"Que no se nos olviden los hombres"
- Gloria Anzald?a, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Visiting my family in Chicago a few weeks ago, my Mam? asked me to shine my father's work boots. She tells me, "Mijo, you should be more grateful for your father who works himself to death for us." At first, I thought little of her comment, but as I examined the worn-out leather of his boots, I could only begin imagine the state of his alma, his soul. Reality check: I realized how ungrateful I was of a man who, in his own way, has been able to provide for his family.
Anzald?a's quote in the epigraph is a call to not forget about the men. In her scholarly discourse, she examines and deconstructs the Chicano heterosexual archetype to make a space for women and queers, which she calls the New Mestiza Consciousness. For the purposes of this piece, I use this quote to both examine and thus not forget a man to who I owe so much. What this all really means is that I am attempting to use academic discourse to talk about my father, because it's the only way I know how.
My father and I were never really close like those clich? American soaps where the father and son play ball together; my father was always working. I could hate him for it and call him a bad father, but he wasn't. He was a great father. For as long as I could remember, he worked at a steel slitting factory outside Chicago before he decided that he needed to change jobs to better provide for my mom and I. He studied hard and got his CDL (Commercial Driver's License) and began to work for a trucking company, ironically across the street from his old job. He worked linehaul, the night shift where he would drive from Chicago to cities across the Midwest. He left his youth in the driver's seat of 18-wheeler trucks amidst the bitter Chicago winters.
Fast-forward 10 years and I'm starting my senior year of college. As I fill my mind with books and absorb knowledge from amazing scholars, I find myself getting comfortable with a construct of privilege at school and sometimes forget about the reality my family faces back in Chicago. During my time in college, I've been able to research and travel in France, tour Ireland with the Harvard Glee Club during spring break, and design educational programs as an intern. All of these amazing experiences were facilitated by my parent's sacrifices. My all-nighters seem like a breeze in comparison to my father's 10-12 hour arduous work nights. We both struggle to stay awake, but while I'm writing papers, he's driving on the road. He works hard so that I don't have to.
Therefore, my Harvard diploma will not only be the fruits of four years of scholarship, it will be the product of my father's sacrifice. Though he missed countless concerts and award ceremonies in my youth, I don't hold it against him. He was slaving away on the highways and on the loading docks in the cold to put a roof over my family's head and food on our table. Despite all of this work though, I have never heard him complain. Thus, his strife drives me to work harder to make him proud. Though he barely understands my major, polyphonic renaissance music, or my passion for arts and culture, he still calls me at 2 AM when he's on the road to tell me he loves me because he knows I'm still awake studying.
Thus, my successes, past, present, and future, are not mine. I stand on the shoulders of a giant and that giant is my father.
Gracias por todo, Pap?. You're the best.
?
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adrian-aldaba/mi-jefe-and-the-ivory-tower_b_940591.html
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