1989, the year I turned 30, was another difficult one for me. Looking back, I realize now that I was still in mourning over my mom’s passing, and that it took a long time to get over it. I wasn’t happy living in Ann Arbor or working at the Undergraduate Library, but I also realized that I couldn’t go back home. Everything there had changed. I felt stuck in a job I wasn’t crazy about, and I had piles of bills to pay. I couldn’t just quit. To top it off, my best friend Richard’s wedding took place in mid-January, and I had to miss it because I had spent so much money traveling back and forth to Tucson the previous year. I just couldn’t afford it. It was a real bummer.

My job duties continued to consist of providing reference service, building collections and doing instruction. I was also given more responsibility for managing the PIC program and conducting training sessions for our reference assistants, but before I knew it, I got into trouble, as I continued to have disagreements with my supervisor. I felt that the only reason she wanted me to manage the PIC program was because I was the only minority staff person around to handle it, and I felt used. One day the head of the Undergraduate Library also got on my case. She took me to lunch, and before I knew it, she was tearing me a new one. She told me that I’d better get with the program or else. It was a warning that if I wasn’t more cooperative towards my supervisor, I’d be let go, and it made me very angry. I wanted out. I hated Michigan at that point. I felt that I was surrounded by a bunch of racist phonies who were full of themselves and who didn’t really give a damn about people of color, much less students.

Thank goodness my friend Barb Hoppe was around. I’ll never forget her kindness and generosity. She took me out on a long walk one day when I was very depressed to look for “signs of Spring” and then we later drove to Muskegon together, making a pit stop in Lansing and Michigan State University, where she went to school.  She showed me where she grew up in Muskegon and took me to Lake Michigan to see the lighthouse. She knew I was a mess, and she was very supportive at a time when I needed a friend. We’re still good friends to this day.

My mom’s death wasn’t the only thing that had me down. I really missed home. I missed the food, the culture, the mix of Spanish and English that was spoken around town,  the desert and my friends. Ann Arbor, while having been known in the past as a progressive community, was turning into Yuppieville, and I just didn’t fit in. Bookstores and head shops were rapidly being replaced by frozen yogurt shops, high end boutiques and expensive restaurants. My Mexican working class roots and my own beliefs about who I was made me feel very different and out of place. After I had graduated from college, from  around 1983 to 1986,  I felt like I was sitting on top of the world. I had a popular radio show and was an actor in a radical street theater group, and I was interested in what was going on in the world around me. I felt like my radio show and involvement with the Teatro helped me make a real contribution to the betterment of my community. My children’s librarian job also made me feel like I was making a difference. At Michigan, I just couldn’t find my niche. I had no creative outlets, nor did I feel any sense of community with others who wanted to make positive change in the world. All I had was Brent, and he and I were drifting apart.

Around the beginning of the year, I found a group of Latino graduate students who liked to drink and party, and I started hanging out with them. They were from various places around the country, including Texas, California and New York. We all attended the after party when Michigan won the NCAA basketball championships, and were present when the students started going crazy on South University Blvd., turning over vehicles and lighting fires in the street.  I was having a lot of fun, but was also paying a big price for it. My relationship with Brent deteriorated to the point that he ended up moving out of our apartment for a while.

I also developed a crush on a student who was part of the group of Latino students I had met. He wasn’t gay however, but I felt like he really liked me, so I just ended up spending lots of time with him, but frustrated most of the time, and feeling guilty because I was falling in love, and Brent and I were still attached. One day a friend of the guy I had the crush on showed up, and this guy was really bad news. He had gotten into trouble in Los Angeles, apparently, and was “in hiding” so to speak. He brought drugs with him and was soon having them delivered from California via Fedex on a regular basis. Before I knew it, I was having a really good time and spending a lot of money. There was snow everywhere, even in late May.  One night while we were all at my friend’s apartment drinking and getting crazy, I made the mistake of throwing a basketball at him, saying “Catch!”,  while he was taking a swig of beer. The basketball hit the bottom of the bottle of beer, and in turn the bottle broke my friends two front teeth. Boy, what a mess that all turned out to be. That was the low point of the year for me. I was in really bad shape. My friend ended up going back home to California to get his teeth repaired, and I ended up feeling like a royal idiot and wanting to die. I also had to help pay to get his teeth capped. The party was over, that’s for sure.

By the time the American Library Association Annual conference rolled around in late June, I was really ready to get the hell out of Dodge. The conference was held in Dallas, Texas, and it was spread out all over the place. It was hot and muggy too. I roomed with my friend Karen and her husband Stuart in a dumpy hotel off the beaten path. It was a nightmare. However, there were some very interesting things that happened. My friend from Library School, Richard DiRusso, was also there at the conference, and he had borrowed a big Cadillac convertible from one of his friends who lived there in Dallas. Richard took me with him to the gay pride festival and we drove around town for a while. That was a lot of fun. Another thing that happened was that I decided to check out the employment placement center at the conference to poke around for possible jobs. I looked like a bum, but didn’t care. I was just there to look around. As luck would have it, however, I ended up talking to the people from the Chicago Public Library and the Los Angeles Public Library. There were children’s librarian positions available at both library systems, and I was very excited about the possibility of finding another job and moving away from Ann Arbor, to Chicago especially.

There were another couple of memorable moments at the conference. While walking downtown, I stumbled on a place called the Shrine of St. Jude. I went in while mass was being said, and stayed a while. My mother was a strong believer in St. Jude, who is known as the patron saint of lost causes, and man, was I feeling like a lost cause. It made me feel much better just being there. I prayed real hard that day for guidance and help. Finally, on the night before I was to head back to Ann Arbor, I happened upon a street concert in an alley at the West End of downtown, and lo and behold the band that was playing was War, one of the funkiest R & B bands of the 70s. I had a great time. They played all their big hits like “Why Can’t We Be Friends’, “Low Rider” and “The World is A Ghetto”. All for free, too! I’ll never forget that night. Hearing that music made me feel right at home.

Shortly after I returned from ALA, I had lunch with the head of Library personnel, Lucy Cohen. She and I had been getting together periodically for lunch since I started in 1987. Our favorite place to go was Pizzeria Uno’s. That day at lunch, I told her about ALA and that I was excited about the possibility of getting a job in Chicago. She told me that she had grown up in Chicago and tried to discourage me. She stressed that Chicago was cold and crowded and expensive and that I would hate living there. She wanted me to stay at Michigan, and assured me that things would get better if I gave it more time. Bless her heart. I told her I’d think about it.

A few weeks later, I heard from Lucy again, and apparently she talked to Carla Stoffle, the assistant director, about having me join the Library Residency Program as a “staff resident”. Carla had been instrumental in recruiting me to Michigan in the first place, and was the driving force behind all of the Library’s efforts to diversify its staff and services. Carla and Lucy didn’t want to give up on me so quickly, and I was very touched by their determination to keep me. I officially joined the Residency Program in September, 1989. My friend Karen was a resident, and my new office mate Gene Alloway, was also in the program. The Residency Program was known for recruiting top notch, recently graduated library school students to Michigan. Students were hired in “cohorts” and worked in a variety of jobs while in the program, which normally lasted two years. The group had easy access to library administrators and met regularly with the Assistant Dean and others. Guest speakers were also brought in to give lectures and conduct seminars. By the end of their two year stay, most residents could get a job wherever they wanted, as the program had an outstanding reputation. I felt lucky to be a part of it, and enjoyed the collegiality that my cohort developed. I also enjoyed learning from some of the profession’s top leaders. Being a part of the program also got me out of the Undergraduate Library more often, and away from my immediate supervisor, who I was convinced was determined to get rid of me.

Things weren’t all bad this particular year. I enjoyed all the learning opportunities that came my way, from taking time management classes, to hearing amazing speakers like Michael Olivas and John Stockwell, to attending ALA and other conferences like the Michigan Hispanic Leadership conference.  I also started doing presentations and getting published, as well as creating exhibits. I enjoyed these activities, and over time they would increase as I became more comfortable in my role as a contributor to the library profession.

I also got to see Bob Dylan in concert twice, once with Tom Petty and then with the great guitarist, G.E. Smith. I also saw Judy Collins, kd lang, Joe Jackson and Buffy Sainte Marie. Ann Arbor was a hopping place when it came to live music, and it also had plenty of bookstores, both new and used, and lots of record stores. A lot of great albums and movies were released this particular year, and I continued building my record and book collections. I also saw a lot of classic Bette Davis movies, and had begun watching television shows like Are You Being Served? and the Tracy Ullman show.

By the end of the year, Brent and I were back together, and we spent Christmas with his family in Twin Lake. It was a nice way to end the year. Brent’s sister had just had a baby girl and there was snow (real snow) all around. Brent’s family was very nice to me, and I felt at home with them whenever we visited. Of course, we were all sad because Mr. Bates was gone and so was my mom, but we still had each other, and a new baby in the family, which helped brighten things up.

As the year came to an end, I couldn’t help but feel that things would get better. They did, at least for a while.

To see all of the materials that we used in this poster session, click here.