Oscar Zeta Acosta - Side Quotes

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Ever since I'd shown my bleeding arms to my sweetheart we hadn't spoken a word. I'd simply decided to wait until she told me she appreciated carved tatoos. But she never did. She just ignored my obvious suffering. The pain in my gut, the secret gnawing at my belly didn't concern her one damn bit. Things got so bad for me I finally took to smoking like all my buddies were already doing. I rolled up whole pages of old funny books and smoked the shit until my lungs ached. I'd cut vines from the ivy that crawled up the sides of the chicken coop and puff on my homemade cigars until my head buzzed.

Oscar Zeta Acosta
That same night I went into the chicken coop, took my hooked knife which I used to pit peaches with, and carved her initials on the back side of my left hand … JA. Jane Addison. My first true love. The original Miss It. I was in such a fog that I forgot to cover it with a glove or something. At supper, right in front of my mother, my brother Bob said in a loud voice, What's that on your hand? I pretended not to hear. I quickly switched my fork to my right hand and put my left hand under the table. Hey, mom. Oscar cut himself, the bastard said. What? she cried out. She couldn't stand violence unless it was part of some beating to teach me respect.

Oscar Zeta Acosta
We had to fight the Okies because we were Mexicans! It didn't matter to them that my brother and I were outcasts on our own turf. They'd have laughed if we'd told them that we were easterners. To them we were greasers, spics and niggers. If you lived on the West Side, across from the tracks, and had brown skin, you were a Mexican. Riverbank is divided into three parts, and in my corner of the world there were only three kinds of people: Mexicans, Okies and Americans. Catholics, Holy Rollers and Protestants. Peach pickers, cannery workers and clerks.

Oscar Zeta Acosta
I'm an innocent, brown-eyed child of the sun. Just a peach-picker's boy from the West Side. Riverbank. My father's a janitor with only a third-grade education and my mother makes tortillas at 5:00 A. M. before she goes to the cannery.

Oscar Zeta Acosta