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To
Be or What to Be
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By Tori Seneda |
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About the Author:
Tori Seneda was born and raised in a small farming community
in northwest Ohio. She received a BA from the University of
Toledo in 1993 and a MA from OSU in 1996. She is currently
a Ph.D. candidate in the Dept. of Anthropology. Her subfield
specialization is Mayan archaeology, which she finds incredibly
fascinating. Most of her writing is school-related, but she
writes “creatively” for pure enjoyment, stress relief,
and “to get the myriad of unrelated thoughts out of her
head!”
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Tori Seneda
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Strange as it may seem, I always wanted to thank David
McClure for calling me a spic back when we had Mrs.
Clark’s seventh grade English together. At the moment it
happened, I was horrified. All of the people, my friends, sitting
around us turned their heads away or buried their noses in books.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know my family
was different than other people. We just were.
The sunlight was pouring over me; the sky was a crystal clear
blue. I was so cold and lost. So why did I want to thank him?
David McClure started me on a quest for my lost heritage.
My paternal grandfather was a migrant worker. He traveled from
Texas to Ohio, progressively following the planting season.
He settled with my grandmother, my uncle Jerry, and my dad in
a small farming community in northwest Ohio. When the boys entered
school, Spanish was their primary language. The school board
told my grandfather that his children would never be able to
succeed if they spoke Spanish. From that point on my grandfather
forbade his children from speaking Spanish outside of the house.
By the time my dad and his brothers began to have children,
Spanish was rarely spoken in the family. The only ethnic things
in our family were our surname and Grandpa’s Spanish rice.
We had rice with everything. Cheeseburgers and rice. Turkey
and rice. Ham and rice. I thought everyone had Spanish rice
with their holiday meals.
At least I thought that until David McClure called me a spic.
Then I started questioning people outside of the family. They
didn’t have rice with their Thanksgiving turkey or Easter
ham. I began to ask questions about why Uncle John and Aunt
Ophelia only spoke Spanish when they came to visit. I began
to ask questions about the family background. I didn’t
get many answers.
I discovered that a few of my cousins were starting to ask too.
It wasn’t until much later, when my cousin Steve had to
research his family roots for a college class that we began
to get some answers. My grandfather seemed to want to talk,
but my grandmother always hurried to shush him. It wasn’t
until after illness struck that my dad started opening up. My
uncle Jerry became seriously ill and then Grandpa died. Jerry
followed the following year. My uncles began to open up a little
more, but not much. Not enough.
During all of this I learned through my own studies about the
rich Mexican culture that we had lost. It was saddening. The
more I learned, the sadder and the less like either culture
I became. Now I no longer want to thank David McClure. Now I
would rather slap him up-side the head. Not for the reason you
might think. It’s not because he made a racist remark.
It’s because the remark sent me on a journey that has left
me stranded in Never-Never Land. I am between two worlds and
each side sees me as a member of the Other• |
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