About Me — Edgar De La Concha

A Child. Immigration. Dreams.

I want to be an author.

Each morning my mind wakes to this thought.

Being rejected from graduate school proved to be freeing. While writing my personal statement I rediscovered the pleasure in dictating ideas, being proofread, and receiving feedback. The exhilarant feeling of knowing something I wrote or one of my musings resonated with someone else. The dream I’ve had since childhood: to publish my own book.

The background.

I hail from Ensenada, Baja California, 1997. My parents seem to remember which hospital they were birthed at yet I’ve never heard word of mine. The youngest of three boys, my solace in being wanted comes from the precise timeline of two years between each of our deliveries.

Kindergarten memoires constitute my life in Mexico. The neighborhood school was subdivided between Kinder and Elementary. We called them el kinder and la primaria. Youngsters alike myself were separated by a chain fence from the older kids.

The giants from la primaria felt untouchable yet during recess I flung myself against the barrier enough to mark my skin, screaming or begging my eldest brother for money. Pesos meant for junk food or chatarra.

Within the garten ladies set up plastic tables topped with potato chips or papitas and Duvalins and mazapans and Rockaletas and the ice cream men or neveros belted their wares from the potholed street out front. Not from a motor truck but from a two-wheeled cart which they pushed through unkept roads.

Chula Vista, California.

Before starting the second year of kindergarten my parents announced our imminent move to the United States. The moment or anything that soon followed it is lost to me except the multiple-hour waits to cross the Californian border by car. Crossings which occurred every weekend so my parents could see their parents. So my grandparents still knew their grandchildren. Despite efforts my paternal great-grandmother always asked my name and whose child I was.

I was never present enough for her to remember.

I attended Spanish-bilingual classes until 4th grade, when Rice Elementary mandated each child’s transition to primarily English schooling.

Culture divides go unnoticed by children until they are forced to acknowledge them. I recognized my speech was different when my 4th grade teacher corrected me.

“What hour is it?” Que hora es? I asked.

“In English, we say ‘What time is it’, not ‘What hour is it’”.

This man was born to teach. To guide. He was the same person who noticed me squinting at the board and suggested glasses. The same being who first praised my writing when for an assignment I wrote ‘A huge explosion filled the air’ rather than ‘it exploded’. Who submitted his students’ work to competitions if he felt they deserved recognition. An educator who despite his shortcomings and short temper always pushed his mentees to evolve.

Mr. Mendoza. Filipino. Because of him I gained confidence in myself and my writing and began to do so for fun.

The second move.

“We’re moving to Texas,” Vamos a movernos a tejas, my parents said at the dining table. Our apartment had a poorly designed chandelier which dangled too low over the dining area and my mother shortened by tying the chain into itself. Despite this my father still knocked his head in the mornings before sitting to eat his eggs and beans.

Two seconds were spent looking towards my siblings and I realized they were bawling and so I did too. It was my first month of 5th grade.

“But my friends!” Pero mis amigos!

I don’t recall my parents’ speech. I’ve since realized how necessary this move was for our familial well-being. My father worked a full-time job as a manager of international logistics yet had to moonlight at a Toys “R” Us warehouse. He was fortunate to sleep four hours a night. My mother found odd jobs for us which I didn’t recognize as work until much later.

She cared for an elderly woman living at our apartment complex. She became involved with a beauty sales company. We went to a well-off person’s home to dust the thousands of books in their personal library. We fostered a pair of siblings for a month or more while their parents found a desirable place to live in Saudi Arabia.

The two brothers were pugnacious and had long nails. They loved Disney’s Aladdin. Once I protested watching it for the tenth time and loaded the Spongebob movie instead. They whined and fought and dug their claws into my arms and my mother despaired when I hit back.

“Don’t do that! You don’t know what they’re going through!” No hagas eso! No sabes lo que estan viviendo! I thought she was being unfair.

But moving was an incredible sacrifice for my parents. They relinquished any proximity to the family they much loved. Since then they have been limited to yearly visits during Christmas. We couldn’t be there when their parents grew sick.

To this day I occasionally catch my mother sobbing quietly while listening to her and her mother’s favorite song.

Laredo, Texas

When we arrived I ridiculed the local Spanglish and swore to never add “y’all” to my vocabulary. Its allure was elucidated over time. It’s charming and short and effective.

The difference in public education was appalling. My new school had an incentive program where one could take a short quiz on a book and be rewarded for passing it.

On the first day I completed about twenty of them, confounded as to why reading required any material provocation.

My only friend at the time and I met when I commented on something he was drawing. “General Skeleton Man”. The remainder of the year we received scoldings for using excessive amounts of paper to create comics or stories.

By the time I was in high school the absence of books inside classrooms and the curriculums’ lack of literature study murdered any affinity toward them.

I stopped reading. I stopped writing. An integral part of my being was neglected and the necessity of seeking a STEM career was emphasized by counselors and teachers and any adult that I sought for advice.

Dallas, Texas

I applied to a Biology program for college and coasted through mundane courses. I changed my major to Economics during my second year. Within a month I switched it again.

Neuroscience offered enough of the prerequisites required for medical school without being torture and learning about mankind’s most complex organ seemed enticing. Until I attended the first lecture of Intro to Neuroscience.

The mysteries of the human brain are dulled when its study is composed of charts and graphs.

Graduation and a sub-3.0 GPA.

My mother wept on my shoulder. My father paid for the celebratory dinner. They believed I wanted to be a doctor. They bragged to family members and friends and this became my personality. They didn’t know the option wasn’t available with my track record.

Left in a limbo, I moved back to Laredo. I spent months drinking and focusing on exercise and playing video games. Anything except my future. After gentle nudging from my family I renewed the pharmacy technician license I acquired during undergrad and moved to Austin with my brother.

The present and the plan.

No avenue exists for me in medicine. Despite developing an appreciation for it, four years and plenty of disappointment later I’ve circled back to writing.

Dreaming of a freelance career led me to Zulie Rane’s YouTube channel. Through her advice I’ve developed a rough plan for the near future:

• Write a minimum of one quality piece for Medium each week.
• Write one flash fiction (minimum 300 words) a week and one short story (minimum 2k words) a month.
• Enter writing contests and submit to journals (two stories currently submitted).
• Publish unsubmitted pieces here or on Simily (haven’t decided where, anyone have insights on this?).
• Read at least one book a month (Currently reading The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy).
• Maybe write a review for each book?
• Use the ensuing portfolio to find clients.

It feels doable. For once I carry hope, that I can accomplish something meaningful, that my life won’t be wasted away.