The Promised Land

Essay on Mexican Migration assigned by Dr. Robert Bauman as a requirement for his WSU history class in American Roots: Immigration, Migration, and Ethnic Identity. The essay is based on a book named MIGRANT DAUGHTER: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman by Frances Esquibel Tywoniak and Mario T. Garcia. U of California Press, Berkeley, 2000.

Assigned for fall semester August-December 2006.

THE PROMISED LAND by Laurel Piippo Frances Esquibel Tywoniak's migration to California during the 1930s was a transplantation from New Mexico to the promised land where she achieved the American dream. Her intelligence formed the basis of her success, more influential than gender, ethnic identity, language, or even migration. Her clear-sighted view of what her Mexican culture offered,compared with an Americanized life, even when she was a junior high school student, determined her future. Her willingness to give up the love of her life and to break with the ethnic traditions of both family and community played a major role in her transformation . Command of the English language was a manifestation of her intelligence. She saw clearly that learning English was the first step toward a life better than the one lived as a Spanish-speaking American/ Mexican girl, whose life could have been determined by ethnicity, gender, and language limitations.On a personal note, Fran is only four years younger than I am. Like her, I was uprooted from everything familiar as a child and taken to California, driven by economic necessity during the Depression of the 1930s. Reading her story, I was constantly amazed at how much we had in common, yet from such different backgrounds. In fact there were so many similarities it was downright spooky!Fran had the advantage of being much smarter, self-aware, and conscious of her goals than I. But the similarities, not the differences, are what struck me. She describes herself as stubborn, defiant, and rebellious, wanting to do things her way, not obeying her father's authoritarian rule, especially about speaking English. She felt isolated and had to look out for herself, not subordinate herself to her family's needs. Above all, she was determined to get an education. That sounds like me.In the WSU class about American Roots, examining the experiences of immigrants and migrants who were uprooted or transplanted, struck a chord in me.

Surprisingly, learning history turned into psychotherapy and self-discovery. That is part of what I am going to explore--my history as well as Fran's. Many similarities between Fran and Laurel made me laugh and are not relevant, but some of them are so much fun! Fran is four years younger than I, and our fathers both migrated to California for economic reasons. Our childhoods both included rural life. Raising sheep during the Depression was not good for my father or hers. We ate a lot of mutton and home-grown corn and peas, raised chickens and had dairy cows. Someone stole 1200 of my dad's flock, and one of my dad's farms was foreclosed because he could not pay the taxes. Fran's family lost land through fraud, but their farm in New Mexico was self-sufficient, and neither of us remembers being hungry. Like Fran and her extended family, I grew up with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and nine cousins who showed up every summer at our grandparents' home in Flandreau, South Dakota. Unlike Fran, when my dad and I moved to California, love and security for me were left behind, and I longed to return to South Dakota. Fran, secure in the love of her family, was transplanted and moved forward, not looking back to a happier time. She did, however, always regard New Mexico as her true home, while the rest of her family made Visalia, CA, their home.We shared similar experiences, at least during the three miserable years I had to live on a farm with animals that might as well have been creatures from a zoo. Fran liked her rural home in New Mexico. She and her sister "accepted the reality that our earnings were part of the family income" in California. In Visalia the town had separate and different residential areas with Anglos on one side and Mexicans on the other other in the Mexican barrio, an area consisting entirely of Mexicans. Her father was a" mejcano," a foreign born person from Mexico. In the barrio the people were "la gent mejicana," and others were "los Americanos." Not sharing their Mexican ethnicity were "Oakies and "Arkies." They had to use smelly outhouses with the Sears Roebuck catalog for toilet paper, just like on the farm where I lived. That was as close to camping as either of us ever chose to experience. She told her children she'd had enough of "camping" and refused to go. This brought back memories of my camping experiences. At least I tried, but after my hus band enthusiastically confronted me with his idea of luxury -- "this out-house has TWO HOLES!" -- I waited till he went fishing and checked into nearest motel. Shock and awe reverberated .

I was forever condemned for being a bad wife, poor sport, a woman who struck terror and loathing in all husbands. My behavior was not a proper role for a woman in the 1950s and '60s, who was supposed to comply with all her husband's activities. .The importance of music in Fran's family was also true in mine. I remember cranking up my grandmother's hand-cranked Victrola, just as she did. Her guitar-playing grandfather delighted her as my mother, a classical pianist, gave me a need and appreciation for music that still exists today. Her love of Mexican music was part of her ethnic identity, both in New Mexico and California. Born of an American-Mexican mother and Mexican father, Fran's childhood in rural New Mexico wrapped a cocoon of extended family love around her. "People loved one another. . . I don't recall much bickering among my aunts and uncles," she writes.

Toward the end of her book she expresses gratitude for a family that she knew always supported her and were interested in her, no matter what she did. Her family expected her to do well in school, and she did. Fran and I both found that California schools were different.. Public schools tended to treat Mexican students like dummies, and teachers had low expectations. In South Dakota I was just like all my little friends, on the honor roll as a matter of unremarkable routine. But in California I was regarded as some kind of superior student because -- gasp! -- I could READ AND WRITE well in sixth grade. California schools were going through the phase of dumping phonics and not teaching the alphabet or history and geography. They placed great emphasis on P.E., forcing me to play soccer at 8 o'clock on very cold mornings. I hated it and always got Cs in P.E, which kept me off the honor roll. I don't recall Fran ever mentioning pleasure in athletics or exercise either. Probably walking six miles to and from school was enough exercise for her.

Fran and I each were required to read a well-respected classic that we disliked intensely. She hated HEIDI and her mountain stories, which had nothing to with Fran or her life or her feelings. I changed schools three times, and every time my new English class read EVANGELINE by H. W. Longfellow. Evangeline's beloved Gabriel and the Acadians and her lifelong search for him were bad enough the first time, but THREE TIMES? -- first in South Dakota, then in Pomona, then in Chino, California.

I missed the wonders of diagramming sentences and never learned about gerunds and participles, transitive and intransitive verbs. Thrice-read EVANGELINE left me with a shaky knowledge of grammar.

Decades later, the historical background of EVANGELINE helped me appreciate Acadia at as park in the northeast someplace. But when my husband and I visited Evangeline's grave in a Louisiana town, I snarled, "I'd like to drive a stake through her heart."

During her childhood Fran's father adamantly insisted his family speak only Spanish, like everyone else in the community, even though the youngsters were American born, and English was used in their schools. Her father was a typical macho Mexican male who occasionally clobbered his children. Frances resented it, but did not stop loving and respecting her father because of it.

Her mother never disagreed or argued with her father. Fran was critical of her mother's subordinate relationship to her father, but later came to understand "the time and circumstances. .." that provided extremely limited options to her mother.

Frances determined not to be limited by traditional ethnic customs; she sought other options. Ironically, her father was forced to learn enough English to deal with employment in English-speaking California.

Migration, and eventually settling in Visalia, California, continued to shape and define Fran's ethnic identity as she began to evaluate how strongly community cultural values would influence her. Because of Fran's rejection of Mexican/American ethnic values, she felt isolated in Visalia, She was alienated at school because she "couldn't see much in the learning process that was directly relevant to my condition or that of my family." She became watchful and alert while retaining her faith in schooling. Her mother was determined that her children receive "the education she had wanted but had been denied." Fran and her family believed in the value of education, as did mine, but neither of us at that age saw a "connection between schooling and a better life," certainly not in economic terms.

In a few years her attitude shifted into realizing that education provided a way out of an ethnic lifestyle she found unacceptable.Fran had no access to libraries and was uninterested in the school books provided.

She loved language, words, reading. She soon learned from listening to mind-deadening conversations among women workers that she did NOT want to live a life like theirs. She saw her father treated rudely because of his ethnicity for the first time in California, but at the same time he had a better job. New experiences came hard upon. The family received hand-me-downs, as a reminder that they were poor, but people were kind. I, too, was a poor relation and never allowed to forget it. She observed gender exclusion for men, too, during World War II when American/Mexican boys were discriminated against unless they called themselves Spanish/American because Mexicans were not desirable.Gender reared its head when school rules forbade girls wearing slacks when she was cold and wanted warm clothes, not a skirt. Anglos were authority figures in her culture, and their arguments dismayed her. One teacher showed her affection and respect, which gave her confidence. Another teacher slapped her when she finished a spelling lesson too soon and did some creative doodling. Anglo kids took French, and Fran did not understand why she was excluded because of her race; she liked languages and was good at them.

She learned in the barrio that "wanting to be like an Anglo meant a betrayal of your own culture."In high school she gave full expression to her love of language. "I had grown up conscious of language and its use, both English and Spanish as well as the Latin of my church missal. It was easy for me to deal with this subject, whether it was literature or grammar or writing."

She "derived great personal satisfaction from all aspects of language study." She loved manipulating words, no matter what the language.

Like Fran, I too loved writing and literature, but had no gift for languages. Her drive for education was prompted partly by the need for the key to a different life; mine was a drive to use my mind, heart, and soul to the highest possible level of learning, to know my heritage, and also to escape emotionally from an unsatisfactory life. Fran learned about different kinds of colleges and universities in high school. Unlike Anglo students, she did not become involved in extra-curricular activities or go to games. She and Anglo girls came together to pursue academic goals, not to socialize. She represented her school at Girls State, an honor. Her priest told her it was a sin to attend a dance sponsored by a Protestant group. All he did was alienate her from the church.

Her ethnic culture could not prevent her thinking through issues and making up her own very fine mind. She disliked stereotypes and says she was "not affected by social influences around me."Fran made Anglo friends, was introduced to Anglo books, and learned about the subtleties of language. She discovered her own sexuality, no thanks to any sex education from her parents.

I'd be hard put to say which of us had the worst so-called sex education.

Fran says, "Topics like sex and birth control were largely avoided in my family and in the barrio." Sex was not talked about among the Mexican girls, but in Pomona my friends and I speculated endlessly about when we would get our "periods." Fran's mother never told her anything.

My family tried to tell me too much, creating nothing but confusion. My twenty year-old sister checked out a book -- no kidding! -- on flowers from the library when I was ten years old. She seemed oddly nervous about it. I wondered why she thought I would be interested in a book on gardening. I looked at it and read about pistils and stamens and pollen and gave it back, wondering why she seemed so uneasy and different. That there was a connection between flowers and human reproduction never entered my head. Then at dinner one day my stepmother's friend told me I should eat ham "Why? I don't like it.""Because you need iron in your blood,." she answered, uncomfortably. My stepmother tried to clarify. "Um, so you will be strong when you have your periods. The blood is for the baby. You need strong blood for a baby." My baby sister was born, but her birth had nothing to do with my blood. Furthermore, if girls bleed during their period, what good does the lost blood do a baby? It just makes a mess, not a baby! Nothing connected. Nothing made sense. Best not to ask any more questions. Really, NOTHING CONNECTED! One night I woke to see my stepmother coming up the stairs, her housecoat open, her huge watermelon belly exposed, which I had never noticed before. The next day I learned that my baby half-sister was born. AMAZING! I had no idea! My Aunt Gail, my stepmother, my older sister, my father, letters from relatives, NOBODY told me a baby was about to arrive! Nothing had connected. I didn't care or figure out the mysteries of sex for another several years. Sex was a totally taboo subject in respectable middle class families.While reading a book in high school, I came across a sentence that described a woman in prison looking out in the courtyard where soldiers raped girls . What were they doing? What was rape? Curious, I looked it up in the dictionary. "RAPE: carnal knowledge without consent." Oh. Some kind of knowledge forced on someone who doesn't want it. Sex education in middle class white Protestant families was unbelievable, I learned decades later when one of my my cousins told me that his mother explained sex as something that happens "when a man asnd a woman put their two toilets together."Boys and romance were something else. Fran's story amazed me. She fell in love with Peter at age 13, loved him all her life to some degree, but had the maturity to know she could never achieve the life she wanted with him. His life would be determined by gender and ethnicity, not hers. Gender and ethnicity programmed Mexican girls to marry young, have lots of babies, not go to school, possibly have a job that wouldn't challenge a brain cell, wait on her husband, and live the stereotyped Mexican life her parents lived. She defied her parents and lied to spend time with Peter, but ultimately gave him up. In contrast, when the little boy across the street got a crush on 12 year-old me, his mother asked my stepmother if he could take me to a movie. NOBODY ASKED ME. And at that age I was meek and quiet, standing there in an agony of silence, hoping my stepmother would say "No." But NOBODY ASKED ME. So the little boy's mother took us to a movie, took us to an ice cream shop afterwards, and stood there with an expression I recognized as, "Isn't this too cute for words?" I hated it. Yet Fran at almost the same age had the maturity and wit to know that knew that love wasn't enough. Like Juliet, I would kill or die for love or indulge in extravaganzas of romantic agony later on, but Fran, ever analytical and intelligent even as a teenager, gave up the love of her life to create the life she wanted, a life it took years of work to achieve. Her self-respect, self-control and goals prevented physical intimacy with Peter, but she never forgot him even though she rejected him. She liked boys, and they liked her, but her self-respect and the strict morality absorbed from her culture prevented any dalliance.

During her teenage years Fran did not want to become like other Mexican girls in Visalia, California. Her strong will and personal sense of values overcame both gender and ethnicity when she observed girls called "pachucas." She saw them in junior high school, but they apparently had dropped out by the time Fran was in high school. Fran chose "Anglo clothes" while the pachucas in the 1940s zoot suit era wore "short tight skirts, bulky sweaters, and high-top black shoes." They roamed in packs, and her father disapproved of them: . . ."they're up to no good." She avoided them. She figured out that "Visalia was a dead-end place. . ." She wanted a future that "held more than working in the fields, .being a clerk, or marrying and having lots of children." She knew as a child that "I had to learn Anglo ways. And I had to do well in high school. I prepared myself for this challenge"

She was so observant, so aware, so smart in rejecting the destiny that ethnicity and gender both held for her. In ninth grade Fran learned about the California Scholarship Federation. "By asking and observing," she learned what courses counted and what ones didn't. She also began to like her classes, and the following year, her teachers recognized her academic talents and helped her with scholarship information. Her SAT scores, excellent grades, recommendations, and surviving a socially uncomfortable interview process resulted in a scholarship to Berkeley. Her mother supported Fran's educational aims and would persuade her father. "I knew that as a Mexican American at Berkeley I was already an exception." She mentions being the only American/Mexican student on campus. When she married a Polish man and changed her name from Esquibel to Tywoniak, people could not figure out her background: "I would be asked, 'Is that a Korean name?" Other guesses included Hawaiian, Japanese, and even Aleutian one time." She mentions that even in the Bay Area, people stared at mixed-race couples in the 1950s when she and her husband-to-be dated.Her marriage did not follow the pattern set by her parents, a pattern partly based on ethnic Mexican behavior.

"I rejected the type of traditional/patriarchal relationship that they had. My father was quick to anger, and his moods dominated our household. This type of marriage was not acceptable to me. I could not accept the self-abnegation that seemed to define my mother's life.

"As a young mother in 1953 she clung to her childhood attachment to the Catholic church, even though she had developed "certain reservations about the Church and its inflexibility. . ."

She could not "easily separate my allegiance to my parents from my allegiance to a Church that they so devoutly believed in and that I now questioned." Yet her close family ties for the first 18 years of her life did not hamper her changing attitudes or growth as a person. Her ethnic family background in a loving extended Mexican family was her foundation, not her pinnacle. Although her parents did not have the knowledge to guide her academic choices, they expected her to do well in school and were proud that she was the first in the family to graduate from college. A born leader, she "saw myself as setting an example in my family." Marriage did not deflect her from her goals either.

Ethnic customs, values, and expectations, gender roles and community role models shaped Fran's early life, but became obstacles to overcome. Language was at first an impediment and a hurdle, but became a joy, as her education progressed. More important than any of these, her capacity for observation, thinking through all possibilities, and applying her excellent intelligence to finding her own Self meant that Fran could be successfully transplanted in California -- or any place else in the United States where colleges and universities exist.

Education, brains, and character create their own Promised Land.