UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Smart: Growing up Gifted and Brown in Southeast Los Angeles Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3ws2s8rj Author Vertiz, Vickie Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Smart: Growing up Gifted and Brown in Southeast Los Angeles A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts by Vickie Vértiz June 2015 Thesis Committee: Professor Michael R. Davis, Co-Chairperson Professor Stephanie Barbé Hammer, Co-Chairperson Professor Juan Felipe Herrera Professor Laila Lalami The Thesis of Vickie Vértiz is approved: Committee Co-Chairperson Committee Co-Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements For their keen eye, encouragement, and editorial suggestions, my deepest gratitude goes to my thesis committee members: Mike Davis, Stephanie Barbé Hammer, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Laila Lalami. For their teaching and mentoring, I’d like to recognize Allison Hedge Coke, Ashon Crawley, Michael Jayme, Fred Moten, Susan Straight, and Robin Russin. “Kissing,” a chapter from this memoir, was published on May 5, 2015 by The Offing magazine, a Los Angeles Review of Books imprint. In the fall, the essay will also be published by Trans-Genre Press in the anthology, Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices. Most importantly, I’d like to thank my partner Kenji, my family, and the homes we have built. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... iii Prologue: The Last Seminar, 1998 .................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Going Places, 1980 ...................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 2: Glass, 1981 .................................................................................................................................. 16 Chapter 3: Beds, 1981 ................................................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 4: Stickers, 1984 .............................................................................................................................. 24 Chapter 5: Division, 1985 ............................................................................................................................. 28 Chapter 6: Receipts, 1985 ............................................................................................................................. 31 Chapter 7: Encyclopedia, 1986 ..................................................................................................................... 35 Chapter 8: What College Is, 1987 ................................................................................................................. 40 Chapter 9: Fear, 1988-1989 ........................................................................................................................... 42 Chapter 10: Say Something, 1990 ................................................................................................................. 57 Chapter 11: Pork, 1990 .................................................................................................................................. 67 Chapter 12: Belfry, 1991 ............................................................................................................................... 70 Chapter 13: Encyclopedia, 1992.................................................................................................................... 75 Chapter 14: Kissing, 1992 ............................................................................................................................. 79 Chapter 15: Fighting, 1992 ............................................................................................................................ 88 Chapter 16: Friends and Jobs, 1993 .............................................................................................................. 91 Chapter 17: Beto, 1993 .................................................................................................................................. 99 Chapter 18: The Forum, 1993 ..................................................................................................................... 102 Chapter 19: Little Piece of Dirt, 1993 ......................................................................................................... 108 Chapter 20: Out of the Closet, 1994 ............................................................................................................ 116 Chapter 21: Acceptance, 1994 ..................................................................................................................... 121 Chapter 22: Graduation, 1994 ..................................................................................................................... 128 Chapter 23: Two Letters, summer ............................................................................................................... 132 Chapter 24: First Day, 1994 ........................................................................................................................ 136 Chapter 25: Hungry, 1994 ........................................................................................................................... 142 Chapter 26: Dancing, 1994 .......................................................................................................................... 156 Chapter 27: Assed Out, 1994 ...................................................................................................................... 159 Chapter 28: Back Home .............................................................................................................................. 170 Chapter 29: Skiing, 1995 ............................................................................................................................. 175 Chapter 30: Parties, 1996 ............................................................................................................................ 180 Chapter 31: Cruising, 1996 ......................................................................................................................... 187 Chapter 32: Don't Be Stupid, 1996 .............................................................................................................. 195 Chapter 33: Cooking, 1997 ......................................................................................................................... 200 Chapter 34: Berkeley, 1997 ......................................................................................................................... 207 Chapter 35: The Fall, 1997 .......................................................................................................................... 219 Chapter 37: The Last Seminar, 1998 ........................................................................................................... 225 Chapter 38: Cash Money ............................................................................................................................. 227 Chapter 39: Graduation ............................................................................................................................... 230 Epilogue ...................................................................................................................................................... 244 All As .......................................................................................................................................................... 244 Do it yourself ............................................................................................................................................... 247 iv Prologue: The Last Seminar, 1998 “But it was fitting like a tight chemise. I could not see it for wearing it. It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroundings that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment.” Zora Neale Hurston, From Mules and Men When I was 17, all I wanted was to get out—out of my mother’s crowded house, out of Bell Gardens, and out of California. At 21, I’d clawed my way into best liberal arts college in the country, but no one told me it wouldn’t be enough. No one told me that no matter how fine my hand-made leather loafers were and how many degrees I accumulated, that I’d always have to go back home to a house that my family shared with an unending stream of cockroaches. * On the last day of my senior seminar in political science, we had class in the living room of the former Williams Inn. Dodd House was a beautiful old dorm, with white clapboard siding and hunter green trim that never faded or chipped. That building, nestled in perfect spring grass, was idyllic, and an icon of Williams, my liberal arts New England college. We even had a Gothic-style church along the main road, and our administrative buildings featured cherry wood dens with portraits of donors, all of them colonial white men, looking out at students across vaulted ceilings