There is a bar in this city that every fool who is a somebody and all the nobodies who wanna become a somebody go to. I, a nobody who is much happier being a fool than a wanna-be, frequent the joint. Its about 2 blocks from the place I’m staying and good friends of mine, intellectuals sin pretenciones, go from time to time. About a week ago I had a conversation that has stayed with me since and is worth giving some thought to. A good friend brought some US Latino who is a free-lance writer. After the usual chitchat and the question of why and who we write for emerged the US Latino unapologetically and confidently proclaimed he writes about the African-American and Latino community for white people. When pressed he explained that he wants his work to be published and thus needs to write for white folk. Yet, the more we pushed, the more it seemed that the somebody really viewed himself as some sort of interlocutor between people of color and white folk.
Several of us tried to explain that there are few journalist of color and even fewer that present critical perspectives. We told the US Latino that we write for our primos, our friends from high school who never went to college, our tio/tias who don’t have BA but know as much if not more than many kids with degrees about Los Angles, race, discrimination, migration, etc. He wasn’t convinced. We continued to drink. We eventually left. Days have passed and I’m still thinking about the US Latino writer…and here is why:
While I would one day like to be a fool who is read by nobodies and a somebody or two I think we are all in the position of this US Latino, especially graduate students. We have no say in the language we use. Our language resembles middle-class educated Americans more than the subjects we write about. While most of us are no doubt far from Spivack’s move in “Can the Subaltern Speak,” I fear we are closer than we imagine: writing for professors and academics in language that would put to sleep the nobodies we claim to be inspired by and writing for. How do we shift the way knowledge is acquired and disseminated? Should we all become Carlos Monsivais?
