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Victor Villaseñor
79 quotes
“My God, it was really coming true. The higher and higher I climbed in education, the more I was finding people I could talk to.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When my brother, Joseph, was sick and in the hospital, you got in bed with me when I was asleep and you kept trying to touch me! All these years I’d thought that maybe it was all a dream, but it wasn’t! You son of a bitch. I was eight years old, crazy with grief for my brother, Joseph, and you—how could you?!”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Suddenly I remembered Jeannie Windflow, who’d taught me how to kiss when we were kids. At the age of seventeen, she’d run off with a Mexican guy from Pozole Town who was nineteen years old, had a job, and was one of the handsomest guys I’d ever seen. He was a semi-professional boxer and real dark. She was a track star, a straight-A student, and real blonde.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I took a deep breath, and the humming began behind my left ear. I now knew how I’d solved that math problem in Ashmore’s class. Everything, every thought that came to us came from heaven through our guardian angel, our genius, when we were at peace in our hearts and in balance in our brains. So yes, I was barking up the right tree with all these thoughts and words that were coming out of my mouth. And with such ease.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know, we’ve got to be careful about what we believe that this Church tells us,” said my dad. “Remember, she’s the one who stole all the best lands de México for herself and enslaved all the Indians that she didn’t kill off.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My dad loved using the word “ain’t.” He said it was the best damn slang word invented by the Americans.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marina was about eight years older than my sister Tencha, so this made her about eighteen years older than me. She was presently a reporter for the New York Times. When she was in high school, she’d won the Underwood Typewriter typing contest, doing well over a hundred words a minute without a single mistake, setting a national record. She attributed her fast hands to her cotton-picking days as a young girl in Scottsdale, Arizona.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marina,” I said, “I don’t know how to explain this, but … well, everything I say or do or even think just doesn’t seem to work out for me. Except when I’m totally alone.” I almost added, “Totally alone with God,” but I didn’t because I knew how crazyloco this might sound, especially since I wasn’t a priest or a monk.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I talked for hours, and for the first time in my life, I could see that I’d lived two very different lives ever since I’d started school. On the ranch I’d lived a life full of love and work and warm, good feelings. At school I’d been treated with so much … physical and mental abuse that I was still filled with so much rage; it was hard for me to even think about it.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here, a man and woman unite for life, but they include in their union all the loves they will live through in their lifetime. But over there, it’s all about changing wives and changing husbands, searching for that one perfect amor.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Eve,” I said, “please stop for a minute. I think I finally get it. As you read to me aloud, the words become alive for me, and I can see pictures in my head. But when I try to read, all those little letters just confuse me. Because it’s the white of the page between the words that truly grab me. Do I make any sense? Reading, I do believe, is a very unnatural thing. But to listen to a story, like sitting around a campfire, is very natural.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Papá,” I said, “on our first day of school, they screamed at us, ‘No Spanish! English only!’ Then they slapped Ramón in the face until he was all bloody because he wouldn’t stop talking Spanish. And all he was saying was ‘Don’t yell at me, you’re not my mother,’ and ‘Don’t be grabbing me! You have no right to do this.’ He was so smart, papá, and so brave and noble, and they kept slapping him, again and again, until his whole face was a bloody mess.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“YOU’VE GOT RAGE. THEN YOU RETURN TO THE STATES WITH THAT RAGE! YOU DON’T RUN AWAY! You saw bad, terrible things happen to you and other Mexican kids in school, then YOU DON’T CHICKENSHIT OUT! No, you go back, and you do something with that rage that will MAKE A DIFFERENCE for all those kids! That’s the beauty of the United States! Even the little guy can fight back!”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“DO YOU HEAR ME?” I now screamed to the heavens, driving this information into the deepest crevices of my mind. “I, VICTOR EDMUNDO VILLASEÑOR, TAKE THIS HOLY OATH BEFORE YOU, GOD ALMIGHTY, as your son, to write my people’s story WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL! I’ll write! I’ll do my part with all the power and intensity that I put into wrestling, hunting, trying to castrate myself, and chess!”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He stared at me. “You barely know how to read and you have decided to become a great writer?” he said to me in a voice full of shock and arrogance. I’d finally had enough of him. “Yes!” I bellowed, going into my wrestling stance. “I don’t know how to read, and I’ve decided to become a great writer—WHAT OF IT?”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I began to get up at two or three in the morning and work for twelve to fifteen hours a day. I’d get so emotionally drained by the writing, that I’d feel sick at the end of the day. My family became worried about me and they invited a friend, who was a writer in Los Angeles, to see me. He told me that he’d heard how serious I was about my writing, so he was willing to take a little time off of his busy schedule to glance at my work. I gave him the latest version of my manuscript. He took it home and came back to see me the following week. His face was long. He told me that he was sorry to say this but, as a family friend, he had the obligation to be truthful, so he’d tell me straight out that I had no talent. The book was terrible. And also, I was trying to write way beyond my mental capabilities.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I began to realize that my parents were going to build the biggest damn house in the whole town! I was shocked! “Are we rich?” I asked my brother. “Yes,” he said. “We are? Then why do I always wear dirty, old work clothes?” I asked. “Because we’re ranchers,” said my brother. “We’re not city people.” “Oh,” I said, “then it’s okay for us to be dirty?” “We aren’t dirty,” he said, laughing. “To be dirty means you never wash. We wash our clothes and take baths all the time. It’s just that people that live on a ranch get dirt on themselves.” My eyes went big. I’d never thought of this. My brother was really smart.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was from this day on that I began to notice a real difference between our vaqueros on the ranch from Mexico and the gringo cowboys. The American cowboys always seemed so ready to act rough and tough, wanting to “break” the horse, cow, or goat or anything else. Where, on the other hand, our vaqueros—who used the word “amanzar,” meaning to make “tame,” for dealing with horses—had a whole different attitude towards everything. To “break” a horse, for the cowboys, actually, really meant to take a green, untrained horse and rope him, knock him down, saddle him while he fought to get loose, then mount him as he got up on all four legs, and ride the living hell out of the horse until you tired him out, taught him who was boss, and “broke” his spirit. To “amanzar” a horse, on the other hand, was a whole other approach that took weeks of grooming, petting, and leading the green horse around in the afternoon with a couple of well-trained horses. Then, after about a month, you began to put a saddle on the horse and tie him up in shade in the afternoon for a couple of hours until, finally, the saddle felt like just a natural part of him. Then, and only then, did a person finally mount the horse, petting and sweet-talking him the whole time, and once more the green horse was taken on a walk between two well-trained horses.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mama’s beautiful?” I asked. “Are you blind?” said my brother. “Don’t you see how men and women are always looking at our mother everywhere she goes. Our mother is more beautiful than any movie star you’ll ever see, and yet this isn’t why papa chose her. He chose her, he’s told us a thousand times, because when he first saw her, she was in line to go into the dance hall over in Carlos Malo with her brother and sister. And when a fight broke out, she didn’t get excited and enjoy it like her sister and the other women. No, she and her brother moved away, wanting no part of it, and so, by seeing this, papa knew that she was a woman of high intelligence, respect, and responsibility; a person that he could trust with his life. And trust, remember, is the foundation of all love, papa says.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Listen to me good,” said my father the moment we were out the door. He was hot, I could tell. “Everybody has their own game, understand? Lawyers got theirs. Doctors got theirs. Business people got theirs. Every bum on the street has his, too. Got it? And every game has two sets of rules, the one set that they tell people that they play by, but—listen closely—behind their closed doors, these same people always got another set of rules that they really play their game with. The Church, she does this beautifully, having people pray to Cristo, oh, so sweetly. Then they get all those young nuns and priests to work for free for them all their lives, and yet from behind those closed doors, that goodhearted, all-loving Church steals the best lands of Mexico, and the whole world, if she could! “Education, mijo, is another racket. Another con game! Don’t let nobody fool you! School wants to get people thinking all the same way like trained mice. Don’t you ever fall for nobody’s racket, mijito. Think, here in your head, feel, here in your heart, and trust your tanates, here between your legs a lo chingón! This is life in all her power and glory! Got it?” he said, gently putting his huge thick hand on my shoulder. “I got it, papa,” I said, wiping the tears out of my eyes. And I really did get it. I loved my father con todo mi corazón. He made so much sense, just like Ramón, and even Gus. All these guys made sense and they took no shit from nobody!”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, amor and peace and prosperity are what we need here in this great nation of ours after that terrible Depression, and then this huge, long, awful World War Two. “But, I’d also like to add that I, personally, didn’t build this house just in honor of Joseph and Mary and Jesus. No, when we made plans to build this house, I immediately sent our architect to Hollywood to find how big Tom Mix’s house was. Because when I first come to this country from Mexico, we see these Tom Mix movies in Arizona, with the gringos on the right side of the theater and the Mexicans and Blacks on the left side. And we see that no-good, fake son-of-a-bitch Tom Mix knock down five Mexicanos with one punch! And one Sunday in Douglas, Arizona—I’ll never forget, I was just a kid—this big, handsome Mexicano from Los Altos de Jalisco got mad and jumped up on the stage in front of the movie and yelled, ‘Come on, you gringo bastards! See if one of you can knock me down with one punch! And I’ll give you the first punch free, a lo chingón!’ And he ripped his shirt open and pounded his chest! “And so—well, yes, of course, a fight got started. Two men were killed and ten more hospitalized. So I tell you, when we started to build this house, I told our architect, GO up to Hollywood and find out how big Tom Mix’s house is, so we could build OUR CASA BIGGER AND BETTER! So I now say to all of you that I didn’t have this house built just for peace and love, but to also tell every DAMN HUMAN BEING ON ALL THE EARTH that here in Oceanside, California, stands UN MEXICANO DE LOS BUENOS CON SUS TANATES IN HAND, free to work or fight with both hands, whichever way the DEVIL WANTS TO PAINT IT! And this is MY TOAST A LO CHINGÓN! SALUD!” SHOUTS ERUPTED!”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes,” he said. “You see, I, too, have been seeing a lot of things, now that I’ve been spending so much time at the hospital.” He took a deep breath. “One night I got up and went down the hallway to see this woman who was crying. She was an elderly woman and the doctors didn’t know what to do for her. She was dying. I held her hand and stroked her forehead like she was a child. She immediately calmed down and was able to pass over in her sleep so peacefully. “The night nurse was furious, and the next morning she told the doctors what I’d done. They, too, became upset, telling me I didn’t have the authority to visit other patients. That poor nurse and the doctors, they just weren’t prepared to accept the simple truth that they aren’t in control. No one is in control, Mundo. We’re all just God’s guests for a short time.” I don’t know why, but I now asked, “Joseph, are you dying?” He looked at me straight in the eyes. “Yes, Mundo,” he said, “I’m dying.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And no one would interfere with me because of the loaded gun in my hand. Also, a part of me didn’t give a shit anymore if I was caught or not. I could now see that my objective wasn’t just to kill Moses and all these other teachers who had abused us, but for everyone in all the whole world to know why. This wasn’t going to be a surprise attack. This had to be a cold, premeditated act, completely well planned, just as it had been premeditated and well thought out to torture and beat us Mexican kids, starting in kindergarten, so we’d be a people, a gente, with our heads bowed down to authority forever, thinking we were inferior and worthless. I now realized that this was how you enslaved a people. You didn’t just bring them over in chains from Africa. No, you convinced them that they were inferior, not evolved, subhuman, and then when you took off their shackles, so they could go to work, you’d still have them enslaved and shackled inside of their minds for hundreds of years. And this system of teaching was fine with most Anglo teachers, because in the act of convincing us, los Mexicanos and the Blacks, we were subhuman, they’d also convinced themselves that they were superior!”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And here at my school, we were in a protected environment, and so, to be as tough as we were being taught to be wasn’t a virtue. It could also be just plain stupid. Like one cadet named Wellabussy. He was from La Jolla, and his family had a feeding pen for cattle in the Imperial Valley east of San Diego County. They were very wealthy, and he liked to tell the story about how he shot illegal Mexicans below their knees with his .22 rifle when they were returning home across the border after they’d worked all day on his dad’s ranch. When he told this story in English class, I was shocked. And after class when I asked him why he would do such a horrible thing, he smiled a sick-looking little grin. “Because it’s fun watching them scream,” he said, “and they’re illegal, so they can’t do shit about it.” He laughed, then said to me, “Grow up. We need to be tough and not give an inch or our whole country will go to hell, returning to the Indians who we already whipped.” I’ll never forget how he’d grinned at me as he said this, knowing well that I was Mexican and therefore part Indian.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every year right after the Christmas holidays, our IQ scores were posted on the bulletin board at the Academy. We, the juniors and seniors, had taken our tests several weeks ago, and for the last few days we were all nervous wrecks waiting to see our results. Of course, we were all told that what was really crucial for us to get into the college of our choice was the grade point average of our last two years of high school, plus our SAT scores. But we knew that our IQ score could also make a big difference because our IQ, we’d been told, was what gave us a true measure of our intelligence. So if we hadn’t worked real hard in school or hadn’t tested well in our college entrance exams, then our IQ could make all the difference.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A few months back Major Terry and his pet student, Drosen, had brought in a guy from San Diego to play chess with me. I’d had no idea that he was rated and was really good, so I’d beaten his ass real fast. He’d gotten all mad at Major Terry and Drosen for not telling him that I was as good as I was. He’d accused them of setting him up to publicly embarrass him. I’d had no idea what the big fuss was all about. I hadn’t even realized that there was such a thing as tournaments and championships for chess just like we had in wrestling. I’d quit playing chess at school after that incident. Now I only played at home with my dad’s older friends, Roberto and Salvador Montoya, who’d both been very good chess players in Mexico City. I beat Roberto almost all the time, but his older brother Salvador beat me pretty regularly. And I’d recently been told that Salvador had been so good that he’d once gone to Cuba to play and that he’d come in third among some of the best international players in the world.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, I loved Mr. Moffet! He was WONDERFUL! He’d given me hope! I felt fearless once again, and I could clearly see it had always been fear that had kept me dammed up all these years. Fear of sin, fear of hell, fear of what people might think of me, fear of … of … I didn’t quite know how to say or even think all these thoughts I was having, and yet… it was like I was now so excited with all these thoughts racing around inside my brain that I was on fire. Maybe I wasn’t really stupid after all. Maybe I’d just been misled all these years from the very beginning. OH, A FIRE FOR WANTING TO LEARN ALL I COULD LEARN WAS NOW BURNING INSIDE ME!”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My heart was beat, beat, beating. No one, except my mother, had ever looked at me or spoken to me like this. “You are the most sensitive and beautiful man I’ve ever met,” she said with tears coming to her eyes. I took a big, deep breath. This was just too much. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been called stupid and ugly for so long that this was really tough to hear. Once, I’ll never forget, two seniors at the Academy had stopped me and ordered me to attention, and I’d snapped to, as we underclassmen were supposed to do. They’d walked around me, carefully inspecting my uniform, and one of them then said, “Is this the cadet?” “Yes,” said the other one. “I agree with you; you’re right,” said the first one. “This is the ugliest cadet in the school!”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Look at me closely, amigo,” said my dad. “Here is a hundred-dollar bill just to start with. Thirty dollars of this is for you to put in your own pocket right now. Capiche?” The bartender’s whole attitude changed. Suddenly he wasn’t tired anymore. “Yes, mi general, entiendo!” he said. “Good, and give another twenty to the chef in back and ten to the dishwasher. That leaves forty for my son and me to drink and eat a little something.” “But of course!” said the barkeeper. “The whole place is open for you! Which tequila would you like?” he added anxiously. “Herradura, and a couple of Modelo cervezas.” “I like Dos Equis,” I said. “The dark one.” “Okay,” said my dad, “one Modelo and one dark Dos Equis.” The bartender was flying, moving, truly enjoying the whole show. My dad winked at me. “Like I always say, to tip after the meal is stupid. Tip first and big, and the whole world changes.”
Victor Villaseñor (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source