I liked him. He seemed a lot more animal to me than human, which was good, of course, because my grandmother, Doña Guadalupe, had always explained to… - Victor Villaseñor

In the last three months I hadn’t lost one single game of chess. It was crazyloco, but sometimes I thought that I was so brilliant because I could see what other people couldn’t see or understand even after I’d explain it to them. Playing chess wasn’t about making single moves. It was about seeing patterns, then backing up inside your mind and seeing the last five and six moves of your opponent, then flashing forward real fast. And bingo, the whole chessboard became alive in living patterns.

My grandmother—God bless her soul—a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico, was the greatest teacher I'd ever had! And do you know what she taught me, she taught me that each and every day is un milagro given to us by God, and that work, that planting corn and squash with our two hands is holy. She taught me all this with kindness and invitation. Not with ridicule and looking down her nose at me and making me feel like less than human when I didn't get it at first.

"Papá," I said, "on our first day of school, they screamed at us, 'No Spanish! English only!' Then they slapped Ramón in the face until he was all bloody because he wouldn't stop talking Spanish. And all he was saying was 'Don't yell at me, you're not my mother,' and 'Don't be grabbing me! You have no right to do this.' He was so smart, papá, and so brave and noble, and they kept slapping him, again and again, until his whole face was a bloody mess."