Autobiography of a Pacoima Childhood Focuses on Happiness

Mary Helen Ponce’s book “Hoyt Street, an Autobiography,” recently published by University of New Mexico Press, is a collection of stories about growing up on Hoyt Street in Pacoima in the 1940s, not as a sociological phenomenon, but as a normal American family that happened to be Mexican-American and spoke both Spanish and English. A graduate of San Fernando High School and Cal State Northridge, Ponce now teaches Chicano studies and creative writing at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. Ponce spoke with Times staff writer Julio Moran about Chicano literature and of her memories of Pacoima.

Question: Where is Hoyt Street?

Answer: Hoyt is the first street south of Van Nuys Boulevard. We lived near Pacoima Elementary School.

Q. Isn’t that where the San Fernando Valley Gardens housing project is now?

A. Yes. They knocked our house down. It’s so sad. I cried a lot. I had forgotten that it had disappeared. At that time, nobody knew that we could fight City Hall. I remember that our parish priest, at a girls’ club meeting, said, “Oh, it’s not such a bad thing that they are going to knock down those homes to build the projects, because we might get a better class of people.” I remember thinking, is this the priest I love?

A. What was San Fernando like at that time?

Q. They were upwardly mobile in San Fernando. All of my friends from San Fernando had better homes and everything. It was like a Beverly Hills.

A. Did you know that you were poor when you were growing up?

Q. No. I never did. Not until I went to high school did my world change. I had food, I had church clothes, I had an Easter bonnet. I was too busy being happy to realize that I was poor. I was constantly doing things. Not until high school did I start thinking about things around me. But I don’t remember ever wishing that I lived somewhere else.

Q. What were your ambitions, your goals, when you were growing up?

A. Ambitions? Goals? We were programmed into home economics classes and typing. The whole mentality was that you’re going to get married anyway, you just need to learn to change diapers. Really, even the teachers, everybody.

I grew up never knowing that I could be a writer. Even today, I have no role models, except my sisters.

Q. So what motivated you to go to school and become a writer?

A. The Chicano movement in the early 1970s. If there hadn’t been a Chicano movement, there never would have been Chicano literature, and I might never have published. I was already married and had children. But I was always reading. My son had just started first grade when I started at Cal State Northridge (in 1974).

Q. What did your husband think of your going to college?

A. He thought it was just something that I would get out of my system. But when I found myself in college, it was like my natural habitat. It was wonderful. I read all my books the first week.

Q. Where did you got your passion for reading?

A. From my father and my sisters. My older sister subscribed to the Book-of-the-Month Club. I would read all her books. And newspapers were very important to my father. He probably had a fourth-grade education, but he was highly intelligent. He would drive all the way into San Fernando to get his La Opinion.

When I was a little girl, probably about 8, I would translate letters and newspapers and write letters for the old ladies.

Q. A critic who favorably reviewed your book noted that the voices of many Latino writers are being muted by being consigned to literary ghettos, often ignored by mainstream presses. Do you agree?

A. Yes, I agree. I just think that they just haven’t been all that receptive to ethnic-American literature. Of course, it seems it’s in right now. I just hope it’s not a fad.

Q. Do you categorize your book as Chicano literature?

A. I think it will go beyond that because it’s an autobiography, it’s American history.

Q. And the ethnicity in the book is . . . .

A. . . . secondary. And it should be.

Q. Your book reads like a novel. Why not just write a novel based on your real life?

A. I never really thought of calling it a novel because of the importance of autobiography, particularly for Chicanos. In the old days only important people wrote autobiographies. But things are changing. Everybody has a story to tell and they should feel comfortable telling them.

Q. In your book, there is no stereotypical drunken father who beat his wife and kids. It seems to be a normal, everyday family.

A. I didn’t want to write about my family, just about the community. But it ended up being more about my family. No. There isn’t any real dysfunction, but there was a lot of sibling rivalry. I think people are tired of the stereotypical stuff. I hope it’s not just a trend. I think that my experience was very average, but we just don’t hear about it, which makes it unique.

Q. Do you hope to become a role model with your book?

A. I never wanted to be a role model, but I think I can’t escape it, especially in teaching. Plus writers influence each other, whether we admit it or not.

Q. There seems to be a flurry of works being published by Latinas. Do you think that women can better tell stories of the Latino experience?

A. I think woman tend to lay it all out, emotions and everything. Maybe it makes for better literature. It’s more honest. Maybe men are still scared. Men can’t seem to handle sexuality like women can. Men all sound like Hemingway in the 1950s.

Q. Are you seeing that in your creative writing classes?

A. It’s interesting. In one class, all the men wrote of adventure, of conquest, and all the woman wrote of pain and alienation. There’s a big difference.

Q. You mix in a lot of Spanish words and phrases in your writing .

A. Oh, yes, although every time I use Spanish, I put it in context or explain it in English, only because they are a mainstream press. But when people say to me, “Don’t you think you’re cheating your audience,” my response is let the reader work a little bit. Let him get a dictionary or ask. Didn’t Tolstoy and other writers write in French? Either you skipped it or you guessed. Actually what I have told people is that I don’t apologize for using Spanish. Until “Shogun,” I never understood that so many Americans knew Japanese. So if you know Japanese enough to follow “Shogun,” you can follow my book.

Plus that was how we talked at home. Nobody thought about losing the language. It was just a combined language. Spanish was always there. It was like a metaphor for home. But English was very exciting, and it opened new worlds for me through books. Spanish was the language of love and home.

Q. How are things different now for young Chicanas from when you were growing up?

A. Well, they have more choices. Mejicanos are very patriarchal. We didn’t have very many options, things were very restrictive. My generation never reached its potential . . . we just didn’t have access to things.

Q. Were times better or worse in the good old days?

A. I can’t say. Things weren’t all that good in the good old days when I look back now. But when I was growing up, I didn’t see it. Maybe it was my innocence. Maybe I didn’t see the poverty around me. Maybe I didn’t see all the battered women.

Q. What do you hope young Chicanos will get out of your book?

A. Maybe they will see that it wasn’t so bad being Chicano at that time. That parents have always loved their children. That parents did the best they could with what they had. Amid all the poverty, we were happy. Maybe we created our own fun.

Q. Hoyt Street is about your childhood from the age of 8 to 13. Will there be a sequel?

A. No, I’m not that dumb. I’m leaving it off at innocence. I do want to write a book about young Chicanos in the 1930s. I don’t want to write about myself, I’m the instrument to write. I also want to write a love story.

Q. Your father died in 1982. Do you think he would have been happy with your book?

A. Yes. I remember I once bought a book for my father with 100 of Mexico’s greatest authors, and he told me, “A ver si un dia tu escribes. “ (Let’s see if one day you write.) My stepmother said to me one day that my father had told her, “Mi hija va ser una escritora .” (My daughter is going to be a writer.) I think he sensed it. I think he would have been very proud. Yes, I think he would have been proud.