Let me do one.
As you know, I grew up on the border,
in what we grew up calling El Paso, El Paso del Norte.
And one of the figures in the new book is an uncle of mine.
And it's interesting.
Of course, you can know people your whole life.
And then, when you begin to interview them,
you realize that there are big aspects of them
that you don't know at all.
And one of the things I discovered about this uncle
is that, when we were talking, he
grew up during the Depression.
And I never really knew if he was a reader or not.
And we call him Uncle Lalo.
And I said, so Uncs, did you like books?
And it's one of the greatest moments I have on tape--
that his voice just changes.
And he goes, oh, books.
There's just this great moment.
And he's back in this little library
on the border and reading Doctor Dolittle
all afternoon on a Saturday.
It was just great, the power of the words.
Well, if my Uncle Lalo were standing up here next to me,
if you have any preconceptions about what Chicanos look like,
you'd say he isn't one because he's very fair.
And so he didn't experience a particular kind
of discrimination.
But because people have these stereotypes,
he had another experience.
"Depression Days"-- "He buys the dark with his last $0.15.
Reel after reel, he's on the deck
with men who fill their chests, taut on the high seas,
who boom red sails in the sunset.
He tries not to think of last night on his cot.
His private reel, border kid playing sea, sea, sea
lumberjack, gripping an axe, slicing the green, pine scent
in a house dark from his father's death.
He tries not to think of the other men who climbed cold
on the truck with him that morning, caramba, qué frío,
their stomachs screechy as gears, hungry for paychecks.
He tries not to think of the desert winds sliding
into the barracks, herding bare flesh around the stove's
warm belly.
Am I alive, doc--
his joke, limp as his clothes bag.
He tries not to think of the sergeant, spitting "delgado."
My uncle steps forward into a frown.
I said "delgado."
I am "delgado"-- the twitch of lips, the wind.
He tries not to think of the words later.
"You don't look Mexican, delgado.
Just change your name."
His formal father eyeing him--
"Just change your name, and you've got a job."
He buys the dark with his last $0.15.
He tries not to think about the bare icebox, his mother's
sighing eyes, of his father, who never understood this country,
of the price of eggs and names and skin."