A big burly man sits in the Winnie the Pooh section of the
children’s area at Gilroy’s Barnes
&
amp; Noble bookstore and reads aloud in his soft melodic voice,
so that we have to lean forward to really hear.
A big burly man sits in the Winnie the Pooh section of the children’s area at Gilroy’s Barnes & Noble bookstore and reads aloud in his soft melodic voice, so that we have to lean forward to really hear.
Dressed in grey dress shirt, darker grey slacks and jacket, a black felt hat decorated with pins commemorating a reading he gave at the National Latino Book Fair, his shoes well worn but clean and polished, and his salt and pepper moustache giving him a distinguished look, he talks of his passion for getting his thoughts down on paper. “I’ve been a laborer all my life, and I realized I had nothing to give my kids. I had nothing to leave to them except my broken hands.”
I first met Ruben Dozal, Jr., at a Gilroy Writers’ Group meeting at the Gilroy Library, where he read selections from his poetry. One of the other writers in the group (a former big city reporter) leaned over and said to me, “Now there’s a story!” And she was right.
Dozal weeps as he recounts the harshness of being deported to Mexico by the border patrol even though he was born and raised in America, of cleaning irrigation ditches and moving sprinkler pipes a 100 hours a week for five years, driving 18 wheelers 500 miles without stopping for a break, of 10 years spent in bac-breaking field work, yet often not having money for food on the table. He weeps for the times of missing his children’s growing up years because he was on the road or working nights: “I knew very little about my daughter’s first seven years and that has stayed in the corners of my heart, never letting go,” he writes.
His faith in God and his love for his family are the strongest themes tying the disparate topics of his writing together. As he reads from “Bits and Pieces of My Life,” a selection from his book called, “My Dad’s Thoughts,” he is not afraid to show the emotion he feels as a 57-year-old father and husband who has stayed on a positive course in spite of many setbacks, of someone who is discovering how to creatively express his true inner self. He gets through to the last line: “The truth is that my hand is still on fire and I cannot turn it off.”
In his poem “Embarrassment,” he tells about the shame of learning to read and write as an older adult.
He recalls how insecure he felt the first time his reading tutor expected him to read aloud on his own. His granddaughter’s daycare teacher who had first suggested that he attend the adult Reading Program when she realized he had a flair for words, in spite of being illiterate. It was a turning point.
“It has really opened my eyes to the wonder of words,” Dozal told his Sunday audience made up of both children and adults. He was there in support of Vision Literacy, a non-profit program that matches volunteer reading tutors with those who are trying to improve their reading skills. The audience was clearly moved by his writing, breaking into applause several times. “Can you come read to my students sometime?” kindergarten teacher Janet Londgren asked, and Dozal’s eyes lit up.
“They tell me that I have come a long way in my writing, but I feel that I have not yet written the beginning of what I am supposed to write,”Dozal said.
