Textbook on the Desegregation of an Afro-Latinx

Chapter 1

the red flame flamboyán sitting on top of a Matanzas mountainshelters the hesitant embrace of your light-skinned Mami andnegro Papi, open Caribbean Sea before them, ancient gateway, portal, key

Chapter 2

Abuelo boycotts the wedding porque Papi is too blackit will be 20 years before Mami speaks to Abuelito againno one voices the silence at home, so you stay mute, tooquiet like a scroll wound so tight it cannot be opened to release its words

Chapter 3

you make books before you can read, stapled volumes of crayoned lettersMami reads to you every night about Johnny Lion, the exploring cubwhen you turn three, you read to her, and by five, you've written your first playbut your characters are like Snow White: foreign, cold, trapped

Chapter 4

Mozart School, in Logan Square, teaches you to be quiet is to dieso you better learn to yell and cuss and spit the evil eye, as if you were two different people: the one who breaks a girl's glasses for kicking you andthe one who buys school supplies early and scores beyond her grade level on testssomeone quietly submits your name to a magnet schoolyou don't know who did that, but you take the tests and get in

Chapter 5

you are bussed to Kenwood Academy, where everyone is Black andthey see you as Black, so you go home and ask Mami, "Am I Black?"Mami and Papi look at each other and say nothing, leaving you totake algebra in 7^th grade, and watch the rich African Americanteenagers who drive to school in their parents' Rolls Royces or Jaguars and onlytalk to kids who use Coach purses or wear clothes from Marshall Field'sleaving you to wonder if you fit in more with the Latino/a wildcats or Black bourgeoisie

Chapter 6

you learn that the Kenwood college prep program was started to addresscivil rights issues that were fought for in the 1960s, so you are proud,excited to learn about your history, but your teachers only teach Thoreau,Dickinson, the Greeks, the Holocaust, and you know this is good becausethey say this is good, but you wonder about García Marquez, and Borges,all the authors on Mami and Papi's bookshelves, and even more so you wonder aboutMorrison, and Angelou and Hughes, who are also on Mami and Papi's bookshelves, andyou wonder why Kenwood is great at teaching you discipline and drive but isn'tteaching you about your Latinidad or what seems to be your emerging Blackness

Chapter 7

you stop paying much attention at schoolinstead you spend hours listening to Jello Biafra recite lyrics about Cambodian atrocitiesRevCo frontman Al Jourgensen pounds beats into you about the Bhopal disasterX-Ray Spex remind you that your identity does not lie in a false, gendered mirroryou resist the prevailing '80s message that greed is good, while classmates obsess overgold hoops and getting into Ivy League schools and the latest Bell Biv Devoe Mami and Papi fear you because you wear black boots and lipstickand blue and purple bruises from slamdancing with shaved head Mexicanos from La Villita

Chapter 8

somehow you make it to college, you're even on the college newspaper, and you writeabout how a catcalling man on the street said you didn't like him because he was Black, butyou answered, "I am Black," and he said, "You can only be a spic or something"this idea seems wrong to you and you explain in your newspaper essay thatyou identify as Black, you claim it, to all of Columbia College Chicago, in black and white printa professor responds to the essay with a map of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that showsmost Black slaves were transported to Cuba, Colombia, the Caribbean, South America, your homes,your world is Black

Chapter 9

you go home and tell your parents, "I am clearly Black...