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Victor Villaseñor: 178 quotes1 like

“And no one would interfere with me because of the loaded gun in my hand. Also, a part of me didn’t give a shit anymore if I was caught or not. I could now see that my objective wasn’t just to kill Moses and all these other teachers who had abused us, but for everyone in all the whole world to know why. This wasn’t going to be a surprise attack. This had to be a cold, premeditated act, completely well planned, just as it had been premeditated and well thought out to torture and beat us Mexican kids, starting in kindergarten, so we’d be a people, a gente, with our heads bowed down to authority forever, thinking we were inferior and worthless. I now realized that this was how you enslaved a people. You didn’t just bring them over in chains from Africa. No, you convinced them that they were inferior, not evolved, subhuman, and then when you took off their shackles, so they could go to work, you’d still have them enslaved and shackled inside of their minds for hundreds of years. And this system of teaching was fine with most Anglo teachers, because in the act of convincing us, los Mexicanos and the Blacks, we were subhuman, they’d also convinced themselves that they were superior!”

Victor Villaseñor

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

“My dad, he didn’t even have the eyes to see me after all of his tall, blue-eyed sons were dead. He started bellowing from the hilltop to hilltop like a madman, saying that God had forsaken him, and he had nothing more to live for, because all his sons were gone!”

Victor Villaseñor

Tears streamed down my dad’s face. “I was about nine or ten, the same ag
Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

“Then, I’ll never forget, I came closer to the board, carefully going down the list. There were sixty-some juniors and seniors in our two classes, and then there I was, the third name from the bottom.”

Victor Villaseñor

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

“Generosity is a good investment when you know who to be generous with, and also, who not to be generous with.”

Victor Villaseñor

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

“And each day, things at school got meaner and more terrifying than the day before. They were crucifying Ramón. They were really hitting him and hitting him, because he was the only kid among us who wouldn’t break.”

Victor Villaseñor

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

“And she slapped him across the face, once, twice, three times, but still Ramón continued speaking in Spanish, telling us not to fear, that we were Mexicanos, and that we weren’t their slaves! I quit crying, just like that. My God, I couldn’t believe it, this boy Ramón had to be the bravest human being I’d ever seen. And the huge teacher, she just kept right on slapping him until his face was covered with blood.”

Victor Villaseñor

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

“This I’d also heard for as long as I could remember, and it was one of our oldest Mexican dichos, sayings, and what it said was that manners didn’t take away bravery, and that bravery didn’t diminish manners.”

Victor Villaseñor

Lo cortés no quita lo valiante, y lo valiante no quita lo cortés.”
Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

“I was TORTURED by teachers! You hear me, TORTURED!”

Victor Villaseñor

I yelled, jerking the whole podium off the floor. “Hell, I flunked the third grade twice because—BECAUSE—” I was crying so hard that I had to wipe the tears out of my eyes with the back of my hand, but this wasn’t going to stop me. I was all guts up front now. I was in that smooth-feeling, all-true place that I got into when I’d go to my room and start writing each morning before daybreak…with all my heart and soul.
Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

“And my God, Ramón was just a little five-year-old kid like the rest of us.”

Victor Villaseñor

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)