Chicanonautica: Writing in a Mass Deportation

 

by Ernest Hogan

There’s an old joke about someone asking a centipede how he walks with all those legs. He had never thought about, so he did . . . And never walked again. 

I tend not to think much about how I write. I just let it happen for the most part. Teaching a class about it forced me to think about it.  I’m happy to report that I’m not suffering the fate of that poor centipede. 

Good thing I only have two legs.

It actually has helped. I do have a process, albeit an eccentric one that is always open to change.

After the election, a story about mass deportation seemed like a natural. My inspiration usually comes from slugging it out with the real world. I loved hearing Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison talk about getting pissed off and it resulting in a story. 

I didn’t as much decide to write it as much as it started happening. It’s how it goes with me, the story manifests in my brain, and doesn’t stop until it’s written. A persistent story can keep at it for years, decades . . .

I always have stories in my brain, clamoring for my attention. Maybe someday there will a drug for it, complete with a long list of horrifying side-effects.

The idea came when I imagined being stopped at a checkpoint. Some dialogue started, and it came alive.

Then I came up with the title “Once Upon a Time in a Mass Deportation.”

I made some notes, and wrote an opening, then decided to wait until the actual mass deportation started, figuring on getting some gonzo inspiration.

Boy, am I glad I did.

Even though I was aiming for blood-thirsty satire, what I had come up with was way too rational. I had no idea that the reality would be so bugfuck. 

Rod Serling said he has to tone down reality for the Twilight Zone. Something a senator would say in real life would only be acceptable on TV from a Martian.

Things are different in the 21st century. In the glut of information and disinformation, people will believe anything, but reject reality even when it bites them on the ass. What’s a Chicano sciifista to do?

I kept up on things, taking notes on the extreme weirdness. Then I made it into a story. Not as much plotting it out but composing it like a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, a mural by Diego Rivera, or a comics panel by Will Elder clogged with “chicken fat” details. I turned my surrealist tendencies loose. Watched some Luis Buñuel, Buster Keaton, and Marx Brothers. It’s such a joy to indulge in being myself.

I’m so glad I’m not a journalist.

I think it does the dirty job. Now it’s after me to get it published.

It also got me warmed up to come up with a story to write as part of the online writing class I’m teaching. My confidence is ridiculous. 

Should be fiendish fun.

And even educational.

I thank Tezcatlipoca for my grotesquely large, powerful, and overactive imagination. And I make the occasional sacrifice.

Ernest Hogan is always imagining different worlds, sometimes better than ours, sometimes worse. Then he writes about them.