of schooling created the first Fisher in the girl's psyche. Between that period of her life when she felt whole and unbroken, and the subsequent period where she would always see the world as divided into two. Spanish was her first language, although she never remembered the time her parents described when she sang in Spanish. At some point in her very young consciousness, her parents began speaking to her almost exclusively in English. And thereafter, she was always careful to distinguish and separate the two idiomas. Even at the age of five, she had already divined the magical potency of the language. And was careful not to intertwine these two exclusive powers, these competing kingdoms, Spanish and English. Her discovery of the sorcery of language was fueled by the set of encyclopedias her parents had purchased from a traveling salesman. Twelve leather bound volumes, maroon and white with guilt letters. The first three volumes for children. The latter nine for adults, including history, science and psychology. At what age she fell into the pool of fairy tale and rhyme in the children's volumes. We could not remember. But when language, especially poetry, pulled her into its embrace, she was never again to let go. Her father read to the children at night, sending them off to sleep with delightful music played on a small island. Record player. He was a modern educated man and knew how to sharpen and grow young minds through music and storytelling. At some point, she began reading the fairy tale and poetry books on her own. And spent countless hours bewitched by the colorful and fanciful illustrations of queens and castles, princes and dragons, and fair haired shepherd boys and villages so distant from her own, yet so close. She liked to recite poems under her breath, loving the lilt of the lines as they converged in meaning. Going to school with so many white children, the sons and daughters of store owners and farmers, was like stepping into one of her fairy tales. It was another world, a world which terrified her a little, with teachers who were tall and some stern. It was a time when the paddle swung freely and also the ruler, the latter used to wrap open palms as a punishment for Mexican children who unconsciously slipped into Spanish. She was never punished this way, for she had learned to separate these two languages well before she entered first grade. So began six long years of learning the secrets of the alphabet and numbers of reading and writing essays and of diagramming sentences. She excelled academically early on and never wavered, for along with her dreamy imagination which she kept to herself, concentration was her constant companion, almost a genie she could summon at will. Unlike the other children who got into trouble for wiggling or getting out of their desks or not keeping their hands and feet to themselves, she was always at one with the lesson before her. Eventually she came to prefer writing essays above all other assignments, making visible the dreamy habits of her imagination, as she compared and contrasted the pinks of the dawn with the rosy orange of the skies at sunset. Yet she was equally faithful to her arithmetic lesson, carefully lining up the numbers and multiplication or division, waiting for the right answer which clicked in her ear like a little clasp. I love that, that was beautiful. Me too. So tell me, tell me more about this because I think you alluded to so many things and that experience in those passages, but I feel like there's so much to unpack there. Thank you. And before we jumped on started recording, you talked about, you told me you were going to read this, but you talked specifically about language. And so maybe we start with the language or start wherever you'd like, but tell us about the importance of the relevance of this story and your own journey. Well, I should say that my earliest teachers were my parents because both of my parents were teachers. And they were the first of their families and communities in South Texas and Edalgo County in their little pueblos in which they grew to earn bachelor's degrees and later master's degree. And after becoming teachers, they were also administrators. So their careers and professions grew as I continued my schooling. But as I write, my parents had bought a set of encyclopedias and they did so because they wanted to encourage us to learn and to read. And my father especially, perhaps because my mother had such a large family, I was the oldest of seven. She was always busy. She was a teacher and then she'd have to do all the housewife and mothering. So my father often was the one that spent time with us and tried to encourage us to learn. And I remember him as I write about reading to us before we went to bed. But very early on, I loved language. I was very keenly aware of it. And right before even I went to St. Paul's Catholic Elementary, my kindergarten had a brief stint in a school where French was also spoken. We learned the song, Allouette, gentile allouette. Had no idea it was about threatening a lark with plucking its feathers. But even then I was exposed to another language, French. And I adore language. And when I started reading fairy tales and poetry on my own, just the rhythm of language, the fact that you could combine imagination with storytelling, with music in a short space, it just entranced me because it also had meaning. So I was very, very aware of language even before I entered school. And truly, the nuns at St. Paul's Catholic Elementary got me all the way up to Stanford, for sure, because it was back in the day where memorization was a big part of what we did, but actually memorization is a big part of learning. So, and also such arts that have been lost as diagramming sentences, where you really got very close into the interstices of language, how was sentences put together. Those were great boons to me and gave me a very good foundation for the rest of my life. But there was also the shadow of being punished for speaking Spanish. And so for a sensitive child, as I was the oldest of seven, eager to please, you know, eager to be considered good, there was that hang that something about my very culture, my very nature, if you will, was wrong, was not as good as. So while I credit my teachers, the nuns for getting me to Stanford English, giving me the good education that my parents had wanted, there was also the hang of feeling not good enough, being reinforced very, very early on. So that, you know, no surprise throughout the years, I lost mastery of Spanish while I attained mastery in English. Your story resonates, you know, we talked before about the similarities with our journeys, respective journeys. And, you know, I grew up in a time after, I think, where we saw the students were punished for speaking Spanish, but my parents, that was their experience. They told, they didn't want me speaking Spanish. And so, you know, I never had a firm grasp. I think I found myself, so much of my story is kind of of recapturing a lost education, right? And so I'm fascinated by your own experiences with this, you know, being in it. And I think what really piqued my interest was, what does that do for you? And I forget how you described it, but you said that along the way, you started to lose your mastery of Spanish. I don't know if you said insecurity. Can you speak to, what was that like for you, like losing that and recognizing, did you recognize here you are, you're losing this mastery of your native language? Well, I have to go back and say it wasn't a mastery, because when I entered first grade, I was six or seven years old. So I had that level of knowledge of Spanish. But my parents said that I used to sing in Spanish, and I certainly don't remember that. And, you know, back in the day, and this was probably, you know, I'm 20 years older than you are, so it is a whole generation. The nuns made sure, there were white nuns, they made sure that there was never going to be any shows of overt racism in the classroom for which I'm grateful. But, you know, there were very noticeably more powerful Anglo families that were part of that Catholic community. There were feelings of, you know, Anglos are superior to Mexicans, therefore, we punish you for speaking your language. So those things were excruciating, I think, because I came from a Mexican pueblo right on the river itself, and that's, you know, what I write about of about 500 people. And it was exclusively Mexican, except for the Border Patrol, which occupied a tiny corner of the pueblo, and they kind of kept it themselves. And so to my parents chose, even though they were both teachers in the public schools and taught Chicano students, they chose a Catholic school where half the students were white, the other half Mexican, but all the teachers were white. And they did so because they had struggled so mightily in college to give presentations in English because they were Spanish dominant. So to make sure that we succeeded in this society, they made the very conscious decision to send us to a school where English would become our primary language. And we had had older cousins, you know, go through this Catholic school. The girls had inherited the pleated skirts, which by the time we got them had no pleats in them. They were pretty much worn and darned. And my parents paid, I believe at that time it was $13, a child a month to get us educated. And that doesn't sound like a lot, but at one point we had four children enrolled there. And it was a lot for my parents because teachers were not paid a lot. But my parents made the very conscious and I would say political decision to send us to a place where we could acquire mastery in English. And that's what indeed happens. And they also wanted us to be introduced and reinforced in the Catholic faith. The church, the St. Paul's Catholic church was right adjacent to the school. So at least once a week we would go and, you know, get catechism and go to mass and, you know, be indoctrinated into the faith. We also had the pastor of the church visit the classrooms. And I remember he was white, Father Dan, we would all drop to our knees as soon as he entered the classroom. And we would go up to him and it sounds odd now, but we would kiss his opal ring, you know, as a finer burst fat. So again, it sounds extreme to our ears now. But actually, Jay, I'm very grateful to my parents for exposing me not only to the best education they could provide, but also to the Catholic faith because it taught me the morals and values that, you know, were so instrumental to me for the rest of my life. And nowadays, you know, parents send their kids many times to public schools, secular schools. And I went to public school in junior high and high school. So I'm aware of that. But necessarily, you can't bring religion into it. So how do you impart values? And, you know, that problem would solve entirely by sending me to Catholic school. And it's those morals and values that my parents taught me and that were reinforced by the school that kind of drive the social drive for justice that, you know, is the fire for my book. Because my book is about the beautiful little Pueblo that I was from on the river. And going back, right before I started writing this book in 2021, I went back to visit and I saw that my father's village was under surveillance. It was now under a giant surveillance balloon. And my mother's village was now framed by the wall. And it was the shocking realization of how militarized the border had become in the valley that was the fire that kind of helped me write this book. And my book is a love letter to my little Pueblos that I grew up in. And the good people that helped raise me, the activist priests that, you know, live right next to our home, the Kudan Dita that live right next to him, the various people that had such a hand in shaping my life and my siblings' lives and what good people they were. And now to find that cradle of my childhood, my childhood Eden under surveillance was a shock, was a severe shock. And that realization that the border has changed so much since my childhood, growing up in the 60s, was part of the fire that helped me write this book. I love that. You know, your parents, and thank you for explaining that, right, that why your parents chose to send you to the Catholic school versus the public school where they taught, clearly your parents wanted you to go to college, wanted you, wanted for you not to maybe struggle as they did. And you said they struggled making those presentations. In addition to setting you up to go on and to continue with your education to get a degree, was there any ever anything, did they ever say we'd love you to study this? Or that you should become a teacher, you should become a doctor, is there any guidance in that way? Or was, did you have the freedom to kind of go and explore and figure those things out for yourself? I absolutely had the freedom within the type constraints of being, you know, in a Catholic family where the parents are very much in charge, where everyone, you know, every adult is, you know, in charge of you as well, accountable, you know, we were accountable to all adults. My parents were a modern educated parents. They very much, you know, wanted to encourage us to blossom into our potential. So, they never squelched me at any point. I think the only part was when I entered puberty in junior high and high school and really started thinking for myself. I did come into challenges with my father for adopting feminism early on. And I remember one day, it was in high school, it must have been, I came home with Timer Newsweek Magazine and Gloria Steinem and all her, you know, sunglass visor, House Blong Hair Glory was on the cover. And I said, dad, I want to be like this woman. And he had a problem with that. Because although he always taught me and encouraged me to fight for Chicano rights per se, which I understood, he had a little more trouble with my feminism, because it did disrupt the order of things that, you know, our family life as he was accustomed. So you're having these experiences, you're exposed to feminism. What is it that you envision for yourself? What kind of future did you envision for yourself? I think I had a very vague and kind of soft focus picture of myself because my parents were educated and they both had graduate degrees. And I remember, you know, entering puberty, my father was working on a graduate degree, I believe it was in history and administration at Texas A&I University in Kingsville, which is now part of the Texas A&M system. And we would all, you know, sleep on the floor because it was only one bedroom apartment and there were several children and, you know, my parents were going to school. So there was always the expectation that I would go to college. But because my parents had gone to local universities at that time at Pan American University, which is now UTRGV and Texas A&I University, when it came time for me to go to college, they really couldn't give me much guidance. You know, I was high school valedictorian. I had good SAT scores, but there was no real guidance as to which college I would ultimately choose. So I chose four of them that had a good reputation and was accepted to all of them and chose Stanford. And I will go into why I chose Stanford, but there was one high school teacher and there always is, if you're fortunate, that kind of sees who you are and what your potential is. And he was an English teacher, he was white, but he saw how easy it was and how, you know, passionate I was about literature. And I remember one time he assigned Christina Rosetti's home goblin market. And I think he was surprised that I could pick out all the sexual connotations and really delve deeply into what the poem was alluding to or the reverberations under the language. You know, and so there were many such books that he would give and he understood that I got them at a deep symbolic level. So he started, you know, a relationship that's mentored to me and kind of treated me, especially in a way, that kind of gave me the confidence to say, you know what, I can go to a good university and I can even perhaps one day become a writer. And it was because of his influence in my life. But again, I had a vague idea of what college was going to be all about. I chose Stanford because they gave me the most financial aid. They gave me a full tuition scholarship, whereas the other three universities did not. They gave me partial scholarships and my family had seven children. So I knew that my parents could not afford except very minimally to help me. But Stanford also wisely sent a Chicano recruiter from the admissions office. And I think that was another huge factor for me choosing Stanford because I knew there was someone that was like me at in the administration. And I think lastly, I chose Stanford because of brochure and there was a Pacific Ocean and that was it. But I felt comfortable academically at Stanford that I never felt comfortable socially, at least at the beginning, my first couple of years, because truth be told, I'd never been surrounded by so many white students. And I my freshman dorm was quote unquote, the Native American theme house. And I believe there was about a dozen Native Americans, there was maybe another dozen Chicano's, and there was about 200 white folks. So I think it was and many of the white folks were affluent too. So they would be going skiing in Tahoe for spring break and the Chicano students would be on campus. So I don't think I felt socially comfortable until my junior when I moved to the international theme house, Hamershield on campus, and there everyone was a minority, you know, the Chinese and Nigerians, the French, Belgians, the Mexicans, the Peruvians, and I felt for the first time very comfortable at Stanford in that setting. But I spent a lot of time in the in the Chicano admissions officer's office, and also the financial aid had a Chicano officer. And I spent a lot of time there the first year, not because I needed their help, but just because I felt comfortable, you know, representation matters, being able to see yourself in positions of leadership and power, which I had learned from my parents actually, because their leadership in Valley High Schools was so critical for the success of the hundreds of Chicano students, thousands that they mentored and encouraged to graduate. And alongside, you know, my experience, I had learned from my parents early on, the politics of education, that it's not just what you learn in the classroom, but the access to learn that the comfort level that your teachers give you, the sense of justice, or lack thereof, you know, my parents, my mother became a junior high counselor, my dad was first a Texas history teacher, and then he became a system high school principal. And I remember them talking about, you know, cases where they often had to intervene between Chicano students and Anglo teachers. And some of the Anglo teachers, at least one was a member of the John Birch Society, which is the precursor for the Tea Party, the precursor for MAGA, and they had to intervene in kind of conflicts between students, and they took their jobs very seriously. And I think they had the wisdom of Solomon because they had the gift of hearings both sides, and coming to, you know, adjust a dress of whatever was going on. But they certainly didn't go into meetings or conflicts with the assumption that the white teacher was right. And that was a whole sea change in the Valley when Chicano administrators finally had the reins of power within the high schools. Wow. I'm appreciating the history lesson. The, you know, one thing that I, another thing that I wanted to know, here you are, you, and I understand what you, when you speak to not feeling socially, right, in at home or feeling like you belong socially on campus at Stanford, I remember feeling a little like that my first year and until finding, I think I was able to find my community. So I understand that while you're at Stanford, though, well, first, did your parents have any issue with you leaving the Valley to attend college? I think they, they, they did, you know, naturally, but it was my father who pushed me on the plane. Because at the very end, I had never left home. And I realized that it was all kind of dreamy and vague until it was time to get on that plane and go to California from, you know, Mission, Texas. And he's the one that actually forced me to get on the plane. So, you know, my dad always knew that I had potential to do something with my life. And he wasn't going to let my momentary loss of confidence stop me from, you know, accessing the education that he thought I needed to be who I was intended to be. Wow, I love that. And did you know you wanted to be a writer when you got to Stanford? I think, again, I had a vague idea that that was something I wanted to do. I certainly, I started off as a psychology major at Stanford. But around my junior year, I switched into, into English literature studies. And I think when you read and write literature all the time, you always have that, you know, little spark in your heart saying, I could do this, you know, and again, the romantic idea of the writer, you know, appealed to me as well. So there was always that lore. But I don't think that I started thinking of myself as a writer until, you know, after graduate school or around graduate school, I went to the University of Texas at Austin, and I won a prize for a poetry collection at the university. So I think at that point, I mean, becoming a writer is kind of an internal developmental thing. It's not just automatic. I mean, I've written my first book, and it's still getting getting used to the idea, I can call myself a writer, you know, it's bonafide now, because there's all sorts of, you know, things that go on. I mean, writers, I don't know, have the highest of self-esteem. They're very self-critical. You know, I, having studied brilliant literature, I know what it is. So where do I fit in that panorama? But I think it was my parents' daughter and me that knew that I wanted to give back to my community. I wanted to represent Chicanos. I wanted to talk about what's going on at the border and the use of surveillance, the use of helicopters, and the use of dogs, you know, how different my home now feels. And, you know, it was that sense of wanting to represent Chicanos, wanting to speak up for Latinos in general, that, you know, made me choose this topic and finish the book and become the writer I had always dreamed of in a vague way, you know, when I was a girl in school. You're at Stanford, completed degree, it's from Stanford. And you said you went to a study to get your master's degree at UT. Was that immediately after Stanford or did you work? Did you, and I asked because I think for a lot of the folks that I've interviewed, they talk about as soon as they finish that master's degree, there was an expectation, whether it was from society or from their parents to, okay, now it's time for you to work. What were the expectations for you after you've completed your degree? Well, there were no expectations, as long as I could support myself and I found ways to do it. One of the things I did was I was a substitute teacher. I did come back to the Valley for a little bit. So I did support myself, but my parents really didn't, I mean, they never intervened in terms of what we were going to do with our lives or who we were going to love. You know, they were kind of like very hands off in that way, gave us a lot of space to truly make our own adult decisions. So I think I was out for maybe a couple of years, two years or so before I went to graduate school. And what is it that led you to UT? I don't quite know. I mean, it was Austin. It was, you know, it's the flagship university in Texas. They had a fine English program. There were many reasons, but this time I wanted to stay in Texas. I think that was part of it. I didn't want to go back to California for my graduate degree. So those are some of the reasons. And right after that, I met someone at UT that recruited me to post-graduation, entered the English department at Texas A&I at Kingsville, and I began my professional career as an English teacher at Texas A&I, which is now Texas A&M at Kingsville. Tell me about your time at Texas. My time at Texas was, you know, graduate school is a very different world than the very intense world of undergraduate school. So I had, you know, a couple of Chicano friends in the English department, and I had very good professors. But I think that the most intense part of anyone's education, post-high school, is the undergraduate education. You know, it was a little bit, you know, it wasn't as monumental in terms of, you know, challenging me socially or psychologically. I think I had come into my own. And so I was more self-aware as to what I was doing and what I was preparing myself for. But it was a wonderful experience. I mean, both at Stanford and at UT Austin, by and large, they were great experiences. But there were, you know, there were elements of racism that I encountered or prejudice in, you know, isolated incidents, things that professors would say or, you know, administrators would say to me that made me see that, you know, these were not you know, weekends of justice in their purity. They also had their own challenges for Chicano students. You know, these experiences, whether it's at Stanford or UT, you're having these experiences and right the, maybe they didn't color your entire time right in these places. But at any point, did you ever experience the sort of self-doubt where you were questioning, should I be here? Should I continue down this path? I would say not. I would say not. I remember at Stanford, at the first, my junior year, the fall semester, I had applied for study abroad in Spain, in Salamanca. And I was accepted, but I needed more financial aid and to be able to do it. And, you know, I did graduate with loans, but anyway, at any rate, I went to the financial aid office and I remember it was a white officer, a man, who told me that Stanford was too good for, you know, your kind of people in terms of too generous financially. And, you know, I had a similar experience at UT Austin where I had a few incompletes at one time and I had similar doubts cast on me by, I don't know if it was admissions or an advisor, but, you know, kind of doubted that I would pull it together. And I knew that I could pull it together, you know, life had happened and I was dealing with other things in my personal life. But, you know, finally, it was one professor who said, I know you'll pull this together and I did. And I graduated on time and it's all courses complete. So while, you know, voices outside me, you know, might have questioned my place in these Allowed institutions, I don't think I ever did, although there were moments of vulnerability. You know, in my own journey, the first time I experienced, I say that I was aware, that I was aware that I experienced racism was while I was at Stanford and while I was an undergrad. Can I remember feeling like I couldn't talk to my parents about it? Because I don't know that it was that I wanted to shelter them from it or that I didn't know if they could help me. But I struggled with sort of the thoughts and the experience and kind of making sense of it. Going and speaking, for example, to this person, financial aid and, you know, and hearing those words, whether it's that moment or any other moment where you experienced racism, some form of racism. What was that process like for you? Was it, did you have somebody that you spoke to about it? Did you kind of just sit with it or was it just, I just need to push past this? I think it was, I just need to push past this. I did have, you know, friends and Chicanos, mostly Chicano friends at Stanford. So I did have a support group. And then again, there was the admissions officer and the financial aid officer that were Chicanos. But it's, I think a lot of students of color, persons of color are very familiar with those, I guess the term now is microaggressions, where you just, you know, you take the little scratch and you move on. Because again, I always felt comfortable at Stanford. In fact, I graduated Phi Beta Kappa. So I was academically, I knew that I belonged there. But, you know, those kind of microaggressions and there were others. I remember, again, in the Native American Theme House dorm, a white student came up to me and told me that the coat I was wearing offended his sensibilities and I needed to buy a new one. So it was those kind of, you know, my parents, other than flying me home for once a year, I don't even think I went home for Christmas during my time at Stanford, you know, they couldn't really afford to give a lot because they had six other children and I believe my alien grandparents were also living with them at some point. So I think I just learned, Jay, as many students of color learn how to take those kinds of microaggressions and just keep moving forward. And I was also fortunate, I think, that I knew Chicano's at Stanford that were very political and politically active. And I remember when he was a boy, he was a couple of years older than I and he was a self-avowed communist, you know, and he once asked me why I thought I was at Stanford and I quite naively, I think a freshman answered, well, it's because I'm smart. And he says, no, that's not why you're at Stanford. You're at Stanford because your Chicano brothers and sisters fought for you to be at Stanford. That's why you're at Stanford. You know, Stanford has, at that time, had always been saying to the Chicano students, there aren't any more. You know, we've looked the country over and there's very few Chicanos, they can cut the grade here. And the Chicano students that were older would say, send us and we'll find them. So I think, you know, Jay, that statement from an older student, it just knocked the rest of the stupid out of me. I never, it knocked the stupid out of me. I never made that glib assumption again that the reason I'm here is my own merit. You know, that was partly true. But, you know, as the longer I was at Stanford, the more I saw the political activism that even, you know, put the administration to look for qualified Chicanos, you know, and I would assume other minorities. I remember one particular student, you know, the Chicano students, we used to drive home because we wouldn't even fly. We drive home. Six of us piled up in a car and we'd rush past West Texas because we were nervous. But I remember one of the, my fellow students was a farm worker and came from a farm worker family and she was out acing the preppies in mathematics. So it, you know, it was those kinds of things that made me see that Chicanos and others have always, we've always had the ability to do things. But unless there's the political muscle behind it, those doors might have been forever closed. And now I look at my other alma mater, UT Austin, and the destruction of DEI as so-called, you know, the fact that you can't use the words women in any titles or Latino, Chicano in any course titles. That's shocking to me. That's shocking to me. And that just shows me we're going to have to come together as a community and start using that political muscle. I love where sort of we find ourselves in this conversation. For a number of reasons, right? Because I think we've And I've shared this with others where I think it's so easy to forget and some of us never learn. We never know. We never hear, right? We don't always get the opportunity to get the stupid knocked out of us. And so to remember, to learn about the work that has gone in before us, that so many of it countless have done before us to create these opportunities, that you were able to take to take advantage of, that I was clearly able to take advantage of, and then to find ourselves where we are today. And your book and why you've written your book, and you've talked about sort of the surveillance that this community, that the community that your parents grew up in, now finds itself under. What is it? So tell us about, walk us through, if you don't mind the genesis of the book. Why you felt the need to tell this story? Well, again, it was visiting South Texas, visiting these pueblos in Adagio County that I grew up in. And I think as an adult, I would return. I'm a transplanted Tejana in California, but every couple of years, especially when my parents were alive, I would go see them at least every other year. And even after they passed away, I would want to go and clean their graves, the Mexican custom of tending the graves. So I was on such a mission in 2021. And I knew, I had already decided I was going to write a book. And I knew that I wanted to write about my childhood in these little magical pueblos along the river, because they were so meaningful to me. But it was seeing the surveillance, it was seeing the wall that kind of like, as I said, you know, sealed my resolve to finish this first book. And again, this was, I'm retired. It took me this long to have the space and time to be able to focus on a writing project. And I knew that I had to choose something that had deep passion, I had deep passion for, so that I would be able to finish it. But that was, it was a love letter to my childhood, to the good people who raised me, especially in the current circumstances where there is so much inhumanity going on at the border, the militarization, you know, the use of violence or political motives, the way that Latinos are characterized by MAGA, you know, and other, you know, the Trump administration. I felt like I wanted to, and I think of myself as a Tejana Jedi, and use my pen, you know, to fight the sword, because the swords are out. And I think it's time for us writers and all the writers that, you know, with social consciousness about the flight of, you know, Chicanos on the border, the plight of immigrants to raise their voices, because we're going to need those Jedi warriors to counteract the narratives, the deadly narratives that are being spun around our people and communities. I appreciate you saying that. I think so much of, and I absolutely agree, I think so much of the work that needs to be done is, again, the telling of stories, right, and taking ownership of our stories and sharing them, because these narratives are incredibly powerful. And I think about myself and growing up in my community. And I often write about how I didn't learn about myself, and I didn't really learn about my community until I left, until I was at Stanford, and I was encouraged to kind of explore, but I was also reading authors who were from the area, who I had never heard of. And I remember feeling, again, as I shared, for me, it was like relearning, it was relearned, it's learning history that I didn't know that I had never been shared with me. And so, absolutely, telling the stories, telling our stories, I think is more critical than ever. So thank you. I agree. Thank you for putting your stories together and for telling the stories that need to be told. And need to be heard, because, you know, the fact that all four counties in the valley went for Trump is shocking to me and shows how much education, or shall we say, as you say, reeducation, we have to do even of our own people. In my way of thinking, in my way of thinking, I understand that there's all sorts of political perspectives, but to share with Chicano Latino students the beauty of our history and to elevate the beauty of our cultural values when we are being so devalued, you know, by the political discourse. Narothea, thank you. Thank you for telling your stories. And thank you for writing this book. Thank you for sharing your story with me today. Before you go, I always ask my guests to leave us with a piece of advice, some words of wisdom. So what would you like to leave our listeners with today? Well, I think if I'm speaking to students of whatever age that have a story to tell and would like to enter the world of being a writer, to have faith in yourself and to prioritize being a writer. I think that if I could talk to my younger self, I would have told her, follow your passion, follow your gifts, and don't be distracted by love relationships or family or making a living, make all those things secondary if you can to your gift. You know, and I think it took me this long to write my first book. And that's just the way it turned out in my life. But I feel like, you know, hold on to your gifts, the things that make you you and, you know, cherish them and nurture them and don't let anyone dissuade you from those dreams. I love that. That's well said. Thank you. Well, thank you for this opportunity. I really appreciate this time. Thank you. No, I really, it's, I'm the one, I'm the fortunate one. I'm the lucky one that gets to sit here and listen to these wonderful stories and your journey. And I'm excited to share it, to share it with the world. Lothair, thank you. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for your story. And thank you for your contributions. So I'm excited to share your work. And I'll make sure to put a link. Anything that you'd like me to share about your book, please just forward it to me so that I can share that with our listeners out there. All right. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. This concludes another episode of the Way to College podcast. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to our listeners out there. Please remember to subscribe, rate, follow the podcast and do me the favor and share the podcast with one other person. I'd appreciate it. We'll talk again soon. Thank you and bye bye.