WEBVTT

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Well, thank you very much.

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It's a great pleasure
to be here again today,

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and to hear Sherwin, and to see
my nephew that I haven't seen

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in many years, Jesus Robles,
and many of my good friends

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that are here today.

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And to be back in Tucson.

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A big hand for all of you.

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Uno mano.

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A big hand.

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It's one of those places that
calls me back all the time

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and that I love now.

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And my father used to travel
through here quite a bit.

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And my father actually came
from Chihuahua in the late 1800s

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to Denver.

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But he was always traveling
through here, and El Paso,

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Chihuahua, New Mexico, Arizona,
and then Wyoming, Denver,

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and back and forth
in California.

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So it's good to be
back in many ways.

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And I'm so thankful
to Patty Hartman, who

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opened the way for
me with my books,

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and to Chris [? Sutter, ?] who
also was part of this award

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that I received, and everyone
at the University of Arizona

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Press.

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You know how it is.

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It feels like it's one
person that did it all but

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it's everyone that does
it, and creates the poetry,

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and makes the award happen.

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And it's part of everything.

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The water that Sherwin
was talking about,

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the fruit flies
buried in onion skin.

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That's so beautiful
to hear, Sherwin.

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And to my mother and father, you
know how we think of ourselves

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sometimes.

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That we don't have
language, or we

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don't feel that
we have language,

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or we're told that we
don't have language,

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or we're not allowed
to have a language.

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And the language that I
received from my mother

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was in the form of
songs and stories.

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Woman stories.

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And she told me all the stories
of the women in her family.

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And she told me all the stories
of the men in her family.

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And they're kind
of similar stories,

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and they're very
different stories.

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And they all were, at first,
I thought, about suffering.

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And then I thought they
were about survival,

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and I just discovered
a couple of days ago,

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just maybe I think it was
here, that they really

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were about transcendence.

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Sometimes we think of all
the pain our families have

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gone through, and then
we really look at what

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our families have gone through.

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It's about pioneers.

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Stories of pioneers, songs of
pioneers, poems of pioneers,

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ballads of pioneers
in transcendence.

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Here's a photo of my
uncle, Vicente Quintana,

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looking like a really
bad dude in El Paso

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and wearing a bathrobe.

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Let's wear bathrobes, OK?

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Let's hang out
wearing bathrobes.

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Bathrobes-- serapes
and bathrobes.

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Since the economy
issue is happening,

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let's help the economy by
wearing serapes and bathrobes.

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And he's hanging out
with his buddies,

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and they're wearing
a World War I helmet,

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so this must have been around
1920 and 1921 in El Paso.

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This photograph.

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And again, "Notebooks of
a Chile Verde Smuggler"

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with photographs.

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"Watering cebolla when
my father burns leña.

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Escondido and Vista days, 1955.

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Stepped down from the trailer
early morning, 6:00 AM.

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My dad burned some leña.

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Hear it sighing, then it
whistles with a sharp ache.

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The wavy smoke
rises from the yard.

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It tells me the day tastes good.

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My jefito leans back
on the box trailer

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made with plaster,
wood slab and two axles

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from an abandoned Ford.

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Drinks una taza de café, looks
out to the tiny lot where

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the corn we planted
is up six feet.

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The quiet air is sweet.

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I take it with me as I
walk down to the cebollas.

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They're coming up good.

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Shower them carefully.

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Cut the hose water with my
fingers, high above the plants.

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The water mixes
with the tomatoes

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and creates another universe.

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A deeper green blends into
the earth when it's wet.

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Look back to the trailer.

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The milpa sways.

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Small offerings come to me.

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Gentle winds."

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For quite a long time,
I didn't look back.

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Well, maybe I just
didn't look at myself

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and see the beauty of my family,
and that's what my father did.

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He burned wood.

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He grew crops and traveled.

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He kept it to three things.

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I mean, that's pretty good.

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Now I realize that's great.

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That we can keep our
lives to three things?

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That's beautiful.

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Mine is like in three billion.

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It's kind of tough.

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And my mother took care
of me, told me stories,

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and took care of the young ones.

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So three things.

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I just figured it out.

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