>> Carmen Agra Deedy: Hi
I'm Carmen Agra Deedy,
Cuban American storyteller
and author
of books for young leaders.
And the American Folklife
Center at the Library
of Congress has invited me to
be part of their 2020 Homegrown
at Home Concert Series, at home.
So instead of being
in Washington DC,
I'm coming to you today
from my home in Georgia.
Now the American Folklife
Center will continue
to release a new
video every Wednesday
at noon East Coast time
from now until September 30.
And each artist will be
live in the chat section
to answer questions; so be
sure to stop in and say hi.
After the videos are released
you can still access them
on the Library's website
or You Tube channel.
See you there.
My father learned to read
when he was 14 years old.
And that's the story I
want to tell you today.
But before I tell it to you I'd
like to introduce you to the man
by way of a little vignette.
Now this happened
some 20 years ago.
I stopped in their
house - and I stopped
at their house on a whim.
I was working nearby and
they lived in Austell,
Georgia a good 45 minutes
from my house then in Tucker.
It was a little clapboard house
and they were both retired.
And I was happy to see them.
I was hoping they'd
be happy to see me,
and of course I was also hoping
to cash in on a good Cuban meal
because my mother
was a fabulous cook.
Well, that screen door is still
slamming and I have just walked
into the kitchen when
my mother comes at me
with the full force
of a Cuban hurricane.
[ Foreign language ]
>> You have to do something.
I said, "Hello to you too Ma."
[ Foreign language ]
>> Your father - I
thought oh no, no, no, no.
No matter what age you are you
do not want to be in the middle
of their business when your
parents have a disagreement.
Whatever it is I don't -
"Carmen", she interrupts me.
[ Foreign language ]
>> He has lost his mind.
And I hear a syncopated ticky
tick, ticky tick, tap, tap,
tap of my father's Remington
typewriter a couple rooms away.
And I said all right,
now I'm intrigued.
Let me go see what's up.
[ Foreign language ]
>> You will see.
I disappear down the
hall and I find my father
in the bedroom and
what is he doing?
He is sitting at his desk
in front of his typewriter.
The Webster's Dictionary at
his right, open about a fifth
of the way and the man is
transcribing the dictionary.
I said, "Papi what
are you doing?"
"What does it look
like I am doing?"
He keeps tapping.
"Papi it looks" and I
look over his shoulder
and that's exactly
what he's doing.
"It looks like you are
copying the dictionary."
"Yes." "Ma thinks
you've lost your mind."
He starts to laugh.
He swivels on his chair,
looks at me and he says,
"Carmen I want to
learn English."
I said, "You speak English Pop."
"No, no, no, no, no I want to
learn to speak English well.
And you cannot learn a language
if you do not have good
vaculario, vocabulary.
And how a better way,
eh, how better way?
How better way to
learn a language
than to transcribe
the dictionary."
Oh my stars.
"Pop this is going
to take you ages."
"I know, what else
do I have to do?"
And it has the added
bonus, he swivels back
and starts to tap again.
And he says over his shoulder,
"I'm making your mother insane."
When he says that
he starts to laugh,
and his little shoulders
start to dance up and down.
Of course I start to laugh
at which point we hear
from the kitchen,
"I can hear you.
I can hear you both, okay?"
My father wasn't just a writer,
because besides transcribing the
dictionary, which has become one
of the signature stories
of my father's life,
among the children,
grandchildren.
They just love that story.
They knew that my father was
just a man with a curious mind.
He loved not only
dictionaries, he loved Atlas's
and he loved encyclopedias.
He was a reader.
But more than that he was
someone who loved to learn.
He wasn't always this way.
Before he became a writer,
he was never published.
He did it or the pure
joy of the thing.
But first, first he
had to be a reader.
And that's the story I'm
going to tell you now.
My Cuban father, Carlos
Agra was born in 1924,
during the Nasan years
of the Cuban Depression.
During those years
he lived on a farm
with my grandmother
and his siblings.
And those were treacherous
times.
People lived, he said on
the edge of a scalpel.
Starvation was a
real possibility.
My grandmother was just able
to keep one meal on the table
for all those children.
And when my father was
six, which would have been
around 1930 she sent
him to school
as his siblings had
gone to school.
However, Papi said the
mind numbing days and -
and the stinging yardstick
were not his cup of -
as he put it, café collage.
And so one day he
emancipated himself.
This newly liberated six year
old stopped going to school,
but of course did
not tell my Abuela,
my grandmother, his mother.
In fact, every morning he - she
would take a little kerchief
and she would wrap up a little
bit of Cuban bread or a croqueta
or a little empanada
and he would tool off
to school, down the dirt road.
She would watch him go around
the end then he would run off
into La Silva, the Cuban jungle.
He said that his
days were marvelous.
And those of you listening to
this, to this littler recording
who perhaps for maybe it
was just sheer happenstance,
maybe it was luck.
But you have actually sipped
from the cup of a
feral childhood.
You know what joy was his.
Because all he did was play.
Play all day long and
he was mischievous.
He said he would
chase guinea hens.
He would raid mango groves
in other people's farms.
When he was exhausted
at the end of the day,
he would go down to
el Rio, the River.
The place he could
always find solace.
And there this six year old
would strip naked in the sun,
go diving into the water,
swim until he was worn out
and then he would crawl up the
banks and lie on the flat rocks
as he put it, [foreign language]
like a lizard in the sun.
And often fall asleep.
But he said inevitably or nearly
always anyway he would wake
up right about the time
the school was out.
And on his way home he
would stop and crouch
by the road near
the school house.
Take from his pockets
little river rocks
that he had collected
during his swim and wait
for his erstwhile teacher
to come down the road
as he made his way into
Floreda, the little town
where my father was from
to the boarding house.
And my father would pelt this
man with pebbles and rocks.
Well you know be sure your
sibs will find you out.
Because my father's hooliganism
and chronic truancy
eventually came to the attention
of my Abuela, my
Grandmother Ophelia.
And when she spoke to him
she broke no argument.
[ Foreign language ]
>> You go to school or [foreign
language] or you work here.
[ Foreign language ]
>> I don't care that
you're six years old.
You have a choice.
What six year old
would choose school?
Especially a school he
had not enjoyed to being
on the farm and working?
And he was the baby.
No one made him work
for - we said for years.
He just followed his
siblings around or -
and he followed his mother
around and he did one small task
or another but the years passed.
And by the time he
was 14 his list
of chores had grown quite long.
But he didn't seem to
mind most of them if -
if his stories are
to be believed.
He said there was only one
job he loathed with a deep
and abiding antipathy.
And that was this one job.
That was getting up in
the morning with the sun -
before the sun had come up.
My Abuela would give him some
café collage, a little coffee
with milk and a little
sugar to fortify him.
And then this was the part that
he really, really despised.
Not the getting up in
the morning in the dark,
not the long walk
over a kilometer
into Floreda, into
the little town.
No, it was the task.
See what he was to do
every morning was walk
into the bakery [foreign
language] in that little town
of Floreda and buy the
families bread for the day.
Cuban bread is a
staple of Cuban life.
Why did he hate it?
Because the bakery
was run by Antonio.
An evidently this
ill-tempered man would just
as soon curse you
as look at you.
And my father was
terrified of him.
And this irascible baker was
also the only place to get bread
because it was the only bakery.
Papi said he would wait outside
until he saw a few
other people arrive.
And then he would sort
of join a smallish crowd.
Slip his coin onto
the wooden counter,
wait until he saw a loaf of
bread, snatch it and run home.
Until the next day
when he had to go
through this all over again.
But then one day
a chance encounter
with a [foreign language]
that's Prince Valiant was
to change the trajectory
of my father's lie.
Papi was late.
He'd overslept and so he was
late arriving at the bakery.
And when he got there the
last person walked out
and he was left alone
with Antonio.
But Antonio didn't notice him.
The man had just
opened up the newspaper
across the wooden counter.
And Papi saw a look on his
face that was so extraordinary
in the fact that it was
so unlikely, so unusual.
The man was good it be?
Well the corners of his mouth
Papi said were inching towards
his earlobes.
He was bearing his teeth
and as my father put it,
it would be criminal to call it
a smile, but it must have been.
Because then the man laughed.
And my father had never
heard that sound come
from this particular human.
And I don't know what
my father did or said,
but Antonio noticed him then.
Maybe Papi gasped.
[ Foreign language ]
>> Seemingly congenial
for the first time ever.
Antonio called my father over.
He took the newspaper.
He turned it around so
Papi could look at it
and as my father, my young
slender, 14 year old father -
14 year old illiterate father
looked down at the paper.
He couldn't make heads or tails
of any of the language he -
the words, the letters
to him looked
like chicken scratching's
he said.
But he saw something that
absolutely grabbed his attention
and raptured him in an instant.
Comics. He'd never seen it.
This was newly syndicated.
These comics had come
from the US to Havana
and now they had been syndicated
to small papers throughout
the island.
And my father looked down
at [foreign language]
Prince Valiant.
He had no idea what
he was looking at.
It was a big box.
And in the box it
was smaller sections.
And inside of those were
renderings - were drawings.
But there were women and men
doing things he'd never -
he'd never seen,
medieval jousting.
At one point in the drawing
it was a man being dipped
into a well and everyone
was laughing.
Whatever it was Antonio must
have thought was hilarious.
Because he said -
[ Foreign language ]
>> Did you see how hysterical?
Well do you think my father
was going to tell Antonio
that he couldn't read?
Instead he excused himself
saying "Yes is great,
but mi Madre, my mother
is waiting for me.
I have to run."
He handed over his coin.
He grabbed his bread
and he was gone.
But Papi said that that
night those images made
of his brain a kerosene fire.
He could not extract meaning
no matter how hard he tried.
Of course he had no
cultural reference
and he couldn't read the
words, he couldn't decode
and he made a decision.
That boy made a decision the
next morning to get up early.
And he entered the bakery
while Antonio was just laying
out the days bread,
before anyone arrived.
And he approached him evidently
with fear and trepidation.
He approached Antonio and said -
[ Foreign language ]
>> Excuse me.
Antonio looked at him and said,
"Momento, no, no per favor,
please would you read the
funny pictures to me?"
He said Antonio cast him a
strange glance as if to say
such a big boy, you can't read.
But when the glance went
unanswered Antonio shrugged
and said, "Of course."
This contrary man, the last
thing my father expected was
for him to agree.
And they started that day, he
read him the new comic strip.
And so these trysts became a
morning thing every morning my
father would arrive early,
Antonio would read
him [foreign language]
and my father would
buy his bread.
He said sometimes the
man was in an ill humor
and sometimes he was more
pleasant, but he kept his word.
And that would be
the end of the story.
Those trysts would have
gone on for a while
or they would have ended one
party or the other giving
in to boredom or discontent.
Those of you that have
had trysts know what I'm
talking about.
But that's not what happened
because real stories always have
that unexpected dog leg turn.
You see my father arrived one
morning [foreign language]
and from a distance he could see
the smoke, tendrils of it coming
out of the windows,
the front door.
And other shop keepers
had gathered
around outside and inside.
Now everyone had helped,
the fire had been put out.
It was a wood burning stove.
And there was not that
much damage, but the bread,
the days bread was ruined.
Now this is during
the Depression.
And Antonio was in
a blistering fury.
So when my father walked
in, about to offer to help -
to help clean up,
whatever he needed.
Antonio saw him and true to his
nature, the man saw my father
and what he saw there
was collateral damage.
My father became I should
say collateral damage.
Antonio said -
[ Foreign language ]
>> What are you doing here boy?
[Foreign language] Do you think
I'm going to read to you today?
[Foreign language] Have
you not seen the tragedy
that has fallen on my head?
[Foreign language] And
anyway, why can't you read,
such a big boy like you?
All of this was said
in the presence
of my father's friends
and neighbors.
And so my father said he backed
away first through the crowd.
And the crowd obligingly
opened, people looked
at the floor as he passed.
He turned around
and then he ran.
He ran out of that village.
He ran to el Rio, the River -
you know that place he
could always find comfort,
find solace.
He didn't swim though.
He found himself on those
rocks and he sobbed.
I don't think there's anything
more - more heart rending
than a 14 year old boy racked
with grief and with shame.
You see he was too ashamed
to go back to the bakery
to get the bread, too ashamed to
go home to his mother, my Abuela
and tell her what had happened.
Too ashamed to even
tell his friends.
But time passed.
He wiped his tears.
And shame, like milk left
out in the sun will curdle.
In the case of shame becomes
rage if it's left unattended.
And it must have been a very
angry boy who walked the edges
of the river picking up
little vengeful river rocks.
He filled his pockets with them.
By the time he made it back
to [Foreign language]
the bakery in Floreda.
It was time for siesta.
It was quiet in the streets
and even quieter in the bakery.
No one was there but Antonio.
Antonio who had been at work
and now was fast asleep.
Behind him on the shelves was
row upon row of freshly backed
and fragrant Cuban bread.
You could smell it even
when you walked in.
More pungent than that leftover
acrid smell of the burnt bread.
Below the shelves in a
chair Antonio snored softly,
his chin resting
on his clavicle.
My father said he eyed him
and then he took a few
steps across the floor.
And then one of those
boards betrayed him, creek.
Antonio was up in a flash.
He was up and he shook his whole
body from his head all the way
down to his feet as if
he was having a seizure.
Suddenly completely awake
he looked at my father.
His eyes bored into him like
two augers and he said -
[ Foreign language ]
>> And why can't you read?
As if the conversation had
never been interrupted.
My father was too
stunned to speak.
But he held his ground.
And he put his hands
in his pockets again,
and he wrapped them
around those rocks.
Antonio came closer and he said,
"Didn't your mother
send you to school?"
My father looked
at him, "She tried,
and leave my mother out of it."
And there they were
starting at one another.
And Antonio said in not a
particularly friendly fashion
mind you either.
"Do you want to learn?"
My father looked at him and
said, "Not if it's going
to turn me into an
angry jackass like you."
And Antonio threw his head back
and Papi said the
man began to laugh.
And when he laughed he
brayed like a donkey.
It - he must have laughed my
father said for a full minute.
At last he looked at my father
and shook his head
and said "Very good."
That was fair.
But miho, my boy I see
only two paths before you.
Either you learn to read - well
either you don't learn to read
and he changed the
direction he was going.
You don't learn to read and you
will be at the mercy of anyone
who can read, who
wants or doesn't want
or on a whim says no, when
you need something interpreted
for you that's written
or you do learn to read.
And now he got really
close to my father.
He leaned down and he said,
"And if you learn to read,
you will never again be at the
mercy of another angry jackass."
And my father's answer was to
have generational repercussions.
"Teach me."
Teach me. They began
the next morning.
And after that they had
lessons every day along
with reading the comics.
Now Antonio was teaching him
the sound of each letter.
My father remembers the
day when he realized
and of course it made me
think of Helen Keller.
But in hearing him tell the
story it was so genuine.
He said there was a day
when Antonio wrote M-A-M-A
on a piece of paper.
And my father sounded out Mama.
And he said in that instant he
realized that those scratches,
those symbols wholly
and completely encompassed the
person who was at home waiting
for him to bring the bread.
After that he said
he was unstoppable.
They went from the comics
to the more interesting sort
of advertisements for salves
and lotions and washboards.
And he said before we knew it
I was reading those beautiful
and colorful obituaries.
And he said that his mind became
illuminated in a strange way
that he - he said I could
never explain Carmen.
He did say this, "It was not
that as an illiterate boy
I did not have stories.
Do not think because
someone cannot read and write
that they do not have an
entirety - he beat his chest -
entire universe inside of them."
But there were things -
things I would never know.
And when I realized
I could know them.
Well then he said he read
the backs of iodine bottles,
you know he said he read letters
stamped on the head of a nail.
He suddenly noticed
we're on different shops,
words were written
across the windows
and I remember hearing
the story as a young woman
and interrupting him and
saying, "Papi you have
to explain something to me.
You are one of the most
curious humans I've ever known.
Why didn't you ask someone
to teach you how reading
worked before this,
someone one of your
siblings, your mother,
someone would have taught you."
He said, "No one had
time for that," he said.
But more importantly I suppose
I thought I'd lost my chance.
And then my father
said something to me.
That at that moment
was very important
because I was just entering
school visits as an author.
And working increasingly
with children
on the margins of literacy.
Papi looked at me with
the eyes of a child.
I could almost see
the boy he was.
He said, "Carmita
I was a poor boy
from a poor family
during the Depression.
I thought I had lost my chance
when I did not go to school."
At this point well like
new shoes and shiny toys,
I did not believe the
written word belonged to me.
When I heard those words
it was like the tumblers
in a lock falling into place
with a click, click, click.
And I realized that was it.
That was it.
If you do not believe
that reading,
that the written word is
something that belongs to you
or your family or your culture.
Decoding is hard work.
Reading is hard work.
But my father came
to believe it.
And he was unstoppable
from thereon.
And because he became
this inveterate reader,
I became a reader.
And my children became
readers and my grandchildren go
to bed reading books, their
rooms are filled with books,
they could have been book drunk.
As for my father, his
reading soon led to writing.
And when he came to the US as a
refugee he wrote many stories,
and I imagine they
were a form of therapy,
but they were more than that.
I think he had the
soul of a writer.
And I suspect he was probably
dyslexic as is his daughter.
But when he died three
years ago he left something
particularly poignant.
I found it after he died.
My Papi who was illiterate
until he was 14 left his memoir.
Typewritten of course,
on that old typewriter.
And throughout it there
are notations in my hand
because page after page of what
could have been a very clinical
story of where he was born
and what happened and -
page after page is
filled with stories.
And that's the story of how a
young boy became a reader thanks
to a cranky old baker.
Thank you for listening today.
And be sure to check out the
American Folklife Center's
website where you
will find a compendium
of amazing sound recordings
that you can listen
to at your leisure.
The address is
www.LOC.gov/folklife.
That's www.LOC.gov/folklife.
See you there.