Paris, True To Its Promise,

My Mamá Grande, A Tiny Mayan Woman, Took Me Aside When I Was An Adolescent And Told Me Several Things That Didn't Make A Bit Of Sense To My Young And Inattentive Ears, And As Young People Tend To Waste All Attempts Of Our Elders To Relay To Us Wisdom Accumulated Over The Decades, I Thought My Mamá Grande Had A Few Mice In The Attic.

I'm Obviously An American Citizen. My Parents Are American Citizens. But I'm Not Looked At As An American.

Once Innocence--an All Too-brief State Of Being, If Such A One Exists--encounters Experience, It Is Transformed. If That Transformation Is Understood, It Becomes Knowledge. And If That Knowledge Is Employed, Then It Becomes Wisdom.

Hispanic Gives Us All One Ultimate Paternal Cultural Progenitor: Spain. The Diverse Cultures Already On The American Shores When The Europeans Arrived, As Well As Those Introduced Because Of The African Slave Trade, Are Completely Obliterated By The Term. Hispanic Is Nothing More Than A Concession Made By The U. S. Legislature When They Saw They Couldn't Get Rid Of Us. If We Won't Go Away, Why Not At Least Europeanize Us, Make Us Presentable Guests At The Dinner Table, Take Away Our Feathers And Rattles And Civilize Us Once And For All.

I Think The Possibilities Are Endless In Terms Of What The Genre Would Be Like. However, In Terms Of Looking For Sources Of Money, I Think We Have To Be Very Careful Not To Fall Into Hollywood's Commodification Of Chicano Culture. We Could Look At The Example Of Piri Thomas, A Successful Puerto Rican Writer Now Living In The Bay Area, Who Has Received Repeated Offers From Hollywood...and He Said He's Not Going To Write About His People Doing Drugs And Going To Jail.