on-writing-well

142 ON WRITING WELL
chagrin was accentuated by the fact that Pancho Villa s exploits
were a constant topic of conversation in our household. My
entire childhood seems to be shadowed by his presence. At
our dinner table, almost every night, we would listen to endlessly
repeated accounts of this battle, that stratagem, or some
great act of Robin Hood kindness by el centauro del norte. .. .
As if to deepen our sense of Villismo, my parents also
taught us "Adelita" and "Se llevaron el canon para Bachimba"
("They took the cannon to Bachimba"), the two most famous
songs of the Mexican revolution. Some twenty years later
(during my stint at Harvard Law School), while strolling
along the Charles River, I would find myself softly singing
"Se Llevaron el canon para Bachimba, para Bachimba, para
Bachimba" over and over again. That's all I could remember
of that poignant rebel song. Though I had been born there, I
had always regarded "Bachimba" as a fictitious, made-up,
Lewis Carroll kind of name. So that eight years ago, when I
first returned to Mexico, I was literally stunned when I came
to a crossroad south of Chihuahua and saw an old road
marker: "Bachimba 18km." Then it really exists—I shouted
inwardly—Bachimba is a real town! Swinging onto the narrow,
poorly paved road, I gunned the motor and sped toward
the town I'd been singing about since infancy.
For Maxine Hong Kingston, a daughter of Chinese immigrants
in Stockton, California, shyness and embarrassment were
central to the experience of being a child starting school in a
strange land. In this passage, aptly called "Finding a Voice,"
from her book The Woman Warrior, notice how vividly Kingston
recalls both facts and feelings from those traumatic early years
in America:
When I went to kindergarten and had to speak English for
the first time, I became silent. A dumbness—a shame—still