Jazz Owls_A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
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like a quiet neighborhood,
not a rooftop.
Illusions, just in case Los Angeles is seen
by enemy pilots who are trying
to bomb us.
Another illusion is the way we dress.
Women riveters wear men’s pants
or overalls, our hair covered up
by kerchiefs, our feet protected
by rugged boots.
None of that beauty-contest fantasy
ever mattered—we come to work each day
looking
like our brothers.
Life Changes a Little Bit More Every Day
Abuela
All the old ways are fading.
My own abuelita used herbs to cure fears,
brushing my skin with feathery branches
from a pirul pepper tree, then rubbing
my arms and legs with a cool
smooth
egg.
By the next day, any scary nightmare
from evil dreams would show up as a face
painted on the egg, hidden
under my bed,
where it couldn’t harm me.
Now, when I listen to that “Rosie the Riveter” song
on la radio, I remember our old ways of dancing
that had nothing to do with girls acting tough,
unless we were singing corridos
about women who fought in the Mexican
Revolution—so I tell Lorenita, Don’t worry,
it’s fine to be strong, bold, brave!
La zooterina
Lorena
It’s a decision I make all at once,
not slowly.
I don’t even need to go to a clothing store,
because Ray still has a zoot suit he hardly ever
wears, now that he’s so busy
studying,
studying,
studying.
This long, dark jacket is heavy,
the baggy black pants so floppy
that they might as well be a skirt.
Strutting into the factory
feels triumphant,
because I already know
that I’m a good worker,
well trained and efficient.
Even one tiny error could bring a plane
down, cause a crash, kill the pilot,
so my careful attention to detail
is essential.
Wearing a zoot suit on the job
shows what I think of the hypocritical
beauty contest.
My boss just glances at me
and shrugs.
I’m not the only mexicana
wearing drapes today.
We all agreed
that our brothers’ clothes
deserve respect
and courage.
We’re like the longtime zooterinas,
who adopted drapes years ago, just to show
that they’re
rebellious.
Transformed
Ray
When I see one of my sisters
going to work in my COOL suit,
and the other making ¡HUELGA!
STRIKE!
signs
to march
in a picket line,
I start to feel like maybe
the girls I dance with
during school vacations
might also suddenly change
in WEIRD new ways,
but I don’t really mind
because ¡watcha!
I’m CHANGING too.
Americanos All!
Nicolás
Segregated troops.
All the Mexicans were kept separate.
Yes, I resented it.
Then I was captured.
Prisoner of war.
Purple Heart.
Medal of Honor.
By the time I was found and freed,
Papá was already back here at home,
working as usual, all the rest of la familia
so proudly treating him
like an ordinary
everyday
hero
even though in Germany
he helped liberate starving people
from unbelievably cruel camps created
by unimaginably horrible levels
of arrogant racial
hatred.
Now the whole family sits here
by la radio, awaiting a verdict
for Perez v. Sharp, a California
Supreme Court test case
that will decide
whether a mexicana woman
can marry a black man.
It means everything to Marisela,
because if Pérez wins, then my lovestruck sister
will finally be able to marry the cubano musician
she met
during that wild
wartime
jazz craze.
He went away, but when he came back,
they started living together, and now . . .
I’m already far enough along
in my GI Bill–funded college classes
to be sure that the crazy old
anti-miscegenation law
is a clear violation
of the Fourteenth Amendment
to the United States Constitution,
which guarantees equal rights
for ALL, and that includes
intermarriage.
Man, it’s hard to believe
that something so simple
wasn’t already legal/legal—
one of those short, easy words
that looks exactly the same
in English and Spanish,
two languages that share
so many
Latin roots.
Pues, if I don’t make it through law school,
maybe Lorena will, because when she lost
her fighter plane manufacturing job
at the end of the war, she went back
to school, and now we’re both
on our way to changing
the way racially hateful people
are allowed to act, no matter
what they think.
Ray is still winning dance contests,
and Marisela says she’s finally ready
to give up her job as a union organizer
and stay home with her baby
while Manolito plays his music
at the Palladium, the Million Dollar,
and other Hollywood
dance halls.
Sometimes when I look at the dry gray streets
of Los Angeles, I wonder what it would have been like
to twirl and leap
during the jazz craze,
when I was far away
and my hometown’s
night sky
was a river
of music!
Author’s Note
As a Cuban American child growing up in the Mexican American community of northeast Los Angeles during the 1950s, I was aware of a nearby armory where just a few years earlier, navy recruits had launched horrific attacks against Mexican American teenagers. Generally known as the Zoot Suit Riots, the violence could more accurately be referred to as the Sailor Riots.
Jazz Owls is a work of historical fiction, but the major events and situations were real, including the roles of police and journalists. All the characters in this story are entirely imaginary, with the exception of José Díaz, whose murder at Sleepy Lagoon led to an era so bizarre that while I was writing, I had to keep reminding myself that, yes, history really can be weird enough to make facts nearly impossible to believe.
In 1944 the Sleepy Lagoon convictions were overturned, and all the condemned young men were released. In 1948 the United States military was desegregated, and California’s law against intermarriage was declared unconstitutional. During the 1960s, Mexican American leaders were at the forefront of Califor
nia’s nonviolent protests against the Vietnam War, as well as the movement that demanded fair treatment for agricultural workers. I think of those peaceful protesters as true heroes, whose profound courage was especially remarkable in the aftermath of such extremely violent racial oppression.
References
Escobedo, Elizabeth. From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
Mazón, Mauricio. The Zoot-Suit Riots. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984.
Pagán, Eduardo Obregón. Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. The Havana Habit. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
Ponce, Mary Helen. Hoyt Street. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.
Ruiz, Vicki L. Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.
Valdez, Luis. Zoot Suit, and Other Plays. Houston: Arte Público Press, 1992.
Acknowledgments
I thank God for nonviolent heroes.
I’m grateful to my wonderful agent, Michelle Humphrey, and my exquisite editor, Reka Simonsen, along with the whole incredibly supportive Atheneum/Simon & Schuster publishing team.
About the Author
Margarita Engle is the national Young People’s Poet Laureate, and the first Latino to receive that honor. She is the Cuban American author of many verse novels, including The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor winner; and The Lightning Dreamer, a PEN Literary Award for Young Adult Literature winner. Her verse memoir, Enchanted Air, received the Pura Belpré Award, a Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, and was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, among others. Her picture book Drum Dream Girl received the Charlotte Zolotow Award. Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother’s homeland during childhood summers with relatives. She continues to visit Cuba as often as she can. Visit her at margaritaengle.com.
Rudy Gutierrez teaches at the Pratt Institute. He received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators and was commissioned to do art for the acclaimed Santana Shaman CD cover. He has illustrated many celebrated picture books, including Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey; When I Get Older: The Story Behind “Wavin’ Flag”; Mamá and Me; Papá and Me; and Pelé, King of Soccer/Pelé, El rey del fútbol. Rudy lives in the New York City area. Visit him at rudygutierrez.net.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Margarita-Engle
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Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New York
ALSO BY MARGARITA ENGLE
Forest World
Aire encantado:
Dos culturas, dos alas: una memoria
Lion Island:
Cuba’s Warrior of Words
Enchanted Air:
Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir
Silver People:
Voices from the Panama Canal
The Lightning Dreamer:
Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist
The Wild Book
Hurricane Dancers:
The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck
The Firefly Letters:
A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba
Tropical Secrets:
Holocaust Refugees in Cuba
The Surrender Tree:
Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom
The Poet Slave of Cuba:
A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division • 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 • www.SimonandSchuster.com • This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. • Text copyright © 2018 by Margarita Engle • Jacket and interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Rudy Gutierrez • All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. • Atheneum is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Atheneum logo is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. • For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com. • The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. • Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover • The illustrations for this book were rendered in mixed media (acrylic paint, pencils and ink). • Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data • Names: Engle, Margarita, author. | Gutierrez, Rudy, illustrator. • Title: Jazz owls : a novel of the Zoot Suit Riots / Margarita Engle ; illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez. • Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, [2018] | Summary: In early 1940s Los Angeles, Mexican Americans Marisela and Lorena work in canneries all day then jitterbug with sailors all night with their zoot suit wearing younger brother, Ray, as escort until the night racial violence leads to murder. Includes historical note. | Includes bibliographical references. | • Identifiers: LCCN 2017024247 (print) | LCCN 2017038525 (ebook) • ISBN 9781534409439 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534409453 (eBook) | Subjects: LCSH: Zoot Suit Riots, Los Angeles, Calif., 1943—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Novels in verse. | Zoot Suit Riots, Los Angeles, Calif., 1943—Fiction. | Race relations—Fiction. | Dancing—Fiction. | Sailors—Fiction. | Mexican Americans—Fiction. | World War, 1939-1945—United States—Fiction. | Los Angeles (Calif.)—History—20th century—Fiction. • Classification: LCC PZ7.5.E54 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.5.E54 Jaz 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23 • LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024247