Q: Confronted with a world of new possibilities and towering expectations, what is a Mexican-American Harvard graduate most likely to do in life?
A: Disappoint.
And, despite a résumé which is unusually long and distinguished for a thirty-one-year-old, I have always been most terrified of disappointing my parents. For all that my mother and father were unable to accomplish in their own lives, growing up as they did surrounded by poverty and discrimination, the accomplishments of my brother, sister and me have somehow been expected to compensate.
And for me, attending and graduating from the most prestigious university in the country was a fine start. Trouble is, the career path I chose after that went in a totally different direction from the one that they would have chosen for me. They had always expected me to simply become a lawyer, an option that now seems to me terribly unimaginative. My father, in particular, had, as a career cop, always held lawyers in high regard and had always prompted me in that direction, force-feeding me his ambitions like a plate of vegetables.
But now, years later, I have arrived, by fits and starts and against the grain of my proud parents’ ambitions, at a place that I never dreamed existed.
I’m a writer.
That path has been, at times, fraught with discomfort, anxiety and doubt. I was often tempted to turn back. One reason that I didn’t was that I realized, along the way, that the choice had never really been mine in the first place, but that my journey, however difficult, had been predetermined by fate.
The precise moment of my liberation came at the point at which I admitted to myself that, despite the culture of achievement in which I had been raised, I’d rather be a struggling writer than a successful lawyer. And now that the road is clear, my heart is filled with the satisfaction of knowing that I am finally able to scratch out a comfortable living doing what I dearly love doing, and I know what I am supposed to be doing.
But, it is also scarred by the clear memory of those turbulent and uncertain days, days which are behind me for now, but not far and maybe not for long.
I remember, for instance, that an argument with my father two years ago was an especially vicious one. The shouting, the cursing, the flaring of tempers on opposite ends of the phone line, each party striving to be heard over the recriminations of the other. The drama—which used to play itself out, on cue, two or three times a year— would inevitably begin with a dose of parental concern. The old man’s words were chosen carefully and intended to soften the blow of the lecture to follow.
“We worry about you, your mother and me. It’s hard for you, we know.”
Yes, it was hard. It had been hard since the beginning— harder than I could ever have imagined, years ago, when I first decided to make a full-blown profession out of something that many others, of perhaps sounder judgment, are content to delve into only as a hobby.
It was excruciatingly hard making a living at it, to be sure. As a freelancer, I’d write nearly every day, faxing out unsolicited essays and editorials to a stable of newspapers and magazines. Sometimes, checks would arrive in the mail. But never as dependably as bills did. And so, I was living back in my native San Joaquin Valley, nestled in the center of California. I was seeking shelter under my girlfriend’s roof and occasionally working, for seventy-five dollars a day as a substitute teacher in poor, rural, elementary and secondary schools to help support my writing habit. I’d also lecture, when invited to, on college campuses, collecting speaking fees and honorariums whenever possible. And, since I had once been employed as a radio talk show host in Los Angeles, I would occasionally hire myself out to sit in for a local radio personality. And it was all to support my writing.
Apart from the immediate scramble to survive, I would also peck away, whenever possible, on long-term book projects. Having already written and published one book at a young age—I was twenty-five—I spent several hours a week coming up with new ideas and drafting new book proposals so that I might duplicate the feat. And then, I’d wait and wait and wait. Then the wait would end in a stream of rejection letters from unconvinced publishers. And so, I’d flip on my computer and start again.
“How long do you expect to keep this up? You’re not making it. You’re struggling. Your mother and I want to see you successful.”
And I wanted to see my parents proud of me again. After nine years as a freelance writer, an author, a lecturer, a contributor to major newspapers and national magazines, a radio talk show host and part-time teacher, I was still struggling to pay my bills and meet my responsibilities.
Finally, in the spring of last year, I had had enough. Not of the writing but of where I had been doing it. Determined as I had been to be a writer, I had been just as determined to be one in my hometown. But one goal seemed to work against the other. I had always chalked up the desire to remain close to my roots to a sense of guilt over my classmates and I having, as ambitious teenagers, so eagerly abandoned my hometown in the sort of brain drain common to small towns of limited opportunity. The difficulty came with the simple truth that the San Joaquin Valley could support only a limited number of professions and mine was, apparently, not one of them.
Suddenly, I knew that I could not accomplish both goals. I had to choose. And I chose the writing.
And so, reluctantly and with a sad heart, I began to look again beyond its borders, spreading the word to editors at various newspapers that I was ready to leave the valley if anyone was interested in making me an offer. Within ten days, I was sent a plane ticket and hotel accommodations for a two-day interview with the Arizona Republic in Phoenix. Two months later, I had a lucrative offer, complete with moving expenses. More importantly, in hiring me as both a reporter and a columnist, those who hired me were challenging the rules of conventional journalism and allowing me to do what other newspapers had been reluctant to—maintain my own voice.
I remember the exact day that I accepted the offer. Standing in the shower, my mind wandered to all that I had endured over nine years—all the mistakes, all the tortured prose, all the rejection letters and collection notices and I felt proud, somehow, that I had found the strength and courage to keep the faith. Then, in a mixture of relief and pride and joy, tears streamed down my face. And I was overwhelmed.
Now I spend my days in a newsroom, surrounded by others who make their living wrestling with the written word. We have cell phones and pagers and expense accounts. My salary is five times what it was last year. I don’t have to teach anymore—my stints of “bus duty” are over. But I still lecture and host radio shows. And I’ll write more books.
But none of that is as satisfying as the knowledge that my parents are sleeping better these days, that they are proud of me again.
And even if success is the best revenge, it cannot be as sweet as the words that my father spoke one afternoon recently. We were back home, driving in the mountains near the spot where we’d gone fishing when I was a boy. We stopped at an old general store, where my father struck up a neighborly conversation with an old man stacking canned goods behind the counter.
“We just came up here for the afternoon,” my father said. “Thought we’d see how high the water was, maybe do some fishing later.
“That’s my boy there,” he said, pointing to me.
“He’s a writer.”
Ruben Navarrette Jr.