DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Chicano/Latino Native American Cultural Center 25th anniversary celebration, December 14, 1996 |

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Chicano/Latino Native American Cultural Center 25th anniversary celebration, December 14, 1996

that didn't laugh like Spanish.
Those hands clenched in the dark at
viboras, viboras hissing
we don't want you, you people have lice
as the school door slammed
but Tomas learned
and his hands began to hold books
gently, with affection. He searched
for stories about his people and finally
gave their words sound, wrote the books
he didn't, we didn't have.
And he graduated over and over
until one day he was chancellor Rivera
the famous Chicano, too needed,
his hands too full of us
to sit alone and write green stories
alive with voices, "fiesta of the living,"
pressing the present, pressing
like the hands reaching out to him
and he'd hug the small brown hands
his hands whispering his secret
learn, learn
his face a wink, teasing out their smiles,
a face all could rest in,
like the cherries he picked, dark
16

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that didn't laugh like Spanish. Those hands clenched in the dark at viboras, viboras hissing we don't want you, you people have lice as the school door slammed but Tomas learned and his hands began to hold books gently, with affection. He searched for stories about his people and finally gave their words sound, wrote the books he didn't, we didn't have. And he graduated over and over until one day he was chancellor Rivera the famous Chicano, too needed, his hands too full of us to sit alone and write green stories alive with voices, "fiesta of the living," pressing the present, pressing like the hands reaching out to him and he'd hug the small brown hands his hands whispering his secret learn, learn his face a wink, teasing out their smiles, a face all could rest in, like the cherries he picked, dark 16