I like the word Latino.

It has nothing to do with politics. It has nothing to do with a cultural affirmation. It’s a word that I like.

I don’t like Hispanic. It makes me think of panic … His panic! What about a woman who is from Latin America running away in panic … is it Her panic? 

But Latino has a melody that reminds me of Nabokov and the novel Lolita: rolling the l’s and vowels out of your month: La-ti-no. The word comes closer to my heart: Latino brings to mind the verb “latir,” as in “mi corazon late,” my heart beats, pulses … Latino late … late … Latino… heartbeat… heartbeat.

Latino also allows me to admire a Latino woman, such as my wife, by going directly to the word without the need to convert it into an adjective: Latina woman. Latina is a woman, standing by herself, no need for additional nouns, no need for adjectives. With Hispanic, you need explanation, as Desi Arnaz used to say “a lot of splaining.” A Hispanic man, a Hispanic woman. 

Latino also allows me a choice. You see, Hispanic was imposed, the way I see it, anyhow. It is not a word in Spanish, it is an English word. I love English and the sound of it and the literature that is written in English. But I feel that Hispanic was thrown at me by the powers-that-be sometime ago. There are many histories of how the designation came to be and there are many sources on the topic, so I won’t go into it. But I think that it evolved as a way of tallying up folks from Latin America as the U.S. Census attempted to understand their presence in the early 20^th century. Thus, there is a touch of the government in there, a statistical approach which places all of us into the same hole. And Latinos do not want to be so easily categorized. Give us our nationality first – be it Mexicano, Cubano, Argentino, Puertorriqueño, Dominicano – and then maybe give us an umbrella term.

This umbrella term is important, though. I lost one friendship over the designation. This particular friend identifies so much with the term Hispanic that he despises the term Latino. To him, it is a ridiculous term that insults him. Therefore, my preference for Latino was an insult to him and he dropped our friendship (maybe it wasn’t much of a friendship, anyhow) over an argument. The point is that the term matters and is important.

Does it help the general community in dealing with a population that is from Latin America or whose ancestors are from Latin America? This is my recommendation: ask your friend, your neighbor, your students, which term to use: Hispanic or Latino/a.

As for me, you know my answer. Now, please, share with me your answer, let me know what you think.

D.H. Figueredo, author of  the Latino Chronology and the Encyclopedia of Caribbean Literature, among other titles, recently delivered the following keynote addess to the Joint REFORMA Northeast Mini-Conference at the Instituto Cervantes in New York City. 

It would be pretentious of me to speak of myself as a writer. I have been blessed that I have published 11 books, that reviewers actually review my books and study my words and sentences and come to intelligent conclusions about the value, or absence of value, of my literary and scholarly attempts. But I don’t think of myself as a writer: that terrain belongs to Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Hijuelos, Tomas Rivera, Phillip Roth. And I don’t think of myself as a scholar or a social observer: I lack the sensitivity so characteristic of Richard Rodriguez, who is both admired and despised; I don’t have the intellectual virtuosity of Nicolás Kanellos; I cannot approach the scholarly universe of an Umberto Ecco, of an Octavio Paz. I’m not a writer, an intellectual, a scholar; I am but a fortunate librarian who, like Desi Arnaz, stumbled onto words that, as if in a García Márquez novel, managed to assemble themselves into a panorama that sometimes makes sense and points readers to the fruits of far better writers.

I’m published, yes, and often say: I can’t believe that this happening to me. It is the same sentiment that I experience when I gaze upon my wife: I can’t believe this woman is married to me. In our youth, she could have been the inspiration for any of Shakespeare’s sonnets and here she was, this beauty that could outlast the beauty of a rose, being my phantom of delight. So it is with the fact that I have been published and when I gaze at some of my books, I’m astounded that my name is on the cover of the displayed volumes. I’m amazed because I feel that I know so little. There are people, according to Leo Tolstoy, who are made great by historical events or who are great because they make history. For me, I always think of Abbott and Costello, those comedians from the 1940s and 1950s, when Lou Costello, after giving Bud Abbott a lengthy explanation on a particular subject, would always end saying: “I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

But I do know about having fun researching and being a librarian and, like Lucy Ricardo, I do know about not giving up. And that is essentially what writing is all about. I always wanted to write. I guess I always wanted to feel that I would linger in the universe long after my earthly departure. My first fantasy of lingering was that of becoming a movie star, an infantile notion that took me through my teen years wanting to look like Errol Flynn, if in the U.S., or Jorge Negrete, if in Mexico. Fantasizing that I was a swashbuckler hunk transported me to the era of the musketeers, which was easily achieved when my family and I lived in the town of Gijón, Spain, a seaport resort next to a medieval village of narrow cobble-stone streets, gothic balconies, and wooden doors with knockers in the shape of animals and angels. Wondering through the alleys and streets of that town, called Cima de Villa, I was D’Artange, Don Juan Tenorio, Scaramouch, and Captain Blood, and in my head I crossed swords with the villain, who was darkly dressed, and leaped and pirouetted into the arms of Olivia de Havilland, of María Félix. The stories in my head became mental books and the narrative that took over my daily thinking possessed my daily life. I was in the world of stories, the world of books. I was already bound for the written page and the quiet halls of libraries.

But the sequence did not flow in the manner presented: Before my own written pages came the pages written by others, the pages of the books housed in people’s palaces: the libraries. Given to disappearing in the labyrinths of medieval Spain, it was natural for me to want to disappear in the sweet labyrinths of large libraries. As you know, since it all also happened to you, it was but a small step for me to enter the world of libraries.  

However, I was surprised: I did not disappear in the book stacks. For librarians do not disappear, if anything else they become – by design, by accident, by the need to survive –  prominent members of the community we serve. Love it or not, we’re mentors, we’re role models, we’re activists, we’re preservers of the past and creators of the future. We don’t get to read as many books as people think we read –  “You’re librarian? You must read a lot,” people often conclude – but we do get to shape a little the lives of many: young Richard Wright reading his first novel, Main Street, while in Memphis; Tomas Rivera and the librarian in Iowa who gives him a library card, transporting him out of the harsh world of tomato fields into the world of dinosaurs, conquerors, and the most effective conqueror of all, poetry.

The people I served, the patrons I worked with, the readers I helped, took me away from my dreams of writing, satisfying my need to see a book touch a heart: it wasn’t my book but it was my heart because I felt I was doing what was good. But then the writing began. Fiction at first, a feathery desire with which I struggle; non-fiction later, a more attainable desire because of the clarity of the mandate: to share with those who care my pride in Latino culture.

I began writing book descriptions for catalogues published by Lectorum Publications and Bilingual Publication: the wonderful Terry Mlawer and Linda Goodman, the former from Lectorum, the latter from Bilingual Publication, gave me piles of books to read and then I wrote my descriptions of the books. It became my training ground for writing for Booklist, after I contacted Earle Gladden, from Donnell Library, and submitted to him a bibliography on Cuban writers. From Booklist, I made my way to the Multicultural Review. That was the moment of change. The editor, Lyn Miller Lachman, who is now a dear family friend, introduced me to the publishers at Lee and Low Books, not too far from here, who published my first children’s book, When This World Was New, and three other titles. An article I wrote for the Multicultural Review on Cuban American literature brought me into contact with scholar Luis Martínez Fernández, now a dear friend, who was getting ready to work with Greenwood Press on the Encyclopedia of Cuba. He knew that I knew about Cuban literature and he felt that I could write. Thus, the world of libraries led me to the writing of book catalogues, which in turn took me to Booklist and the Multicultural Review, which brought about my contact with publishers, editors, and agents. It was the writer in me that made me a librarian. It is the librarian in me that pushes me to be a writer.

With the push and the good fortunes that I have had, there were some practical steps that I took and continue to take.  I will share the steps with you, suggestions that might be helpful. 

1. Don’t write Gone with the Wind.  It’s already been done.
2. Follow your passion.
3. Use your knowledge of sources and the community.
4. Does your passion address a need of a particular community?
5. Do aspects of your passion address a need, a vacuum, a neglected area?
6. What’s being written on your passion, on your subject, and from what perspectives?
7. Go to conferences, seminars, workshops on your passion.
8. Attend ALA exhibits, special conference exhibits.
9. Try out the idea on yourself: If it’s boring to you, it will be boring to others.
10. Try out the idea on a handful of people you know, but not your friends and relatives.
11. Once you have selected the area to research and write about, stop talking about it. 
12. Keep the desire to write about your passion within yourself: Ideas are fragile and can sometimes be killed by exposing them to the air.
13. Write an article on your passion.
14. Send the article, or articles, to journals: little journals, academic journals, local publications.
15. Show people you can do it; show people you can write.
16. Check out publishers and what they publish.
17. Once you’re dealing with publishers and editors, don’t fall in love with your passion. Be flexible about different approaches to the writing of your topic.
18. Tell yourself you’re not Hemingway, you’re not Virginia Woolf, and don’t fall in love with your writing. Be ready to make changes.
19. Your writing is not biblical, is not sacred. Accept suggestions and comments from editors.
20. Take the long view: It’s not going to happen tomorrow, it might happen next year or five years from now.
21. Accept rejections and don’t take them personally.
22. Read.
23. Take and keep notes.
24. Write, write, write.
25. Don’t give up.
26. If you can live without the passion, if you don’t go around fantasizing, if you have excuses not to follow your passion, then let it go.
27. But if you can’t let go it, then let your passion drive you.

Back to myself a bit. My passion drives me. I want to teach high school and undergraduate students about the history and accomplishments of Latinos in the United States. Why? There are so many Latino children who know so little of their heritage and are subjected to cultural neglect that sometimes they are ashamed of the land of their parents or grandparents and sometimes have such an overwhelming need to identify with the dominant features of the ruling society that they submerge their own cultural treasures, their own identity, even their own physique. We’re beyond the tragedy of The Bluest Eye, the novel by Toni Morrison, and yet there are people I have met who have undergone facial surgery to make their cheeks sharper and higher, to bring their noses closer to what they see as a more acceptable profile. That saddens me. Remember Rita Hayworth? That gorgeous Rita Cansino, of Spanish descent, went from brunette to strawberry blonde, from Cansino to Hayworth, to become cinematic legend. On the other hand, do you remember Selena? She accentuated her Latino voluptuousness and her Latino Tex-Mexican music to achieve fame. And Jennifer Lopez? A reporter once looked at her effervescent Latino anatomy and asked: “Is that all yours?” wondering if she had had surgery. To which Lopez proudly replied: “Todo Mio. Pero no para ti.” All mine but not for you.

Selena and Lopez, Junot Diaz and Sandra Cisneros. They make me smile.

And because of that smile, and because of my children, so that they can smile with pride when they think of their heritage, I will continue to pursue the glory of Latino history and culture and I will try to write about my parents and their parents and their stories. And hopefully, there will be publishers who will continue to think that I can write. And hopefully, one of my books will one day touch someone’s heart.

Thank you.

Greenwood’s Latino Chronology, written by Latino American Experience Advisory Board member D.H. Figueredo, has been named a New York Library Association Best Reference for 2007. The 170-page Chronology serves as the basis for LAE’s Timeline feature. Below librarian and scholar D.H. Figueredo shares his thoughts on receiving this prestigious award for the second time. (He previously was honored with the award for his contributions to the 2-volume Encyclopedia of Cuba, which is also part of LAE, a component of Greenwood’s American Mosaic database collection.)

When I was informed by my good editor, Mariah Gumpert, at Greenwood that my Latino Chronology had been selected by New York Public Library as one of the best reference books of 2007, I was humbled, honored, and once again found myself in the magic of circles. Here I was with a book that I was lucky to write, on a subject that defines me, linking me to an honor that emerges from an institution that served as an intellectual home for me for a handful of years.

The honor is given by the New York Public Library branches and in the mid-1980s I was part of that system. I was not in the branches but at the Research Libraries and, though now and then there are territorial conflicts between the branches and the Research Libraries, I always felt that I was part of one incredible world of knowledge: the research component, documenting the world for the future, and the circulation experience, giving out that knowledge to the world of today. While working at the Research Libraries as the Latin American bibliographer, I used the branches regularly. I visited the Mid-Manhattan Library and also worked at the Donnell Library, where my editor, since at the time I was contributing to the journal Booklist, was the legendary Earle Gladden. This was a man who believed in spreading out to Manhattan the best of the world’s literature in its original language: a multicultural affirmation, if ever there was one. It was Gladden who first accepted for publication my many bibliographies; in turn, these bibliographies brought certain recognition that in time led me to write for other journals and eventually into the writing and editing of books.

It was at the Research Libraries that I learned, more than in graduate school, how to truly conduct research: visiting people’s homes, interviewing famous and ordinary participants in historical events, tracking obscure editions of monographs, understanding the differences between monographs, series, reprints, and new editions. As part of my job at the Research Libraries, I attended the conferences of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Libraries. At these conferences I made friends who years later would guide me further in my research process and would introduce me to incredible collections in places like Princeton University and University of Miami. Furthermore, many of these new friends were Chicanos and experts on the history of Mexican-Americans in the United States, introducing me to such major political and social developments as the founding of LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens), a successful organization advocating for the rights of all Latinos, and the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 when American soldiers and sailors attacked anyone in Los Angeles who looked stereotypically Mexican. These colleagues reaffirmed for me that the evolution of this great nation was not seeded just in the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 but also in the establishment of the first permanent European settlement in San Agustín, Florida, in 1565, and that the settlement of the emerging nation took place, not just on the Northeast under British rule, but on the West Coast where Spanish and Mexican explorers founded such cities as El Paso del Norte, Texas, in 1581 and El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles in 1781.

Those formative years gave substance to my research and writing as well as to how I saw myself, and my children, within the panoramic canvas that is the United States. Yes, I was a recent arrival, reaching Manhattan in 1965, and my children were born in this country, in the once pastoral town of Piscataway, New Jersey, but we were and are one more link in a legacy that has added complexities, nuances, and beauty to history of the United States. My wife and I are defined and characterized by the history of our native country, Cuba – a dream of long ago – and my children are defined and characterized by that dream of long ago, that Cuba, and by the dream of what their lives will be in their home, the U.S. We are now part of that Latino chronology that gives shine to the mosaic we call America.

Thus, it makes sense, cyclical, circular sense that my chronology, which is a contribution to the American Mosaic suite of digital products created by Greenwood Press, is honored in the one city in the world that is a true mosaic.Yes, New York, New World.