This is incredible---Back to Bachimba is so smart and well-written, and such a capsule of its time. I taught high school English in the Curtis Park neighborhood in Denver in the 2010's, and by that time the neighborhood had gone from nearly all white (in the early 20th century) to nearly all Latino and Black (in the mid to late 20th century, in the time that Lopez is writing about) back towards white again (starting in the 2010s). The gentrification in the 2010s was FAST, and the kids who grew up in the neighborhood had been there for multiple generations at that point and were (justifiably) angry about how the houses their parents had bought for $50000 were now selling for half a million dollars. There was a ton of pride in the neighborhood, since Denver's first Black mayor grew up near Curtis Park and attended the nearby Manual High School: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Webb.
This is a great reminder that this stuff disappears, but also that there's writers like Enrique Hank Lopez that are so talented, that write multiple books and found literary journals, and yet no one from their own neighborhood knows who they are. We should have been teaching this essay at the high school I worked at! We spent time helping kids write personal essays for college---this is the model! Try to be as engaging as him with the personal resources you have!
Your personal reflections are also well-written and engaging, and I hope one day that the English teachers in the town in England that you grew up in will teach your essays as an example...
Thanks for such a thoughtful response! Really interesting to hear about your backstory in teaching and how it affects your reading of something like Back to Bachimba. I totally agree Lopez's essay is a model for personal essay writing; so much of what a writer reads influences their style, but this was one of those rare pieces where I was actually conscious of how it was changing me while I was reading it. It was a job not to let my voice turn into mere mimicry of his. Thank you again for reading.
1. Likening your accent to a weed made me laugh, Matthew. I am never taken for anything other than an Englishman. When an American hears me: “I LOVE your accent!” And I, always: “Well, I’ve been working on it all my life.”
2. Far more importantly, your difficulty accessing an essay reveals a genuine danger. I’ve been reading (and writing about) Richard Ovenden’s Burning the Books. He makes the important point that storage is not the same as preservation! A lesson readers and book-lovers need to remember.
This is incredible---Back to Bachimba is so smart and well-written, and such a capsule of its time. I taught high school English in the Curtis Park neighborhood in Denver in the 2010's, and by that time the neighborhood had gone from nearly all white (in the early 20th century) to nearly all Latino and Black (in the mid to late 20th century, in the time that Lopez is writing about) back towards white again (starting in the 2010s). The gentrification in the 2010s was FAST, and the kids who grew up in the neighborhood had been there for multiple generations at that point and were (justifiably) angry about how the houses their parents had bought for $50000 were now selling for half a million dollars. There was a ton of pride in the neighborhood, since Denver's first Black mayor grew up near Curtis Park and attended the nearby Manual High School: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Webb.
This is a great reminder that this stuff disappears, but also that there's writers like Enrique Hank Lopez that are so talented, that write multiple books and found literary journals, and yet no one from their own neighborhood knows who they are. We should have been teaching this essay at the high school I worked at! We spent time helping kids write personal essays for college---this is the model! Try to be as engaging as him with the personal resources you have!
Your personal reflections are also well-written and engaging, and I hope one day that the English teachers in the town in England that you grew up in will teach your essays as an example...
Thanks for such a thoughtful response! Really interesting to hear about your backstory in teaching and how it affects your reading of something like Back to Bachimba. I totally agree Lopez's essay is a model for personal essay writing; so much of what a writer reads influences their style, but this was one of those rare pieces where I was actually conscious of how it was changing me while I was reading it. It was a job not to let my voice turn into mere mimicry of his. Thank you again for reading.
1. Likening your accent to a weed made me laugh, Matthew. I am never taken for anything other than an Englishman. When an American hears me: “I LOVE your accent!” And I, always: “Well, I’ve been working on it all my life.”
2. Far more importantly, your difficulty accessing an essay reveals a genuine danger. I’ve been reading (and writing about) Richard Ovenden’s Burning the Books. He makes the important point that storage is not the same as preservation! A lesson readers and book-lovers need to remember.