Running head: CITIZENSHIP RESPONSE ONE 1

Brian Kersch
Rhetorics of Citizenship Response Paper One
Brian.Kersch@unt.edu
University of North Texas

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Rhetorics of Citizenship Response Paper One
Mi madre nunca haba hablar sobre su familia o su tierra natal. No tuve familia de mi
madre, no tios o tias, no bisabuelaos, y no hogar, solo los gentes en Estados Unidos. When my
mother returned to Aztln she did so as a foreigner, alien to a land that her family once inhabited.
Forcibly evicted from southern Mexico by the government because identifying as indigenous in
the days of Emiliano Zapata made one dangerous, mi abuelo gathered his family and made the
return journey north the return home.
The concept of home has always been a difficult one for me. Perhaps it is because my
people have a "tradition of migration" (Anzaldua, 1987 pg. 11) and perhaps it is because my
mother did her best to eliminate her cultural heritage from her children. To forget her home,
because for her, there was no security, no affect. Home was dangerous, home was threatening,
and home was distant. Yet I have always had a desire to belong (Carrillo-Rowe, 2005), to belong
to a culture my mother can never belong within, to belong to a culture I've had ripped from my
flesh, me raja, to belong to an academy that demands my white skin covers my red blood in my
writing (Rich, 1986). This desire manifested itself in different ways, in high school I developed a
thick accent when speaking Spanish, because it was my language. I could claim my accent for
my accent belonged to me, and whenever I would speak I would show my cultural pass a
green card if you will, as Mexican. The imperative for me to be Mexican was because I felt
separated from my mother. Passing as white granted me access to a cultural identifier that I soon
learned was fleeting. As soon as my mother walked through the door she was marked, she didn't
belong, and if I was her son, neither could I. So I spoke Spanish, pero no fue suficiente porque
mi piel fue blanco. Soy blanco. So I found a home in the academy. I could hide behind the name
"Brian Kersch" on a white piece of paper and no one would ever doubt my credibility. Brian
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Kersch could write theory, could write with authority, could write on behalf for all of us (Rich,
1986). Brian Kersch was a disembodied name on a page (Adigweme, 2011), hiding behind his
mother's attempt to eradicate any signs of her culture and the whiteness of the husband she
married. Truly if I were to belong anywhere it would be in the academy, for the academy cares
not for your history, for your skin, for your land, for your home (Adigweme, 2011). I quickly
realized that the academy was only a retreat for me, a way to hide my mother, for she never
walked in at the end of my papers, I was never discovered as intruder and so like my mother
wanted for so long, I had successfully extricated her family from my life.
I have been told that your past haunts you, and my mother haunted me with a vengeance.
I quickly realized that I was speaking my accent in conversation with white people. Over
pronouncing Taco Cabana or the full name of chile con queso became a badge for me, a sign
that I belonged to another group. By announcing my accent I found ways to differentially belong
(Chvez, 2010) to both white and Mexican culture. Yet even this differential belonging felt
forced, compelled to announce my difference even in spaces that had accepted my whiteness.
Challenging being accepted into white spaces became compulsory for me, I don't belong here
became a mantra running in the back of my head, I had been hailed by the demand to long to be
here (Carrillo-Rowe, 2005) and my response was to prefer not to. Rex Butler (2010) says that the
power of the "I prefer not" provides an answer to being hailed, it is neither a "yes" nor "no" but
rather a third option that refuses the hailing; in being hailed to be long I decided to "carry 'home'
on my back" (Anzaldua 1987, pg 21). My accent belonged to me, and I to my accent, it was my
choice to mark myself as different, to be long differently than I was hailed, to exist in spaces that
appreciated my white skin, but to brush against the norms that demanded my white skin. I found
Spanish words creeping into my papers, my mother with them. I wrote that mi madre es la
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mojada in a feminist discussion as a means to displace white feminist theory's stranglehold as the
universal position (Rich, 1986), to write my mother into existence, into being. I found myself
refusing normative belonging by changing not only the content within but the very terms of the
conversation (Chvez, 2010).
My accent be longed to me
And I to my accent


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References
Adigweme, A. (2011). I Don't Exist: Conflicting Communities and the Nature of Sexual
Belonging. Poroi: An Interdisciplinary Journal Of Rhetorical Analysis & Invention, 7(2),
1-21
Butler, R. (2010). Thought is Grievance: on ieks Parallax. International Journal of Zizek
Studies, 4(1), 1-27
Carrillo-Rowe, A. (2005). Be longing: Toward a feminist politics of relation. NWSA Journal,
17(2), 1546. doi:10.1353/nwsa.2005.0043.
Chvez, K. R. (2010a). Border (in)securities: Normative and differential belonging in LGBTQ
and immigrant rights discourse. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7, 135
155. doi:10.1080/14791421003763291
Rich, A. (1986). Notes toward a Politics of Location. In Blood, Bread, and Poetry, 21033. New
York: W.W. Norton.