Reading Performance Objective #2: Recognize, analyze and evaluate an author’s use of literary elements such as mood, tone, theme, point of view, diction, dialog and figurative language (e.g., metaphors, allusions, symbolism, similes) in selections of challenging fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

        His name was Mariano Tafolla. It was his grandfather’s name, my father’s name and my father’s oldest brother’s name. Searching through Santa Fe archives a few years ago, I found his grandfather’s signature. It was almost a duplicate of my father’s. I keep the name Tafolla, although my signature, perhaps even my personality, is far different. Perhaps it has something to do with words. With finding your place in the world in the old Mexican funerals, by internal guide, by intuition. This is who I am.
         I have always considered my life one of great fortune, and the south-side barrio of San Antonio, Texas, was one of these points of fortune. It was a place rich in story and magic, warmth and wisdom. So magic it was even the police would not come there, despite calls and complaints, unless they came in twos and with their car doors locked. We all played baseball in the streets, shot off firecrackers on the fourth of July, and raised our Easter chicks to fully grown chickens.
        Years later, when I would hear about slums and ghettos, cultural deprivation, and poverty-warped childhood’s, I made no identification in my mind with these. In my own family’s point of view, we were wealthy. We had no deprivation of cultural experiences, but rather a double dose of cultura. Yes, when my cousins from "up north" would come to visit, they would seem to have so many more facts at hand, seem to know so much and do so much in their schools. Our school had no interscholastic activities, no spelling bees or science fairs, no playground equipment, not even a fence.
         The main thing our schools tried to teach us was not to speak Spanish. So the main thing we learned was not to speak Spanish in front of our teachers, and not to lose Spanish within ourselves. Perhaps that is why so many good, independent, and critical minds dropped out of school. We learned - oh, did we learn - but it was not what the school district had planned for us to learn. It was much bigger than that.
         We became filled with hunger. I call it now, sometimes, Latino Hunger. A hunger to see ourselves, or families and friends, our values and lives and realities reflected in something other than our own minds. We wanted proof that we really existed - a proof documented in those many schoolbooks filled with Toms and Susans, and Dicks and Janes - but no Chuys or Guadalupes, no Juanas or Adalbertos, no Santos or Esperanzas. And we definitely needed Esperanzas if we were to dream of anything at all beyond the Spanish. There was a hunger and a place in our lives that needed to be filled with Esperanzas and Milagros.