“No le digas a nadie” is a threat that happens in almost every conversation I have with my mom. It’s synonymous with, “Don’t tell another breathing soul about any of this.” Whenever something dramatic happens in our familial sphere, it is always followed by this saying. Whenever there is juicy gossip, I had to promise first that I wouldn’t tell a soul or else I couldn’t hear the news. From my first memories well into my mid-30s, this threat was embedded in me.
When I attended my first creative nonfiction writing seminar, something shifted. After years and years of constant moments of being sworn to secrecy by my mom, I was in awe when I was told to lay it all bare. It seemed that if you wanted to be in the business of writing nonfiction, you had to share the exact truth with all the finite details. Apparently, there was no space for twisting the truth to make it less harsh. I nervously observed my classmates taking in this advice and no one seemed worried about this intimate level of honesty that they were supposed to take on with their future readers. This sudden transparency that had to be shared with complete strangers.
Even hidden with a certain level of anonymity, telling the complete truth flew in the face of the values I had been brought up with—secrecy and loyalty to my family. I couldn’t grab sandpaper and try to shed off the unpleasant memories of the past. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t share the intimate complexities of my private life. If I dared let anyone else know, I was breaking an unsaid allegiance. I was ripping up an invisible contract that apparently my three-year-old self had unknowingly signed with a permanent marker. You might as well have told me to stand up during Christmas dinner and read from a long list of insults and opinions that my mom had toward her sisters that year, and expect zero fights afterwards.
When I was about 13, I questioned my mom about why I shouldn’t speak about the truth or even share the truth; she replied with the old adage that the stories of the house do not leave the door. Stories are kept floating around in the attic or taking up space in the basement, but the second they are near the window or a door, it’s time to press the alarm. This is how I’ve lived my life, with the conviction that truth is sacred and should only be shared with God. Even then, I recall an instance where I was told that I couldn’t tell the priest at confession because what would he think? By extension, what would the church think? God forbid it somehow makes it to the pope himself. In my household, the thoughts of others kept our truth hostage. If the truth reflects badly on any family member, then it will not be shared with outsiders.
Initially, when I entered my MFA program, years ago, I wanted to focus on others. How their mannerisms could rise from the page and my reader could see them like a hologram, speaking and fiddling with their hair. The urge to go out into the world and capture someone else was what I wanted. It was safer for me to catch another human being and have their innards exposed on the table than to put out my life moments. Their vulnerability was safe whereas my own was forbidden to the world. Their secret life stories were fair game while mine would have symbolized the utmost betrayal to my mother and to my loved ones.
But I felt like a hypocrite. What right did I have to write on the vulnerable moments of others when I was afraid to write about my own?
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, this code of secrecy has deeply impacted my writing practice. How do you shake off decades of being constantly told that your private life should never be shared with strangers? Every time I sat down to write, I could just feel my mom’s eyes leering at the words, confused and hurt. As if my writing belonged to my family and direct permission was needed. As if the secret auntie police unit would show up at any moment and take us away. As if my mother would stop loving me and excommunicate me from the family, separating me from food gatherings and banishing me to the backyard to sneak in when everyone was gone.
Although I wanted to focus on others and the world around me, I simply couldn’t shake off writing about all the memories and moments of my own life. The summer where my godmother promised to take me to church every week when I stayed with her and we made it twice; the time I spied on my cousin French kissing his new girlfriend, wondering why he had topless pictures of girls all around his room but I couldn’t watch sex scenes in movies; the unhealthy amount of fruit punch my godmother gave me; the fake blood pact with rooster blood the cousins made when we were seven; and all the other moments shielded from public light, the things I’m not allowed to let others know that are in reality the things that make me, me.
There is no sharing in my Latino culture. The idea of even speaking about the uncle who got drunk in someone’s baptism is shocking let alone anything more serious than that.
I know that I am not alone. Thousands of other Latinos and those from other cultures and ethnicities were also brought up in this threatening manner. The idea that one family secret would make it out of the sanctity of the home would send millions of matriarchs to their death bed. It didn’t help that all the Latino writers I admire didn’t even touch nonfiction until they were settled writers. Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, all toiled in fiction and I had to search for interviews to find inklings of their truth. If there was no one else that looked like me sharing their truth, then who was I to share mine?
There’s another common refrain I’ve heard that loosely translates to: I’d rather die than have my dirty laundry airing out for the world to see. Aside from the unfortunate view of anyone’s underwear streaks parading around, I think that death is a high price to pay for dirty laundry. Here’s where the problem lies: dirty laundry can always be cleaned. In order to be cleaned, however, you have to reckon with the idea that it is dirty, soiled and perhaps might even need to be tossed. When you write about those intimate moments you were told to never write about, you are giving permission for others to enter the fold. They are now part of this reckoning and can even, God forbid, talk about it and share it with others.
See, when you don’t tell anyone else about the battles and debates of your household, you don’t have a mirror or a reaction that informs you that perhaps there is something wrong. Honesty and transparency amidst years of isolation and secrecy would require a complete upheaval of a familial system that prides itself on showing the world its flowers and petals. When, if you were to unearth it, you would find roots intertwining, earthworms flourishing and the occasional maggot trying to make it to the surface. My mother and many other mothers feared that underground, the reckoning of what others might say.
The fear of the words of others has stifled my own words that need to see the light of day. My words that need to be aired out and flown into the air so that others can see it and hear it. My stories and narratives that are of equal importance but can’t be shared because of this deafening gag order that I carry.
For a long time, I believed writing and even sharing stories was a white man’s game. Sure, having Huckleberry Finn included four times in my education didn’t help. But the other message I heard was that truthful narratives didn’t belong to us Latinos. This secret censorship that I (and I’m sure many others) have, directly impacts our creative outlet and we have to learn to chip that away. To feel as free as any other writer. I have to bleed the truth and survive to learn that it’s ok for me to share my story.
If my vulnerability and honesty encourages others to share their intimate stories, especially those writers from backgrounds like mine that are now only being allowed to be celebrated, then I will gladly air out my underwear with its streaks, holes, and tears.
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Ingrid Garcia graduated with a MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College back in 2016. She has been fervently teaching composition classes in various universities and colleges in the DC-metro area. She is looking forward to the delicate balance of teaching, presenting at academic conferences while also writing narratives that are of a more personal element.
