How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
The path to success isn’t paved for people of color. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories as we learn how to say Success in Spanglish.
How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
A Fronterizo's Journey of Literary Expression and Empowering Scholars - Thomas Ray Garcia
Thomas Ray Garcia is a writer, educator, and entrepreneur from Pharr, Texas. He is the author of the award-winning short story collection, The River Runs: Stories and co-author of El Curso de la Raza: The Education of Aurelio Manuel Montemayor. He is the founder and board chair of the College Scholarship Leadership Access Program (CSLAP), a lead coordinator for the Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force, an adjunct professor at South Texas College.
Summary:
Ever wondered how one's roots can weave a tapestry rich enough to transform lives and communities? Thomas Ray Garcia joins us from the Rio Grande Valley, a place where cultural currents flow deep, to share his remarkable journey from a humble upbringing to the halls of Princeton University. His narrative isn't just about personal triumph; it's a beacon of possibility for first-generation, low-income students. Thomas's unwavering commitment to educational access through the College Scholarship Leadership Access Program (CSLAP) is testament to the idea that with the right support and mentorship, success is a language we can all speak.
Navigating the intricacies of identity and heritage, Thomas reveals how growing up on the border shaped his character and his life's mission. His transition to an Ivy League setting threw his Latino heritage into stark relief, challenging him to dig deeper into his fronterizo identity. Thomas's return to his roots after graduation speaks to the pull of home and the desire to uplift and empower his community. From establishing mentorship programs to contributing to regional growth, his story is a powerful reminder of the impact one individual can have when they choose to invest in where they come from.
Pull up a chair and listen to the rhythm of Thomas's pen as he discusses "The River Runs" and "El Curso de la Raza," literary endeavors that paint the Rio Grande Valley in strokes far removed from stereotype. His writing process, a testament to discipline and passion, and his journey through the labyrinth of publishing, underscore the resilience and diverse narratives of borderlands communities. As Thomas weaves tales into his memoir, he redefines success not as a destination, but as the ability to invoke change and inspire—a success that resonates beyond the page in real-world action and transformative community work. Join us for an episode that's sure to ignite your drive and perhaps even redefine your own measure of success.
See more at www.successinspanglish.com
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Intro Song: Regaeton Pop - Denbow Ambiance
This is Raul Lopez, and you're listening to. How Do you Say Success in Spanish? The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color. Many attempt to journey with little to no guidance. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that, together, we can learn how to say success in Spanish. What's good me, it's your boy, raul. Welcome back. Thank you for joining me today. Today's guest is Thomas Ray Garcia. How's it going?
Thomas Ray Garcia :Hey, raul, I'm doing very well. Thanks so much for having me on.
Raul Lopez:Of course I appreciate you taking the time. I know we kind of connected through a mutual friend and I'm looking forward to kind of get into your journey. Just to kind of start off, let me give a little background about you. Thomas Ray Garcia is a writer, educator and entrepreneur from Far Texas. Thomas is the author of the award-winning short story collection the River Runs Stories and co-author of El Curso de la Raza the education of Orillo Manuel Montemayor. He is the founder and board chair of the College Scholarship Leadership Access Program, cslab, a lead coordinator for the Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force and an adjunct professor at South Texas College. Welcome, thomas. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.
Thomas Ray Garcia :Thanks for having me on, and it's great to come onto the podcast after our brief arctic blast down here in the Rio Grande Valley, so I'm wearing my coat and tie to keep warm. It's great to be inside and talking to someone from across the country.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, and we've been dealing with colds for a while now north, and obviously Texans do not deal well with the cold, so I'll try not to keep you from being too cold for the rest of this meeting. But I guess to kind of start off, you know, tell me a little about who you are.
Thomas Ray Garcia :I always consider myself a writer first and foremost. I grew up without books in the house. I grew up in a single parent, low-income household and I knew. Going into high school and college and storytelling always motivated me to want to be more, to learn from others, to learn about other cultures, to learn about how other people could live their lives outside the Rio Grande Valley. Basically, storytelling was my way to learn more about the world I couldn't access growing up, so I write fiction and nonfiction. Currently I focus on writing stories about the Texas-Mexico borderlands and showing the world what the Texas-Mexico border is really about, in all its realism, greediness and lyricism.
Thomas Ray Garcia :I'm also a non-profit leader and it's funny because I majored in English and college, so I never would have imagined founding my own business, working in a local government and doing a lot of the economic development work I do today. But it started with education. It started with me becoming educated, learning more about my own story, about growing up along the Texas-Mexico border, going to Princeton University as a first-generation low-income college student and trying to find out who am I and how can I give opportunities like this to other people just like me. When I was in college, I became interested in college access and filling in gaps for first-gen low-income students so they too could access opportunities like going to a Princeton University or graduating from a two or four-year university, when otherwise they're ridden off in high school because of their zip code or because of their income level, like I almost was. So college scholarship leadership access program C-SLAP has been my main program and project for the past 10 years. It started as a volunteer-led summer institute when I was 19 years old. I created this institute at my alma mater school district to help the class of 2013 begin getting ready for college early and to start getting ready for the college admissions essay. Writing the financial aid process, finding scholarships and connecting to near peer mentors are those of us who are ready in college and ready to help them on the next step of their journey. C-slap became my high school course.
Thomas Ray Garcia :Right after college, I became a high school teacher at Farsan Juan LMOISD, and C-SLAP essentially became a year-round curriculum that I was able to sharpen using the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the TEACS, which are our statewide learning standards. From there, I gave the curriculum and the program to Farsan Juan LMOISD. Then, a couple years later, in 2019, I decided C-SLAP is still needed in our community. There's still many college readiness gaps and they're different at each of the school districts we have here in Hidalgo County along the border. So that's when we founded C-SLAP as a 501c3 nonprofit, where I served as executive director for four years and I currently serve as the chair of the board. Now I do economic development work at our local government, at Hidalgo County government, but part of my work still is focused on getting students through and through college. Now it's more so. How can I give them more opportunities when they reach the other end of the line, once they graduate from college? Can we make sure that the workforce is ready and the jobs are tomorrow here in Hidalgo County?
Raul Lopez:Yeah, and it's an interesting journey you've taken from where you grew up to all the going of Princeton and then coming out, as you said, writing being your main focus, and then, ultimately, we make our adjustments in our process. So all that kind of starts, and I think one of the things you mentioned is what kind of really affected you was better understanding about your culture and where you are. So can you kind of explain a little bit about what the Rio Grande Valley is, because that's a very, very unique location and environment for people to grow up in it. Really, you know from everybody I've been there a couple of times and it's a great place, but it's very unique. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Thomas Ray Garcia :Yes, the Rio Grande Valley is the true South Texas. When I got to college and I said I was from South Texas, people assumed San Antonio or Corpus Christi. But we're right along the Texas-Mexico border. The Rio Grande Valley is four counties on the southernmost tip of Texas and we have a unique culture because we're so close to Mexico. Hidalgo County, for example, is about 93% Latino and if you live in anywhere in Hidalgo County you'll notice that our culture is not just Tejano but it's very much Mexican-American. It's parts of the American culture, it's parts of the Mexican culture and it's a beautiful mixture of both.
Thomas Ray Garcia :You commonly hear Spanish being spoken at local businesses and schools. You commonly listen to Con Junto on the radio. You commonly see mixed status families and multi-generational families going out for a night on the town. It's a beautiful sight to be able to see two different worlds and two different cultures merged together in this space. That was the world I grew up in. I didn't know about anything else until I popped that bubble.
Thomas Ray Garcia :Going to college, I didn't quite understand what it meant to be a Latino or a Fronterizo, which is a borderlandsman a literal translation until I was put in a situation where I encountered other Latinos from all over the world at Princeton. An anecdote I often share is my first semester at Princeton. I joined this student organization called Princeton Latinos y Amigos. I walked in, put on my name tag, met everybody and I noticed how everyone kept on calling me amigo. I just thought, oh, that's what you do at Latinos y Amigos. I realized they weren't doing that to everybody the brown-skinned folks. They were just calling them by name. To black, asian and white people. They were emphasizing the amigo as if we were the allies. People thought I was just somebody's friend. They invited to Latino y Amigos Until I explained to them no, I'm actually from the Rio Grande Valley, right along the border.
Thomas Ray Garcia :My name's Thomas Garcia. Since I'm a white-skinned man, they assumed you must not be Latino. My grapple between being Latino enough, being white enough, not being white of either, being somewhere in between that was my experience at Princeton. I had to come into my own being a Borderlands man, a frontariso, by learning more about border culture, history and literature. I never had to own that identity. Just growing up here in the Rio Grande Valley it was leaving to college and coming back and realizing the world is not like the border. I have to start defining myself in more clear terms. That way I can start to see the world through the lens of a frontariso.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, I think we tend to walk a thin path between identity sometimes, where we feel we're too Latino for one section, we're too Americanized, or we're too light-skinned or too dark-skinned to fit into any other group. Sometimes it takes time, I think, for all of us to build ourselves and accept who we are and accept the culture we are and how we want to distinguish ourselves. How did that affect your time at Princeton? Because lots of times, people go to college and they do their stuff. You went to Princeton, you went to get your master's at UCLA but then ultimately ended up coming back. Lots of times when we leave, we don't want to come back because we're like I'm done, I'm learning who I am and I want to get far away. What kind of how did learning about your culture and drove you to come back and do the changes that you're looking to do in the Rewritten Valley?
Thomas Ray Garcia :My freshman year of high school I was almost ridden off as not college material because I came from an unaccredited private school. I struggled a bit in middle school and I needed to prove as a freshman in high school that I did want to learn more about college. Back then my freshman class was over 800 students and it whittled down to about 500 by the time I became a senior. So in terms of capacity, my high school counters this thought based on the numbers on the page. Don't waste time giving the student Explanations on how to get to a U T Austin or a Texas A and M university, much less a Princeton University.
Thomas Ray Garcia :So I had a research on my own how to get into college. I had to Google how to get into U T, how to get into A and M when I go, how to get into the Ivy League schools. I found out about Princeton and I learned that because I made less than $40,000 household income, I would go to Princeton for free, completely debt free, if I were to only get accepted. So, starting early my freshman year, I worked hard in high school to become the well rounded student that would be competitive for Princeton. I had the courage to apply and very much. It was on my own. I didn't have a near peer mentor. I was the first of my family to go to college.
Thomas Ray Garcia :My counselors were spread, then I really had to find out information and write my essays and do everything on my own. So by the time I got to Princeton I turned back to my community and I wanted to give back in ways I wish I would have received that help when I was a high school student, and that's where C Slop was born. So at Princeton I always had one foot on the border and one foot at Princeton. Even when I was taking my classes and being a full time student, c Slop was still operating in the background.
Thomas Ray Garcia :We weren't simply a summer institute. We provided year round near peer mentorship in which I was mentoring high school students who were completing the CS S profile, who were applying to the Gates Millennium Scholarship, who were looking at out of state colleges for the same reasons I did. It would be much cheaper for them to go to a private university out of the state Then, in most cases, going to a public university in the state because of their income level. So for a few years I dedicated myself to uplifting my community and in that process I started to learn more about what really is a front that is. So that's when I became interested in my own identity, my own connections to the border, I started to become more interested, not just from a sociological lens but also a cultural lens, of how I can carry the borderlands with me and how that influences my time at Princeton.
Thomas Ray Garcia :Naturally I didn't quite feel comfortable with the white majority student body. I could easily fit in those spaces because I was a white man, but the socioeconomic divide already excluded me as an other. I couldn't go to the same restaurants as them. I couldn't do the same social activities as them. My parents had a very different background than their parents so I felt other than front of them and with the minority groups I often felt other because I didn't quite fit in, I didn't look like I belong there. So the Latino see me go store. I think is a perfect example of unwittingly feeling not quite Latino enough, even though I'm in a Latino space and I should feel comfortable. Naturally that's where I became comfortable with this liminal space of not quite being that enough, not quite being this enough, and I had to be comfortable with that hyphen in between Mexican American. Yeah, like we said, before.
Raul Lopez:It's always a hard challenge to overcome those obstacles, especially when you go so far away from where you're at and what your comfort zone is. And I think for a lot of us we don't realize college is going to be very different, no matter where we are.
Raul Lopez:I mean, I only went to Boston from Rhode Island, which is like a 45 minute drive away, and it was a completely different environment that I grew up with and that took some time to get used to it, and so obviously we deal with these. You mentioned, while applying for colleges you didn't have the resources that would help you get into college. I was fortunate enough to be involved with a program called Upward Bound, which is a trio program that help guide kids first generation college students to get into college and succeed in college, and so saying that you didn't you didn't have that resources is that kind of what helped guide some of what you do with CESA.
Thomas Ray Garcia :At Princeton, I saw the amazing resources my peers took advantage of and, to an extent, took for granted, and I wanted to give a version of that back to my community.
Thomas Ray Garcia :So CESA to me is about increasing capacity at local school districts, providing young people a platform to give back to their school districts through mentorship and redistributing their social capital back to young people who need it, and so we're seeing operating models that work effectively when it comes to teaching about college essays, scholarship, research, career readiness and many other components that often add burden to local go.
Thomas Ray Garcia :Centers are what we call the college centers here at our local high schools. We understand, because of our K through 12 public school system here in Texas, we are severely underfunded and we simply don't have the personnel and the capacity to reach every single student. College access for all, which is the C slap mission, means providing every single student, no matter their zip code, their income or their academic capacity, access to college readiness opportunities, understanding that not every single student is going to go to college, but at the very least we're going to give them access to the resources, the mentorship and the opportunities that they deserve so they can make a ready made decision with their families is college the right choice for me. So no student can say, while I was in tone XYZ when I was a high school student, I wish they would have believed in me. I wish I would have known that earlier. We aim to eradicate that situation.
Raul Lopez:With, with, with kids, with high school kids, you know, getting them, I think, especially for Latino kids. I think one of the big reasons I did I created this podcast is very similar to what your reasons are is that we did. We see people and we hear the stories of people on their path to success in higher education, and so we're having someone that guided them, help them and, like you said, they might not even take advantage of it because they don't realize how valuable that information is. And a lot of us are growing up, doing this up for the first time is our first time going to college. We're paving our own path with trailblazers and doing things for the first time without any resources. What are some of the challenges that you see that some of your students are dealing with when it comes to getting access to college?
Thomas Ray Garcia :In 2013, the a and our title actually stood for awareness. Currently it's access, and I think that illuminates the key difference that our students used to face and what they face now. From 2013 to about 2017, we saw that awareness about opportunities was our number one obstacle. Students simply didn't know about certain colleges, how their financial aid programs worked and how scholarships operated, and so much more. Now we see, because of social media primarily, there's a overflow of information and a lot of misinformation out there. So access to equitable mentorship and resources has become our key focus. In other places, families have too much information and it's too much to digest, and we need to make sure the information is provided at the right time in the right place along the students journey. So we aim to work now with students earlier in their journey. We've begun reaching out to middle schools. That way, awareness is done in the middle school level and the access is done at the high school level.
Raul Lopez:I had a very strict parents who college was kind of our focus from early on. So I think since, like I can imagine, third grade, I knew I was going to go to college.
Raul Lopez:I think that was my only option really, and so obviously there wasn't much resources, but I knew I knew I did so. So seeing that you guys are kind of even reaching out to the younger kids is great. I think that's a very valuable thing. But I think, to touch upon one of the things you mentioned is that your C-slap was a summer program I guess that you guys originally had and then eventually converted to kind of like a full time nonprofit. So this is the process for starting a nonprofit and creating something that you've. You know the type of business that you've created.
Thomas Ray Garcia :We decided the non-profit route was the best route for us because we were very strong program programmatically, we knew how to assess the quality of our work, we saw the metrics. It was just a matter of scaling and expanding and it was hard to do that within a school district because of the turnover. So when we were a summer program we actually had three different college readiness directors at the central administration and every time there was a new director we had to essentially resubmit what our program was, our aims, our goals, and it was hard for us to grow internally. We also hit roadblocks in terms of our operating model and what we could teach and how we could teach it and how we could reach students. So it became natural for us every single summer as we expanded slowly, to notice if we were completely independent, these are the kind of things we could do. We could grant scholarships, we can do more service activities, we can do more with our staff and that's naturally where we decided to go after expanding outside of a school district and now we're working from the outside in as a 501c3 non-profit. So we already had the program.
Thomas Ray Garcia :It was just a matter of doing all the business side of things, which is implementing fundraising board oversight, looking at how do you make sure that your staff is highly trained and doing all the things we need to do to make all the wheels turn, not simply the programming.
Thomas Ray Garcia :We also have to be community oriented and reach out for partnerships, work together not only with school districts now, but also other nonprofits and groups that work with high school families. So it's been a real journey and every year I see as a journey. Every year is basically one piece of the puzzle that we've tried to put together in this bigger puzzle of how do we fit into the community and serve as a pillar of college access while also making sure our students can get to the next level, fully serviced. So we can't do everything. We can get the students to and through college, but on the other end, we want to make sure our community partners can receive our students as a ready to enter the workforce or into the military or enter another field of interest, and they're fully prepared to be received by our community partners.
Raul Lopez:And with how many kids have you guys worked with throughout the years and what was some of the success stories that you've had so far?
Thomas Ray Garcia :From 2013 to 2020, we directly impacted a thousand four hundred and twenty one students, and that includes students who either attended at least three of our workshops, at least two of our college coaching sessions, or who received a scholarship from us or who were part of our summer institutes when we first started. Those students have since graduated from college. We have a ninety nine percent college graduation rate. We have a ninety eight percent college graduation rate over six years. We have a sense that we want to make sure our students are fully serviced even after they leave high school and college, so they come back to C-slab and they're able to become near peer mentors.
Thomas Ray Garcia :So the students we service from 2013 to 2019 are active near peer mentors in our program. That means that I can lean on them to do things that we cannot hear on the ground. These near peer mentors know the college experience. They understand what it means to be a young person living alone in Austin or going out of state and attending a liberal arts college. So we lean on our students expertise and the willingness to give back to their school districts, especially using C-slab as the platform. So when ninety nine percent of our students end up enrolling in college in ninety eight percent end up graduating over a six year period. We have a lot of human capital to work with and naturally these students understand how beneficial it was to have a program like C-slab and they're willing to help us out in any way, shape or form. So it's really exciting to be able to see that we created a network and we've created a real community of young people who want to uplift each other.
Raul Lopez:That's awesome. It's amazing, I mean, the program I was in upper bound. You build some of these lifelong connections and even now, you know, it's been 20 something years since I graduated from high school and I still communicate with my upper bound friends as if they're my family. So there's an impact that's, I think, everlasting. And I think when they see the value of it, you know they want to come back and support. You know I do the same thing I go back and support, and so I'm very it's nice to hear that and it's, you know, I'm sure for you it's great to come back and see the kids that you. You know I've had upper bound. I also worked in upper bound. I had upper bound students who were high school kids and now they're almost 30 with a career and a family. You look back at them. You're like, oh my God, I can't believe you went from.
Raul Lopez:You know this little annoying little kid and now you're a grown man, that's, you know, a director at a company, you're doing really great in life, and so it gives you, you know, a lot of hope and you know a lot of positive inspiration, aspiration to what you're doing. So I'm really happy to hear that. And so I know, with nonprofits and these things you know it gets. It tends to sometimes get really political because you're essentially doing everything with the government. So is that what kind of drove you to get involved with the prosperity task force for Hidalgo Conti?
Thomas Ray Garcia :In 2020, we had just incorporated as a 501c3 non-profit and we were essentially trying to do everything. We felt like an island in a stormy sea. We saw that our families were not being serviced by their school districts, their colleges and their local governments. Especially in spring 2020, when we saw C-slot become a digital literacy center, a mutual aid program, a mental health referral, we literally saved lives and college access became the least of our concerns. And that was when we felt we needed to do more in our community. We needed to service our families fully, not simply doing a service of getting students to and through college. So, post pandemic, we started more outrantly, facing the community, forming partnerships and working with local governments In between us, getting involved with the task force. Post COVID, I ran for the state board of education in 2022. There was an open seat in our state board of education and I ran in a five way primary in the Democratic primary, and my whole reason for running was because of the pain and suffering I saw during the pandemic from our students and our educators, and I understood that we were operating in a broken system. It was one thing to fill in the gaps, but I wanted to start closing the gaps. So at age 28, I ran a 14 county race 2 million people and I came in third in a five way primary and in the process I was able to look at our community from a bird's eye view. I met so many like minded people and realize the campaign was merely a means for me to understand my community better and now I have more platforms to make a more effective change In early 2023, that's when C slope joined the Hiddle County prosperity task force as a partner entity.
Thomas Ray Garcia :Our job was simply provide mentorship and identify funding sources for residents seeking educational opportunities, which is something we already do for our students. We simply didn't do for the community at large. And the purpose of the task force, which is an anti poverty initiative situated in the economic development office at the Hiddle County judges office and I should note that in Texas the county judge is not judicial, it's more executive, it's almost like a mini governor physician this prosperity task forces consist of over 160 community leaders, over 50 entities. The primary goal is to identify residents in poverty and place them on a job placement pathway, and that often involves tapping into wraparound services groups like ours to do our thing for residents that otherwise fall through the cracks or don't have community partner relations. On the long term, we want to focus on economic development, so by developing human capital, we then attract the jobs of tomorrow to meet the workforce of today.
Thomas Ray Garcia :The involvement with the task force was through C slap until September 2023, where I applied for a new position at the county government focusing on the prosperity task force, coordinating, executing strategy and making sure that we got things done, and that's currently what I do. So I made a huge career change from executive director of my nonprofit to working at county government economic development, where C slap is still an active partner and a crucial partner in identifying residents and placing them on our job placement pathway. I'm able to receive these residents on the other end and making sure that they get fully serviced on their way to getting a job. So I'm proud to still be very much involved with C slap as the board chair, in which I focus on the more systemic things like fundraising and community partnerships, and I also have a foot at the county government to make sure that groups like C slap can get more involved and we can service families by working together.
Thomas Ray Garcia :So there's no need to reinvent the wheel and to do everything within one entity. We can simply have the entities lean on one another, join together, collaborate, innovate. We need, to our part, to reduce the poverty rate, which is close to 27% in Hidalgo County and it's close to 14% statewide. So we have a long ways to go. What I often say at the county is we are doing good things, but we're not doing enough if we have a 27% poverty rate. So the solution is not to ask groups like C slap to do more. We simply have to do things differently, and that means looking to our community partners, tracking our students as they go to and through college to make sure they actually do get into a high paying job, and reaching students and residents that otherwise don't get into a high paying job by a group like C slap, yeah, I think you you kind of recognize the, the, the trend that there's always something before that can help elevate the thing in front.
Raul Lopez:So like the horse before the carriage kind of deal where it's like, yeah, we want to give them college access, as well as college access if they're living in poverty and you know, and then set world from there so that evolution, you know, has grown for you.
Raul Lopez:And so when, when you look at what you're doing with the Hidalgo County prosperity task force, and the stuff you're doing with, with, with C slap, you know, is there room for people who are trying to start their own nonprofits? And gets it like is it necessary to get involved with politics If you want your nonprofit to be successful? Is it kind of one that you need to kind of dip your hands in everything in order if you really want to make an impact?
Thomas Ray Garcia :I would say getting involved in local government is key, whether it's school boards which we had direct contact with as a nonprofit and as a school program and local cities and county governments, in order to make the most impact.
Thomas Ray Garcia :And what I saw was it wasn't simply going to these, the government entities, and seeking help, it was us offering our services to them, understanding that we're a community and in order for us to service the residents that need the most help, we should go to the highest places and to the local officials, who also want to support students and uplift residents.
Thomas Ray Garcia :It's just a matter of what tools do they have at their disposal, and I see that at the county judge's office now, where we're trying to understand all the different assets in our community and how to tap them to do the most good that we can, given our limited capacity levels, limited funding and so many other obstacles.
Thomas Ray Garcia :So I do encourage nonprofits to make that leap and not just to simply submit a proposal or to submit an RFP, but to actually sit down with local leaders and explain. Here's the work we do, here's why it's important and here are the things that we'd like to do in order to do more good work. Sometimes we can reduce it to simple things like funding requests, but at the prosperity task force a lot of it is simple innovation and partnerships that should have existed many years ago that now exist because we have an entity bringing people together from the top down. So I do encourage nonprofits to get more involved with the local government because you never know what kind of needs need to be filled and you can be that entity that can fill that need.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, that's awesome and I think it's something maybe a lot of people don't necessarily. I mean, I didn't know it. I wouldn't have known that if I wanted to start nonprofit. I'm also like when you touch, get involved with government. So thank you for that. And so, with everything you do, you still write, and you even mentioned writing is probably your biggest passion. So it's amazing the competency done and everything that you've created and you built and the impact you're making on your community and that's you're still writing, you know. Can you tell me a little bit about what writing is like and getting? You know I think you got a couple of books published what that process is like?
Thomas Ray Garcia :Yes, I was an English major, believe it or not. So in English I learned how to learn. I learned how to read critically, write critically and think critically, and when I used to take various etheric courses, like Beowulf, an entire seminar on the Beowulf poem. I don't actually use Beowulf in my day to day work at C slapper at the county government, but what it did for me is enable me to sharpen my brain and to undergo some mental exercises that apply to everything I do today, and writing is one of those exercises. Nowadays I have to wake up a little earlier, get to the office about 30 or so minutes early to do my writing for the day, and right now I'm currently on Mexico. In what it means to be from here, both in fiction and fiction, in my main audience is actually not Borderlands residents, but people who are not from the border. Understanding that, people from the border have a sense of I see what's on the news, I kind of get what the border is about, and so they project fantasies of what it's like to be from the US Mexico border based on other people's stories. But what we're trying to do down here in the Valley is tell our own stories, and that's what I hope I can do as a writer. So I published two books in 2023. One of them is a short story volume called the river runs. These are 11 short stories about life along the Texas Mexico border, and the other book that was published just a few months later from Texas A&M University Press is a nonfiction historical memoir that I worked with on with a Chicano movement activist named a month of my or. These two projects I've been working on for years and it was a complete coincidence that they got published months from each other in 2023. But it made my dream come true as a writer to actually get my stories about the border out in such an important year and such an important time in my life, as I was transitioning between C-Slab and county government. So I still consider writing my main occupation, even though I don't dedicate eight hours a day to it. I like to think that I put eight hours of work into about 30 minutes of work when it comes to writing, and I hope my output shows that.
Thomas Ray Garcia :So the river runs and El Curso de la Raza are both about South Texas. It's just about what element of South Texas are we talking about? Are we talking about the impact of education on South Texas students in El Curso de la Raza. Are we talking about immigration, growing up along the river and a border, what it means to be brown or what it means to be a white skin Mexican American in the river runs?
Thomas Ray Garcia :What I like to do is tackle these issues that otherwise are somewhat taboo or otherwise aren't talked about enough, I think, in our fiction and nonfiction about the border, tackle them directly and then put a spin on them. So the river runs is titled such because we don't pretend that there's no river there. We abide by the fact that we live right along the Rio Grande Valley. It runs through two cultures, countries and communities. How do we then live along the river? So that is the goal of my writing to take what it means to be from the US Mexico border, infuse it in our stories and show people who are not from here here's the reality of what it's like to be from the US Mexico border.
Raul Lopez:What's something you you know, if you could tell anybody one thing you'd really want them to take away from, like your stories of and something to know about the Rio Grande Valley is what's one thing you'd like them to take away with.
Thomas Ray Garcia :The Rio Grande Valley has a resilient culture. We live between two cultures, two worlds, two countries divided by a river. We are often the recipients of fantasies, both political and otherwise, and we must then live with the fantasies projected onto our people. So there's a certain resilience that's born from that. When I talk about the US-Mexico border to someone who's never been from here or never visited, and they've simply heard stories about it, there's a lot of relearning that happens in those few minutes of conversation.
Thomas Ray Garcia :What's it really like to be from the Rio Grande Valley that is right next to Mexico? Is it really like what the news portrays as a dangerous, unsafe place, or is it actually a place of beautiful culture, resiliency and such a vibrancy that I haven't seen anywhere else in the country? What's unique to me about the border is that it's different everywhere. The Rio Grande Valley culture is different from Laredo culture, different from El Paso culture, different from San Diego culture in California. To be from the border means you carry the borderlands with you, and that alone breeds a certain resiliency that you bring with you into every area of your life, whether you stay in the border or you leave the border.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, everybody I know from the border they're very proud about telling you they're from the border. Everybody from that area that I know. I mean it's just a pride of what they call home. And so, as far as your writing goes, I guess the process of getting a book published you said it took you like a year or more from what you were writing to actually get them released and published what is the process like for getting a book from an idea to writing it and getting it published?
Thomas Ray Garcia :The River Runs was pretty unique. I actually started the earliest short story in that volume in 2015. I've had short stories over a number of years and I never thought of putting them together in a volume until I saw the America O'Bernadette's Literary Arts Prize for Fiction hosted in 2022. So I put my short stories together in a collection, I determined their order and then I had to come up with a title and I realized every single one of these stories features the real around it in either a direct or an indirect way. The River Runs through these stories, the border runs through these stories, and I'm going to call it the River Runs. So in October 2022, I submitted the manuscript to this contest. In July 2023. These stories were officially released and I won the award.
Thomas Ray Garcia :I was able to learn here's what it means to be from the border. I need to be able to represent my culture in clear, effective ways to readers who might not be from here. So I didn't want to simply make parole real or regional literature. I wanted to make literature about the region In El Cursa de Orozza that was also a long time coming where that was a standard application and submission process. I worked with a co-author on his life story on that book from 2016 to 2020. We submitted queries to university presses. We were sending them out everywhere and we heard back first from Texas A&M University Press, right before the pandemic struck. So when through the pandemic, we did very slow revisions, edits, some scholarship work and that book took the standard route of getting published through a clear application and submission process without a contest in between.
Thomas Ray Garcia :So those two books have taught me very different things about writing and publishing. One is you never know when the opportunity is going to arise to get your stuff published. So if you have a collection of poems or short stories or fiction that you think is worthy, I would think of it as ready to be published at any time, especially when you're Google searching academic or fiction contests. When it came to El Cursa de Orozza, I knew publication was coming. I just didn't know when or when a university press was going to bite. But I was always prepared to take it to the next step in getting a cover artist, getting an editor, getting the indexer and being ready to distribute the book, which is the fun part, in my opinion. Once you've done the hard work of getting it published, how then do you make sure that people aren't reading it and people are gaining insights to your book. So that's been pretty fun with the past year and getting both of these books out on tour.
Raul Lopez:Nice. Is there anything else you're working on in the future when it comes to your writing?
Thomas Ray Garcia :I'm currently working on my own memoir actually. So, after working with Aurelio Montemayor on El Cursa de Orozza the education of Aurelio Manuel Montemayor I started thinking about my own educational journey.
Thomas Ray Garcia :These are stories I often would tell my C-slap students. These are also stories I told on the campaign trail for State Board of Education about what it was like to go to an unaccredited private school, struggle in public school and then go to Princeton University as what I call a scholarship boy, which is someone who isn't quite immersed in the university life and not quite immersed in his home life either because of the growth he's experiencing in the academic world. So in this liminal identity and a liminal space of not quite fitting in in your university life, not quite fitting in at home anymore, I started to reflect on writing my stories so other scholarship boys can learn from. So I'm writing a memoir based on that educational journey and I'm about halfway through the first draft and it's basically stories from kindergarten all the way to my college years.
Raul Lopez:Nice, I mean it seems like, you've had an amazing journey and I'm sure there was going to be very interesting stories to read, so I'm looking forward to it. And so you know, with everything that you've gone through, everything that you've been through, you know, we kind of sometimes get to a certain point in our life and we look back and say, man, I wish I would have known this, I wish somebody would have told me this. You know, if you go back in time and talk to the younger version of yourself and give yourself a piece of advice, what's something you tell yourself?
Thomas Ray Garcia :I wish I could tell my college freshmen self to meet more people, and I emphasize this at C-SLAP. The true education you will get in college is not necessarily in the lecture hall from the professor, but it's in the lecture hall from your classmate sitting next to you, especially if you attend a small university like Princeton, where you can meet every single person in your graduating class. If you made the effort in your four years I feel like I didn't make quite the effort to meet as many people as I could and learn their life stories. Princeton was a melting pot and it's only become more diverse since 2012 to 2016 when I attended. So I encourage young people and I would encourage my younger self to simply get out more, learn more people's stories and learn about the world through people's lived experiences, not just in the classroom.
Raul Lopez:Thanks. Yeah, the amount of people you meet at college that you didn't realize you were going to meet in the different, like there was people I met who were millionaires from Europe, who family owned like a sailing, comes like when else could I say I've ever met someone like that, you know? So it's like, yeah, take it. And it's like, yeah, take advantage of the time there. And so you know, ultimately, this podcast, you know it's called. How do you say success in Spanish?
Thomas Ray Garcia :you know, success.
Raul Lopez:The idea of success varies per person. You know what is success, so how do you say success in Spanish?
Thomas Ray Garcia :I would say it's impact. I'm a utilitarian so I believe in making a difference. When I get to work on something, I believe in results seeing the impact my work has made in the real world and tracking those results and seeing how I can scale them to do even more good work. That's where CSOP was born, that's where my current work in economic development is born and to an extent it's why I write every morning. I hope every story I write, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, makes an impact every time someone picks up that story. I know it did for me when I picked up the Seawolf by Jack London, age 13.
Thomas Ray Garcia :I grew up without books in the house, so when I was forced to do silent reading in my public school in seventh grade and I didn't have a book on me, I went to my English class as small library, picked up a tattered copy of the Seawolf because the cover looked cool. So I came back to my desk and I started reading the Sea Adventure Story and although I didn't have the capacity and the ability at the time, I understood something was happening underneath the words. I understood this wasn't simply a sea adventure. It was also a philosophical rumination on the nature of man versus nature and that really touched me as a 13-year-old and it made a significant impact on me.
Thomas Ray Garcia :And whenever I pick up a book or a new author that changes my way of being or thinking, I think back to the power of storytelling and how we can change other people's lives through sharing our stories with them. When a near peer mentor connects to a student, for example, or we write our own stories after owning our identity and our culture, or we make an impact through people's lives, whether it's through human capital development or economic development, and we can see those people rise out of poverty and then come back and help other people through their shared experience. So to me, that is success.
Raul Lopez:Nice, very true and well. Tom, I really appreciate you coming on this podcast and telling us your journey. I think you've dropped some great wisdom and helps the knowledge when it comes to like C-SLAP. What are things people could do to help support your organization?
Thomas Ray Garcia :Two different ways. One is any resources you think would be relevant for young Latino students, send them our way. Our email is info at cslapofficialcom and our website is cslapofficialcom. We aim to give as many resources and opportunities to our students as possible, and often that involves popping the Rio Grande Valley bubble and getting resources from the outside in. Individuals can also donate, and every time people donate to our nonprofit we make sure that that money goes straight to services for students. So $25, for example, enables a student to attend one of our workshops or classes for free, and that has the potential to change that student's life. So cslapofficialcom is our website, in which we have a list of our near peer mentors. We have a list of free resources and more information on our programming, as well as options to donate.
Raul Lopez:Awesome, yeah, and I'll definitely post everything on our site as well and for the podcast, so hopefully you get some additional support and I'm really glad I got a chance to meet you. I'm really glad we got a chance to connect and I'm really like you and I. The idea of leaving an impact, leaving something that's gonna make a difference, is really important to us, so I really wish you and cslap all the best in your success.
Thomas Ray Garcia :Well, thank you for giving me the platformer. And today, I think, is also exemplifying success, because this is storytelling, it's connecting Latinos from across the country and hopefully, through the stories I've shared today, it impacts someone who otherwise I wouldn't have impacted without you giving me this platform. So thank you for that.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, no, thank you, yari. I appreciate that, and so, once again, thank you very much for being here and for everyone else listening. I appreciate you guys showing up as well and listening to the podcast, and I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue to learn how to say success in Spanish.
