A Reading in Jackson Heights
Facing an audience for the first time.
After the release of Huellas Magazine’s Volume 3: Queens is the Future, the editors, Nestor David Pastor and Pablo Medina Uribe, invited the writers from the issue to an in-person reading. This past May, on a sweltering Sunday afternoon, we gathered at Terraza 7 in Jackson Heights. Before I read an excerpt from my story, A Trip to the Fair, I gave a summary and short backstory, which is expanded below, along with a reflection on the reading.
The Summary
A Trip to the Fair takes place at the dawn of modernity. The 1964 World’s Fair was coming to Queens, New York, promoting a future of technological progress. That my father managed to be there on opening day always seemed like a fantastic tale. But he was. He was living in Bogotá, thirty-one and raising five children, when he received a phone call from his friend, the owner of a travel agency, who needed a second driver to ferry tourists from Miami to New York.
The Backstory
Complications from a stroke would hobble my father for the remainder of his life. His mind recovered, but the left side of his body never did. On weekends, I would visit him in Staten Island. I often found him sullen, frustrated with his predicament. He always thought of himself as regal — not in a haughty way — for he possessed an aristocratic panache present in some men taller than the rest of us. The breakdown of his body had to be dispiriting. That he had done little upkeep on his physique, his sizable paunch contrasting his scrawny arms and legs, probably added to the decline. For those last ten years or so, with limited mobility, he felt alone and abandoned, moored to a bed set up in the living room. The remoteness of his home made it harder for his other children to see him when they were back in town. I was the only local, making the trek whenever I could, sometimes on the ferry, but mostly on the express bus from Manhattan.
I started asking him to tell me stories from the time before we were around, memories that are typically relegated to the other side of the wall once the kids show up. I saw how much reminiscing put him in a happier place, so I started showing up with a notebook, taking notes while trying to keep up with his narration, which I would rework afterwards. The following weekend or the next visit I would ask him to fill in any missing pieces.
The story of his trip to the World’s Fair came together this way. After a few weekends, I had an itinerary, with considerable details, including some that could be corroborated with a little research. I looked up weather conditions on particular days, the date of the Washington D.C. cherry blossoms in 1964, and the progress on I-95. I found articles on the subway fire. I studied maps from the World’s Fair, to understand the layout of the pavilions, and I watched films from opening day. It would take me more than a decade to finish the project.
The specifics of the trip were remarkable — the police escort to the hotel; the dance floor at the bar & grill; and of course, the rainy opening day — but I also pushed him to remember how he felt at particular moments during the trip, about his life, about his family, and about the U.S. These thoughts are in the paragraphs where it feels I’m inside his daydreams.
After the Reading
The nervousness I felt as I walked to the small stage dissipated the moment I started talking. After a short introduction and summary, I read a couple of pages from my piece. I knew those sentences intimately; they unrolled without effort. With full control of the words coming out of my mouth, I worried I was reading too fast. I made a conscious effort to go slower, pronouncing every word as clearly as possible. As I conveyed the tale about my father’s trip, there were also the implicit tones of a father-son relationship. Before I knew it, I had reached the end of my excerpt. In the immediate aftermath, seconds later, I remember wishing there had been an opportunity to engage with the audience. The faces were friendly and relaxed, and I wanted to know more about their reception of the five paragraphs I read. What questions did they have? Would they read the rest of it? Did I pick the right excerpt? With other writers waiting for their turn to read, this dialogue would have to wait. On my way home, I was elated, pleased with how everything turned out for my first reading, how enjoyable it had been, grateful for the time and effort from David and Pablo, and the experience they had created for us.
A Trip to the Fair was published one year ago on July 20, 2022. To access all the stories from the “Queens is the Future” volume, in English or Spanish, visit Revista Huellas at huellasmag.com.
To read more, see medium.com/matiz.
