READING L.A.

I never met Maclovia Vargas Haviland, but I was told that one of her last requests was to be featured in Reading L.A. Last Sunday, her wish came true, but I’m not sure whether she knew it or not. She had died four days earlier, succumbing to cancer. She was 79.

“I grew up in East L.A.,” a daughter passed her words on to me, “and my name was always a challenge to my teachers. I never understood why. Then I read ‘My Name’ in Sandra Cisneros’ ‘The House on Mango Street,’ and I knew I wasn’t alone. It described my life: being brown in a culture that doesn’t accept you.”

Since Reading L.A. made its debut in January, Book Review has featured more than 150 readers and their eclectic tastes. The purpose of this column is simple: to reflect the opinions of readers throughout Southern California. The message, we hope, is clear: Whether you are a carpenter, student, actor or attorney, you need not possess a doctorate to be a citizen in good standing in the republic of letters. What counts is a passion for books and the conviction that literacy matters.

At first glance, Maclovia was no different from our other participants. An enthusiastic reader all her life, she wanted to share her passion for Cisneros’ book. Yet as I drove to her home in San Pedro to pick up her photograph (such is the nature of a last-minute request), I realized that these were her final words to this city and its culture.

Maclovia Vargas grew up in Boyle Heights in the 1920s. The community, lying in the shadow of City Hall, was remarkably diverse, making quick neighbors of its new arrivals: Russians, Serbians, Mexicans and Jews. Although the Vargases came from El Paso, Texas, they were considered Mexican and, as a young girl, Maclovia quickly learned what that meant. A doctor once reminded her to scrub her elbows. “But that’s the color of my skin,” she told him. The public pool in Montebello was open to her only on Wednesday mornings, before it was cleaned in the afternoon.

Her teachers were either unwilling or unable to pronounce her name. “Macedonia” and “Magnolia” became the most common slights, sources of early shame and embarrassment and eventually part of the family history and lore. (Maclovia, to save her own children similar embarrassment, named them Susan, Jane and Jimmy.)

“The House on Mango Street” was first published in 1984. By then, Maclovia’s life had become shadowed by denial, a lifelong effort to show those teachers that by becoming educated, working hard, even marrying her love, a white man from New York City, she could somehow become less Mexican. Then she discovered this poetic collection of vignettes, describing a Latino life. “At school,” writes Cisneros early on, “they say my name funny, as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver. . . .” And suddenly the tables turned for Maclovia, who was named for her aunt and for relatives who once long ago lived in Spain. She learned something that even a lifetime of generosity and caring for her community could not have taught her. She learned that just because the world was deaf to her music, it didn’t mean she was unimportant.

Every book is a dialogue. Inside its pages lies an endless conversation between reader and writer that can take on sometimes surprising proportions. Reading L.A. hopes to mirror that exchange: the agreements, disagreements and, at its best, a book’s magical ability to prove and affirm that we are not alone in our lives, and maybe, even in the cosmos. While this may seem commonplace, it bears repeating. Think only of Maclovia. Think of the shame deep secrets harbor; think of the lives those secrets twist. Think of the silence a writer’s courage breaks and the strength it gives in return.

When I arrived at Maclovia’s home, night was falling. The ocean and sky had turned a deep blue, cut by a band of red, orange and yellow. Her daughters invited me in; their mom was asleep, heavily medicated. From her bedroom, I could hear Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

When I opened the envelope with her picture, I saw a stunning woman with an easy smile, a shock of gray hair and deep brown skin. I saw her confidence, pride and composure, and I wondered if this is how I’d want to be remembered by people who will never know me, a culture that didn’t accept me. As I was driving away, I imagined what she might have said to me.

“You may not think that I am important. I am. You may even dismiss me by mispronouncing my name and think it incidental. It’s not. I now know you better than you know yourself. And what I know, I learned from reading.”