By Sophia Jimenez
| Tuesday, March 25, 2014
I first read Oscar Hijuelos’s memoir Thoughts Without Cigarettes
in early 2013. I was eager to learn more about Hijuelos after reading his
masterful Pulitzer-winning novel, The
Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, but I didn’t expect to feel a
personal connection to his story. Hijuelos was the son of two Cuban
immigrants and grew up in 1950s Harlem. My own background growing up in
suburban Austin, Texas, couldn’t have been more different—or so I thought.
I was raised by comfortably middle-class parents who sacrificed to send me
to a private college prep school, and then to a wonderful, intellectually independent,
academically rigorous but very expensive college. My father is Mexican, and
I’d always felt self-conscious about learning most of my Spanish in school,
visiting Mexico only rarely, and spending my formative years with rich
white kids. I was proud of my accomplishments, but I wondered if Latinidad
would ever truly feel like part of my identity.\
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only
one plagued with these worries. Hijuelos used his memoir—the last book he
published before his untimely death on October 12, 2013—to explore his own
identity conflicts. At age four, Hijuelos was hospitalized with a kidney
disease for an entire year, and none of the nurses spoke Spanish.
This
greatly affected his language development. By the time he returned home, he
was firmly English speaking and could barely remember enough Spanish to
communicate with his own mother. His family couldn’t understand what had
happened to him. His Spanish was never as fluent as his peers’ was, and for
the next several years, he saw himself as the outsider in his Cuban
community. He had paler skin and lighter hair than his family and
neighbors, which only made him more self-conscious about not fitting in.
When Hijuelos started writing novels,
however, he found himself drawn to Cuban characters and Cuban stories.
Literature gave him an opportunity to explore the heritage that he felt he
had lost, and Mambo
Kings transformed him from a misfit into one of the most
powerful voices promoting Cuban-American history and culture.
Hijuelos’s memoir is an occasionally
rambling but beautifully lyrical read. I loved his anecdotes—particularly
the ones about his time at City College—and the honesty of his voice. Most
of all, however, I loved what he taught me through his own experiences. Thoughts Without Cigarettes
only strengthens my belief that books can be instrumental in changing the
way one sees the world.
Since reading it, I’ve been more confident about
calling myself a Latina. Like Junot Díaz in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,
Hijuelos reminds us that Latinidad comes in all sorts of shapes—even dorky
misfit ones. More importantly, he reassures us, through his own
inspirational story, that all experiences are valid. In my opinion, Thoughts Without Cigarettes
is one of the best and most moving examinations of Latino identity out
there.
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