On Colonies, Canons, and Ellis Cose's "The Rage of a Privileged Class"

The post-ending to Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, after the bibliography: "Victor Villanueva... describes himself as a husband, a parent, a professor, and a happy man.A happy ending. Mami required a happy ending. After reading another essay, Mom showed disapproval in that way that mothers do, that way that makes you forget you're forty-something and a parent of five children, a grandparent yourself. "Look at all what you've done! You should be happy!" So, Mami, I am happy (which doesn't mean that I don't think some things couldn't stand changing). The publishers demanded a happy ending. The editor to Bootstraps required the bio because the book ended on such a down note. A down note. As I saw it (and intended it) the ending was a declaration of a sense of worth in what I do, of feeling quite blessed in having a career and a life filled with meaning. Sure, I'd rather the state of people of color in America were better, that the state of all people but a decided few on the planet were better, but I am a happy man. A graduate course is assigned Bootstraps and Mike Rose's Lives on the Boundary, an inevitable comparison. Students prefer Lives on the Boundary. Rose is more helpful, more hopeful. The help, I figure, has to do with the less theoretical bent of Lives. The hope, I think, was of the same vein as the editor who read Bootstraps as ending on a down note. A co-worker reads my essay on immigrants and minorities in the English Journal, an essay ostensibly on Richard Rodriguez. She says, "You're so gregarious in person; I can't believe how angry your essay is." She says the same thing later, after sitting in on a workshop of mine on critical teaching. I had them rolling in the aisles that day.