Homeland Security Ate My Speech
Page 15
“Homeland Security Ate My Speech” has been drastically rewritten and updated from a version first published in the 2006 edition of Profession, the Journal of the Modern Language Association, under the title “The Lost Speech.”
“Alice in Leftland: Will You, Won’t You Dance?” was commissioned by The Nation for its 150th Anniversary Issue, and published on April 6, 2015 by that magazine with the title “Separated at Birth.”
“They’re Watching Us: So What?” has been substantially revised from its original version published in Guernica on February 3, 2014, titled “Repression By Any Other Name.”
“How We Overcame Tyranny Before: Take Heart, Friends” was originally published in The New York Times on February 11, 2017.
“The Whispering Leaves of the Hiroshima Gingko Leaves” was originally published in The New York Times on August 5, 2017.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In times of trouble and defeat, we must always be wary of succumbing to a feeling of hopelessness. I have not been immune from the easy enticement of that feeling but also have fortunately had by my side, when things seemed most dismal, the luminous company of those who have saved me from the temptation of despair.
This book would not be possible without that company, the many others who contributed in one way or another so that I did not need to face in solitude the demons inside and outside my life.
None of these pieces would have been published in their current form if not for the attentive, painstaking, re-reading and improving, in English and in Spanish, of multiple drafts, by Angélica, my partner in life and literature, to whom this collection, as everything else I write, is dedicated.
Our friend, my assistant, Suzan Senerchia, provided indispensable support, finding books and articles that helped me compose these comments, which range widely—and often wildly—over an array of materials and interests.
My agents for this volume, Jacqueline Ko and Anna Wood, helped steer it to the right port. They also worked tirelessly, with others at the Wylie Agency, to place the pieces originally in a variety of outlets.
I cannot mention all the editors at each of those venues, but I would like to particularly recognize some of them: Tom Engelhardt at Tomdispatch, Matt Seaton at The New York Times op ed page; Parul Sehgal and Gal Beckerman, at The New York Times Book Review; Roane Carey and Don Guttenplan at The Nation; Cherry Gee and Susan Brenneman at The Los Angeles Times op ed page; Pat Wiedenkeller at the opinion section of CNN; diverse editors at Guernica, Time, The Atlantic, the BBC, and Salon; and, of course, my editors in Spanish, Ernesto Tieffenberg (Página Doce), Rafael Rodríguez Castañeda (Proceso), and José Andrés Rojo Ramírez (El País).
To my new friends at OR Books, who decided to risk bringing out these writings at an uncertain moment of political crisis and instability, my thanks particularly to John Oakes and Colin Robinson for their belief in my work and its relevance.
Finally, there is the family, those who afford Angélica and me sustenance in a variety of caring ways: Rodrigo, Isabella and Catalina; Joaquín and Cece; Pedro, Ana Maria, and Patricio; Nathalie and Ryan; Heather and her two daughters Kayleigh and Emmy and her parents Sharon and Kirby. And my gratitude as well to friends, too numerous to list here, some so close that we feel them to be family.
Without all of you, I would have been far lonelier in my struggle against the toxic mixture of hatred, ignorance, and prejudice that contaminates us all, and in my ongoing attempts to make sense of what is worst in our species and basest in an America that must indeed be exorcised by its most radiant citizens, like so many loved ones near me, if we are to survive.
1 Many years after we wrote the BBC film, which received the 1995 Writers Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Television Screenplay, The Railway Man, a movie starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman based on the same autobiographical material, was shown on many screens. There is no relationship between that movie and our television biopic.
2 Delivered in Johannesburg on July 31st, 2010. Celebrated each year by the Mandela Foundation to honor Mandela’s birthday. I was the first Latin American and the first writer to be invited to speak on this occasion.
3 The speech in question was part of a plenary session of the Modern Language Association (MLA). I do not feel comfortable, for reasons that will soon become obvious, disclosing the date or location of that speech, which was addressed to the President of the MLA who had invited me to be one of the four panelists.
4 A considerably different version of this essay was first published in The Nation magazine as part of the issue/book that commemorated that journal’s 150th anniversary.