I wonder if all writers are asked as consistently to explain their position on the socioeconomic ladder. I polled white writers I know, friends of mine, informally and unscientifically, and most were surprised I'd gotten that question so often. They hadn't. And while it's true that my work is not generally about the place where I grew up, given that fiction is my thing I never really thought that had much relevance. It's about making things up, isn't it? Don't all writers -- regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, native tongue, national identity, social class -- don't we all attempt to write about people who are not ourselves? And how boring would it be if we didn't? Why, then, this question, over and over?

It's not that writers of color in this country don't have their work judged on literary merit; it's that we are not judged exclusively on these grounds. The writer's biography is also examined, his or her stats plugged into an authenticity equation to determine, once and for all, how real the work is. There are many reasons why this is self-defeating, and many reasons why we should not play along. When we should be judged on the basis of our ability to imagine worlds and empathize with our characters, we are instead reduced to merely representing that which we must surely know firsthand. When we allow ourselves to be praised for "being authentic," when we traffic in biography, we are complicit in our own disenfranchisement: Suddenly we are dismissed as serious artists. It's no longer art; it's reportage and facsimile. It's real.

Of course the woman at the fundraiser wouldn't have minded if my parents had been illegal. She would have loved it. She was waiting all night to hear it. She would have thought it charming, just wonderful, all that suffering so folkloric and heart-rending and made worthwhile somehow because I had been able to write it all down. How fortunate! And what a terrific place America is! She could have gone home with my book that night and felt she was communing with something genuine, that I was whispering secrets in her ear about Peru -- or was it Mexico? -- or some other place she'd passed through, or thought about only occasionally, a people whose food she'd tried once and found to be tasty, if a bit spicy.

Of course, it didn't work out that way. She couldn't hide her disappointment when I told her my terrible secrets: that my parents were legal. Worse yet: They are professionals. That I grew up in a house with indoor plumbing and basic cable and a refrigerator. Oh my. It was just awful. We had a fenced-in backyard with a dog, a front yard with a stately oak tree, and a driveway with a basketball hoop. Goodness. And I read books in English from a very young age, and my parents read books too, and worst of all: I went to a very expensive college. Oh, dear, she cries -- she can hardly stand it: You poor, poor thing, and still you grew up to be a Latino writer?

Recent Stories