No, I wasn’t very smart, this I knew, but I was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, I was some kind of crazy-loco genius, burro genius. I mean… - Victor Villaseñor

And I realized: I've got to write the story about our people to anchor us to creation. And then no matter how much we get abused, we'll still feel special and we'll still feel good.

I took a deep breath, and the humming began behind my left ear. I now knew how I’d solved that math problem in Ashmore’s class. Everything, every thought that came to us came from heaven through our guardian angel, our genius, when we were at peace in our hearts and in balance in our brains. So yes, I was barking up the right tree with all these thoughts and words that were coming out of my mouth. And with such ease.

For the very first time, I understood what mi papá had been telling me all these years about his very own father, the great Don Juan, straight from Spain, and how he’d only liked and loved his blue-eyed children, the ones like himself, and had never even recognized his dark Indian-looking children like my dad.