Brownsville native, author recalls life on border

Brownsville native Sarah Rafael Garcia is here to read from her book, "Las Niñas: A Collection of Childhood Memories," at UTB-TSC today, but she's also here to learn from her grandmother, who is the subject of her next book.

Rafael Garcia spent Tuesday afternoon learning how to shape the homemade flour tortillas of her childhood in her grandmother Maria Luisa Garcia's kitchen.

This skill, associated with the proud tradition of the Mexican matriarch, is one Rafael Garcia would have resisted learning just a year ago.

But after running from the traditional role of the Mexican woman for a lifetime - traveling alone and embracing life as a single woman - Rafael Garcia says she's at last ready to learn more about what it means to be a wife and mother. Now, she says, embodying this identity would be a choice rather than an expectation.

"We live in such a materialistic culture today," Rafael Garcia said. "We've forgotten what devotion is. What it is to live for the sake of living and not for the sake of having."

Rafael Garcia's book chronicles the early journeys of her life as the first daughter of new immigrants. Her father and mother were both born in Matamoros and moved to Brownsville in the 1960s before relocating to Santa Ana, Calif., when she was 4 years old.

The collection begins with Rafael Garcia's first memory of her parents, when she could barely walk. It ends with the death of her beloved father when she was 13 years old. Each summer while living in California, Rafael Garcia returned to Brownsville to be with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.

In Brownsville, Rafael Garcia says she saw a different way of relating to her Mexican identity.

"I think Brownsville is like the foundation of our history," Rafael Garcia said. "Here the culture continues to bind us, but in other places (parts of the United States) it tends to separate us. When I come to Brownsville, I forget that the rest of the world exists."

Rafael Garcia says that the discrimination she faced in California isn't as apparent in Brownsville, which is primarily Hispanic.

"When we were growing up, we were blind to (the discrimination) because my father protected us," Rafael Garcia said. "My father did janitorial work at the Orange County Register and pushed paper, but we never knew that because he always changed into pressed slacks and a button-down shirt before he came home."

She says it was only when her father died and her family moved to a white neighborhood that she began to experience racism.

"There was a group of girls talking about how there were more wetbacks in the school that year than the year before," Rafael Garcia said. "Because I had light skin and hazel eyes they turned around and asked me what I thought. I said, ‘I know exactly what you mean, because I'm one of them.' That unfortunately set the tone for the rest of my high school years. I no longer felt equal."

Now 35, Rafael Garcia is able to fortify her childhood experiences with the reflection that only time allows.

She hopes the book will be used for educational purposes. One of her sisters is a teacher and already uses some of the stories to help students improve their reading. Some of the later chapters of the book could be used for college courses, because of the complex narrative devices Rafael Garcia employs and the difficult questions of Hispanic identity that she poses.

Whatever way others choose to use the stories, Rafael Garcia says the book has served an essential purpose in her life.

"I didn't get my mom to tell me she was proud of me until this book came out and she saw what was going on," she said. "She said, ‘I'll never say this again, but I'm glad you didn't listen to me.' "

To learn more about the author, visit www.sarahrafaelgarcia.com. The 5:30 p.m. reading is free and will be held at the UTB-TSC Barnes and Noble Bookstore. For more information about the event, call (956) 882-8249.