- I was at this poetry workshop.
It was this poem,
sprinkled with words in
Spanish like chili powder,
on the fresh fruit slices of
my English and they told me,
maybe you should translate more words,
not everyone can understand you.
So I told them, I didn't
write this poem for you.
So don't ask me to change it, for you.
You see I spoke Spanish
before I spoke anything else
and while my father was
learning English in a classroom,
I was learning it from my
mom and Sesame Street.
So maybe this poem is for
Big Bird and Cookie Monster
and Oscar, who taught
me it's okay to get mad.
Especially when you're
being misunderstood.
You see I wrote this poem for
my mom and her generation,
who were punished in classrooms,
made to kneel in corners.
Their mouths washed out with soap
for speaking their mother's tongues.
I wrote it for my father,
who was proud when the white lady told
him that she couldn't
believe he was an immigrant
because he hardly had an accident.
I wrote it for my daughter,
who gets top marks with that
analytical mind of hers in math
and science, but struggles
in Spanish class.
And I wrote it for my son,
who asked me one day in disappointment,
daddy why didn't you teach me
Spanish when I was younger?
I would know two languages by now.
And I wrote it because
when I was their age,
I pretended I didn't
understand the janitors
and the lunch ladies at school
because none of my GT class mates
would ever have talked to those people.
So now I'm writing it for them
and their daughters and their sons.
y my tios y my tias y toda la gente...
So they can pick the lettuce
and tomato that goes into your taco salad.
Maybe it's for the Selena's out there,
who can sing Como la Flor,
but don't actually know the
language in which they sing.
And for Hispanics in Hollywood
who are still typecast as
gang members and pool cleaners
and landscapers and
janitors and lunch ladies.
All the restaurants in the
Greater metropolitan area
with Jalisco somewhere in their name.
12.8 million Latinos did not
vote in the last election.
And that 30% of border
patrol leaders out there
who claim themselves as Hispanic,
keeping their own cousins in cages
but I sure as fuck
didn't write it for you.
It's for anyone who's ever been laughed at
for saying sandwich
or library or pizza.
Had their name butchered
by some pinche gringo
who didn't even wanna try
because there is no excuse for that.
It's for being told to
speak American on this soil,
where we rolled tortillas
before we ever broke any bread.
And there was a Santa Fe
before there was a Plymouth Rock.
There was El Paso before
there was ever a Philadelphia.
There was a San Antone, a San Diego
an Albuquerque before there
was ever a Washington DC.
And I did not write this poem
for you either Mr. Trump.
I wrote it for me.
(crowd cheers and applauds)
