In 2 weeks UNP will be exhibiting at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ (AWP) annual conference! The AWP Conference & Bookfair is the annual destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers of contemporary creative writing. Enjoy a sneak peek of the UNP books you can grab there.
Where Are You From is a touching and personal collection of letters to Tomás Q. Morín’s young son wherein he meditates on love, the body, and the future his son will have to face.
We will be hosting an author signing with Tomás on February 9th at booth 1334/1336 from 1:00-1:30pm as part of our programming. Mark your calendars!
Letters from a Sub-Sub-Basement
My son,
I am a man uneven. My right shoulder drops. A grin shows my teeth don’t line up. One ear is higher than the other. And my foot, my left foot . . . I should start with my toes. There are blisters and they hurt. There’s a story there. My left foot is wider than the right. Not by much, mind you. But enough. (And the right foot is longer than the left!) Come look if you don’t believe me. Now, I’m not a freak, some mismatched toy of God. No one would ever know any of this if I didn’t tell them. The naked eye hasn’t been made that could tell the difference between my feet. Not even an eye wearing clothes could do it.
How do I know? I sold shoes once upon a time. During the holidays. We had a tool called the Brannock Device. I didn’t know that’s what it was called, though. It was invented in the ’20s. Should I say 1920s? Maybe I should. You’ll start high school in 2033, and so the 2020s will be closest to you.
But toes!
I was going to tell you a story about toes. I hope you have your mother’s pinky toes. Like a compass needle, they point true north. Carrying a baby loosens the ligaments of a mother’s feet.
Find your mother and massage her feet.
And do it often.
I have my father’s toes. Your tío Juan does too. We also have our father’s hands. My index and pinky fingers curve inward. So do my pinky and big toes. We humans were fish once. You can see it in the shape of my flippers. If I wear the wrong shoes and walk too much, the inside of my tucked pinky toes will blister.
I have stepped on myself all of my life. If we have the same feet, then that will surely be part of your inheritance.
You’ve seen me grouchy. A blister is an expressway to grouchy.
My patience grows small and hides from me.
In Texas I’ve never worried about feeling this way. But here in New Jersey, it’s another story. And not just New Jersey. People like us . . . brown, brown people I mean . . . we’ve been shot, strangled, tazed, lynched, and beaten while living happily. Grouchy is almost an invitation to be snuffed out. So I’m trying to be careful here in Madison because, well, I want to meet you. If I survive the next sixteen weeks, then I can do that.
The first time I walked to Stop & Shop for groceries, the sun was high. I thought a marvelous mile of bright light would cure my homesickness. I had not met you yet, but I had, really.
Who says meeting can only happen in the air after all?
I knew your mother’s belly, and so I knew you even if you did not yet know me.
I digress, but you already know this; you know me to be a lover of tangents, a tangent machine. You also know that I don’t love them for their own sake. I’m not one of those simple fools who babble on and on and never get to the point; by now you know me and thus have seen that I always circle back around. How could I not? To do otherwise would be to court the unevenness I loathe, the very one that lives in my body. Symmetry is my king and queen. An open circle is no circle; it is merely a letter C that has lost its way.
Okay, I was walking. You love clothes, as your mother and I do, and if we did anything right, then you do as well, so I will tell you what I was wearing: gray fleece shorts (with three pockets—always buy them with three pockets), a light blue tank top, and my light blue denim Toms shoes. Toms says they are gray, but I know blue when I see it. If you don’t believe me, check the closet because I probably still have them. I take care of what I love. Your tío Juan was the opposite when we were kids. Our abuelo called him “lumbre.” It means “fire.” I wonder how hot you will burn. I’m fire too, but I smolder low and long. So I was walking and had left the edge of campus behind. So far, so good. There were trees and cars, even a bird singing. I had no reason to expect the day would carry anything strange. You would think forty-plus years of living in the South would have taught me better. It didn’t.
I passed a bookstore, Thai and Greek restaurants, a wine store. It was Anytown, USA. People sat at benches and tables enjoying their lunch. I brushed off the first person that stared at me for too long as an aberration. The same with the second. By the fourth and the fifth, I knew I was not on the receiving end of a seemingly endless string of unfortunate coincidences. A part of me wanted to believe that I was, though. That is what this country does to you; it makes you think that what is real and obvious in front of you could not be so. It starts when you’re young. Ask your tío Juan if he remembers when he was a little boy and I punched him in the face with his own fist and said, Stop hitting yourself. Why are you hitting yourself? People will tell us, Stop being paranoid. You see racism everywhere. Give people a chance. If they ever tell you that, mijo, tell them my favorite line from The Outlaw Josey Wales: “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s rainin’.”
The men looked at me as if they had seen my face on a wanted poster. The women stared at me like you would at a dog with muddy paws that just ran in the house. There was an old woman who I thought was going to fall over. She was short, so she kept leaning her head back and back to take in the totality of my body. Her eyes were like coasters. I bet you her neck hurt for days. When her masseuse asked her how she hurt her neck, I wonder if she was honest and said what she was really thinking: I was staring at this giant beaner in town. In Texas I am an invisible man. In this tiny town of northern New Jersey, I am anything but when people wonder where I am from.
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