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Pocho'dan Alıntılar

"But all this reading, my son," she asked. "All this studying-surely it is for something? If you could go to the university, it would be to learn how you could make more money than you would make in the fields or the cannery.

So you can change our way of living somewhat, and people could see what a good son we had, and it would make us all something to respect. Then, when married and began your family, you would have a nice home and could be assured that you would be able to afford an education for you children."

He was dissappointed and tried to keep the bitterness from his voice, but could not quite succeed. "And I am supposed to educate my children so that they can change my way of living and they theirs, and so on?

Ah Mama! Try to understand me. I want to learn, and that is all. I do not want to be something- I am. I do not care about making a lot of money and about what people think and about the family in the way you speak. I have to learn as much as I can, so that I can live . . . learn for me, for myself-

Ah, but I cannot explain to you, and you would not understand me if I could!"


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"He was one of those fortunates born with the natural ability to excel at almost anything he tried, and bluffed himself through things he could not do."

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- "It is late," he said. "Where have you been?"
- "Walking, Papâ."
- "Walking? You know you are not allowed to be out after nine o'clock, do you not?"
- "Yes, sir. But I must live my life," answered Richard.
- "Your life! Your life belongs to us, and will belong to us even after you marry, because we gave it to you. You can never forget your responsibility to the family." He was angry now that his son questioned his authority.
- "Yes, Papâ, but can you not see that I cannot stand living this way?" He knew he was doing wrong by every standard his father believed in, but he could not stop talking. "Listening every day to the girls and their silly talk is as bad as listening to you and your México and to Mamâ talk about God! I am sick--sich. Can you not understand?"
- "Understand? What is there to understand except the fact that my son is talking back to me!"

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"I can be a part of everything, he thought, because I am the only one capable of controlling my destiny. . . .
Never--no, never--will I allow myself to become a part of a group--to become classified, to lose my individuality. . . .
I will not become a follower, nor will I allow myself to become a leader, because I must be myself and accept for myself only that which I value, and not what is being suit of clothes they're wearing this season or Cuban heels season this year of Our Lord 1940, you from the North, and you from the South, and you from the East, and you from the West? Be original, and for Chrissake speak up! Shall we make it a vogue to sacrifice virgins--but, no, that's been done. . . . What do you think of matricide or motherrape? No? Well--wish we could deal with more personal things, such as prolonging the gestation period in the Homo sapiens; that would keep the married men hopping, no?"


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He was certain that he could never revolve his whole life around marriage. He could not give that institution the importance it had falsely taken on through the centuries. Marriage, per se, was not life, nor could it govern life.

In this he believed.



from Pocho by J. A. Villarreal