A passenger train cut across the rolling hills of Southern California. The sun defied the time of year, bearing down a golden sheen across the landscape. Inside, men in suits and women with pearl necklaces filled the seats. They spoke softly or not at all. The train hummed beneath them, steady, like breath. Tucked by a window, sanding the narrow of a baseball bat, sat twenty-year-old Ted Williams. It had been four days since he departed Boston where he had just batted .327, smashed 31 home runs, 144 hits, 34 doubles and led the American League with 145 RBIs. All in 149 games.
It had been eight full months since he’d been home to San Diego.
The year was 1939. Ted had just completed his rookie season with the Red Sox. Hitler had just invaded Poland. It marked the end of a decade-long campaign of “Mexican Repatriation” that saw two million people, including over a million US citizens, deported or driven to leave through violent raids and the systemic stripping of their jobs and community. Such was the nature of white economic anxiety caused by the Great Depression. Unease lingered in Ted’s belly. Hence, why he busied his hands.
A little boy ran down the aisle.
He was five or six and thin and fast, darting between knees and bags. He ducked behind a newspaper, then behind a woman’s coat, and finally stopped when he saw Ted working his baseball bat. He watched as Ted held the bat across his knees and worked the handle carefully with a piece of sandpaper, turning it a fraction at a time, testing it with his palm, sanding again. Ted did not look up.
Finally, the boy said, “Are you a ball player?”
Ted kept sanding. “No. I’m a hitter,” Ted said.
The boy smiled. “Like Joe DiMaggio?”
Ted stopped and looked at the boy. His eyes clear and sharp, carrying something restless. “Better,” Ted said.
The boy smiled softly, unsure if it was a joke. Before he could say anything else the boy’s father appeared, a tall man in a gray suit who smelled faintly of tobacco. He apologized and softly nudged the boy forward. Ted noticed the father’s gentle touch. Admired it, even.
“It’s no trouble, sir,” Ted said.
The father studied him. “You’re Ted Williams,” the father said.
“Yes, sir.”
The father shook Ted’s hand firmly. “Hell of a season, son. Rookie of the Year. Should’ve been MVP.”
Ted only offered a faint smile but sat a little straighter as if praise tightened the strings that held him upright. The conductor announced San Diego, and the father and boy found their seats.
Ted’s stomach clenched.
In Boston, Ted was Ted Williams. The Kid. The promising prospect. The hitter who defied age and experience. Thousands of people stood when he swung his bat. A simple gesture he had made his entire identity. In San Diego, Ted lived with an ache. It sat on his chest. Made it difficult to breath and be merry. Despite the sunny disposition and cool Pacific breeze, San Diego was stolen by the Spanish and coerced into America. It was located on the literal and metaphorical border. Its citizenry lived in the in-between. Ted saw social inequities and racial prejudice but never chose a side. Though his father’s surname was Williams, his mother’s was Venzor.
The train roared into the station. Ted sheathed his bat and exited.
On the platform, the noise hit him first. It was loud and joyful and unrestrained. His stomach dropped. He knew immediately.
At the end of the platform, giving Ted the hero’s welcome he deserved, was a group of Mexican families. Men in work shirts and women in flowery dresses. Children waved, gleaming with admiration. A small boy held a painted sign. The letters were uneven but bold, written with pride:
“WELCOME HOME TED”
Ted froze. The echoes of his name grew faint as he retreated to the recesses of his subconscious. The place where he became in tune with the judgements of others. The place where he survived.
“TED! Ted! Ted. Ted…”
Around him, the mood shifted. White passengers slowed. Some stared. Others pretended not to see. A woman clutched her purse closer, fearing for her safety. A policeman eyed the group closely, waiting for a reason to assail. A reporter, on a tip that Ted was arriving that day, stood ready to pounce for a local hero’s comment. He too noticed the air. The reaction of the crowd. He then noticed Ted and realized the truth. The Mexicans were there for Ted. They are his family. Ted Williams is Mexican? Yes, Ted Williams is Mexican.
Ted’s throat tightened. His heart raced. In his mind he saw Boston, Fenway, the narrow right-field fence, the crowds. He saw headlines that did not mention batting averages. He heard the deafening silence of a crowd laying down their judgement. Ostracized and alone, he saw his future career continue on without him, held behind the cell bars of racial imprisonment.
Ted turned and ran.
He ran from the voices calling his name. He ran from his innocent young cousin holding the sign. He ran from his own family. Ted pushed through commuters and ducked past carts. He leapt over rotted fences. He did not stop. Not until his lungs burned and his legs shook. Until he escaped the realities of his own identity.
Back at the train station, the reporter lowered his camera. A smirk crawled across his face, knowing he had a scoop.
***
That night, when Ted finally emerged from the shadows, he found his front yard and driveway jammed with cars. Ranchera music escaped the windows. As did loud, jovial laughter.
Ted busted down the front door and unleashed a tirade on his unsuspecting aunts and uncles. His innocent young cousins were collateral damage, but he didn’t care. His face was flushed red, spewing obscenities and insults, fueled by the resentment he held for his mother. The hatred he had for his father. Fear and anxiety and insecurity erupted from the darkest depths of his soul.
“Are you all fuckin’ stupid? Trying to ruin me? Ruin my life? Why don’t you go mow the lawn. Take out the fuckin’ garbage. That’s all you dirty people are good for anyway.”
“Ted, no,” his young cousin whimpered. Tears glistened. Ted was his hero. The one he admired most had punched him in the heart.
“GO. BACK. TO MEXICO. I don’t want you here. Nobody wants you here. The smell in here makes me want to vomit. I’m the only one who can make something of myself and you all are too fucking blind to see it.” Ted heaved. He was met with silence.
Emerging from the back of the kitchen, was his Tía Teresa. Her glare met his. “What’s the problem, Ted?” she asked.
“The problem? The PROBLEM?”
Tia Teresa stood still. She dared him to say it.
“The problem is everyone will think I’M one of YOU,” Ted yelled.
“Are you not?”
The adults in the room didn’t budge. They had seen this from Ted before, the slight remarks, the denial. Ted fumed. His knees buckled. He turned and slammed the door on his way out.
Ted sat on the front porch steps, like he’d done so many nights as a kid, waiting for his mother to come home. His father had drifted in and out of his childhood like a drunken storm until the softest breeze blew him away completely. His mother was a fervent disciple of the Salvation Army. To Ted, she fed strangers before she fed him. Thus, the only place Ted ever felt certain of anything was the baseball field across the street at North Park. Some of the very first stadium lamps in San Diego lit his sanctuary below. They stayed on long after the rest of the neighborhood fell asleep. Swinging a bat deep into the night, Ted learned to turn emptiness into ambition. Shame into determination. When he finally saw his mother’s silhouette in the distance, he returned inside.
***
The next morning the headline on the San Diego Tribune announced Ted’s biggest fear.
“ROOKIE SENSATION TED WILLIAMS IS A MEXICAN”
Ted read it. His mouth grew arid. Fear turned to anger. He strangled the newspaper. His knuckles blanched, as if gripping his bat.
He wasn’t no Mexican. He was an American.
A ballplayer. A real one too, not like his Tio Saul, who could only scrounge the farm leagues and affiliates. Ted was a Big Leaguer and refused to consider any other fate. Baseball was the only thing he ever cared about. Actually, not even baseball; hitting.
Hitting was his salvation.
***
Across the street at North Park, Ted swung until his hands blistered. Between swings, he whispered his name like a prayer.
“You’re Ted Fuckin’ Williams. The greatest hitter who ever lived.”
The more he recited, the more he thought the entire ordeal would blow over. Perhaps no one would notice such a benign misunderstanding. The fine American men and women wouldn’t betray the greatness they saw with their own eyes. They would see he was devout in his patriotism and a mirror to their sensibilities.
A group of neighborhood boys watched Ted from the outfield. Ted waved for them to shag balls. Normally, he didn’t have to. The crack of his bat was a clarion call to all in the neighborhood, ready to help out the local hero. Instead, the boys rode off without answering. At the soda stand, the vendor refused to serve him. The man would not meet Ted’s eyes, refused to serve him. “Makes people uncomfortable,” the soda vendor said. “Bad for business.”
Ted shoved the stand. “I’m Ted-Fucking-Williams.”
The soda vendor threw the newspaper toward him. “Take it up with them.”
Ted rode his temper all the way downtown and stormed into the cigarette smoke-filled offices of the San Diego Tribune. The place skimped on two things: good air ventilation and integrity.
Ted screamed for the reporter, the culprit who could kill his dreams. The first man who raised his hand, Ted clocked him in the face. The burly editor scuttled over and Ted broke his nose. Ted fought until there were too many hands on him and then he fought some more.
When he woke up in a cell, his eye was swollen shut and his lip was split.
His mother came for him. Known around town as Salvation May, May Venzor Williams was well respected by city officials and police officers. She was pugnacious without being pushy and relentless without being disrespectful. So, it was no surprise when the guards opened the cell door for her, not for the Rookie of the Year. May wore black and smelled of soap and starch. Outside on the jailhouse steps, she cleaned Ted’s face with a cloth purse.
“This is a blessing,” his mother said. “Now you can serve God. Make something of yourself.”
“I’m going to be great,” Ted said. “You’ll see.”
She looked at him the way she always had, as if he were something to be corrected rather than understood. Ted knew now not to seek her comfort. Though hushed, she was internally overjoyed. Ted scorned her as if her offense was greater than his father’s. At least the alcoholic degenerate had the decency to leave outright. Abandonment is designed to be permanent and out of sight. Helps extinguish all possibility of hope.
***
When the call came from Boston, Ted lied. “I’m not Mexican, Mr. Yawkey, I’m Basque.” The line was quiet. The man on other end of the telephone line had as much knowledge of the Northern Spanish province as Ted did. He had only blurted out the first thing that came to mind, having heard his Tio Saul chastise his mother for using the lie around her own family. Basque meant European. European meant white. The eugenic mathematics were no match for the odds of racial prejudice. For Major League Baseball was a white man’s game. Ted had to play if he wanted to play.
No Negros. No Mexicans.
But Tom Yawkey, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, was no fool and certainly no social warrior. He was barely a businessman. Instead, he was a trust fund baby who’d lucked into funds from his adopted father. He spent the winters down on his plantation where he barked commands at his black laborers as if it were the days of Antebellum. And in the future, after Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, it was the Boston Red Sox who were the last team to integrate.
Ted’s contract was terminated.
***
Ted had no skills and little interest in education. The only North Star he’d ever known were the lights to North Park. Now those same lights taunted him. His Anglo surname had always afforded him the privilege of looking the other way when the San Diego police beat down a Mexican. The air reeked of citrus and scapegoating. Poor white men blamed their hardships on the Mexicans who undercut their entitlement. Ted was Williams, not Venzor. San Diego wasn’t his home anymore, it was Boston.
Ted wasn’t giving up his job. His dream. His life.
***
At the train station, all windows were closed. It was midnight. The station was empty. Around the corner, the only remaining buses were bound for Tijuana. Ted was trapped. Stuck in the in-between. An American who lived with the spoils of his white father, he had never felt the sting of bigotry. He only witnessed it from the comfort of cowardice. He was hopeless. Forsaken. Then came a lifeline.
“Hey, Ted!” a voice shouted from behind.
Ted turned to find a familiar face. Joe Tallamante lived two streets over. His dad organized sandlot games at North Park. He had a wicked spitball and a joy for the game that Ted found to be unserious. Baseball wasn’t fun, it was work. And the only measure of his worth. It’s why Ted didn’t care for defense. The only defensive stat in existence is for failure. Hitting successfully was measured in all sorts of units: distance, earshot, mathematics. It produced cheers from strangers and exorcised his pain.
Joe pointed to a group of young Mexican-Americans loading up on a ramshackle bus. They were barnstormers, heading through the desert, north along the Rockies and across to Kansas City.
“Join us,” Joe said.
Ted hesitated. He played in Fenway, not in hayfields. But Ted looked around. He had no other choice. If he wanted to get back to Boston, this was the fastest way and his only hope.
Ted boarded a bus full of mechanics and ranch-hands. Calloused hands and big smiles. Loud and alive. Ted sat at the front, alone.
***
The team played wherever it could. Fields carved from farmland. Outfields marked by cars and fences. Ted didn’t play. He practiced alone, measuring every movement of his own swing. He did not laugh with the others. He did not eat with them. He was with them but not one of them. Outside Santa Fe, in the land of the Acoma, taken by the butcher, Juan de Oñate, the bus succumbed to the inevitable. Smoke puffed from the hood. The guys gathered their tools, lifted the bus and got to work. They would save themselves. Ted had noticed a motel down the street. He would save himself.
On the motel door, a sign read: No Dogs, No Mexicans.
Ted entered.
After a warm bath, Ted stood before himself in the mirror. He cocked his hands and visualized the pitcher. He heard the crowd roar. He smelled the freshly-cut grass. “You’re Ted-Fucking-Williams, the greatest hitter of all time,” he said repeatedly. Each swing grew more ferocious, fueled by self-loathing.
A blast cut his reverie.
Out the window, Ted saw the bus kick into gear. Ted shot out of the motel, but watched the red taillights disappear into the mountains.
It would be a full day before Ted caught up with the bus. A Mexican farmer had stopped on his behalf, taking pity on his lonely thumb. Ted felt like he knew this man. He recognized his smile, full of missing teeth. He could have been his grandfather.
In a sugar beet field outside Denver, the truck puttered to a stop behind the parked bus. Ted had lost track of the days but could tell, by the attire of the crowd, it was Sunday. Post-church but pre-ballgame.
The players stood and wiped sweat from the morning’s work. They had exchanged hot meals for chopping wood, hauling beets, and fixing leaky sheds offered as housing by the Great Western Beet Company. These sheds, littered together, were known as Spanish Colonies. Once promoted as opportunity, the terms were rigged and wages poor. These families were more akin to sharecroppers.
Ted stood before the teammates he abandoned, humbled.
“I owe you boys an apology. I turned my back on you. Won’t happen again … if you’ll have me,” Ted said.
Joe offered Ted a bat, but pulled it back, pointing to the pigsty. Ted worked that muddy pit without complaint. The stench and filth redeemed him from his treason as he watched the guys ready for the ballgame. Ted was always on the outside looking in. Blame partly fell on him. His attitude. It didn’t matter that his Tio Saul taught him the game he loved. His drive to be better than everyone made it hard to be one of them, no matter a man’s culture or color. But here, in the Spanish Colonies of an agricultural conglomerate preying on men trying to build a better life for their families, Ted was welcomed. The pork tamales tasted better. The masa, perfectly moist. Salsa, fresh and nourishing. A young woman tore succulent flesh from a goat rotating above a spit. She loaded it on a plate with fresh corn tortillas and rice and gave it to Ted. He went back for seconds. It reminded him of his first pro-am game where he was paid in hamburgers and milkshakes.
Joe handed Ted the bat. He had earned the right to play.
For the hundreds of families, good food and baseball were their weekly reprieve from the grueling work and blistering indignities. Ted could relate. Though he found in baseball a reprieve from his lack of food. The men and women played for community. Homeplate was made of wood. Stuffed canvas sacks made the bases. Train tracks made for the left field fence. Right was lined with cars and trucks. They played to feel human. Ted played to feel worthy.
When Ted finally swung, the bat thundered. Children stopped playing. Men removed their hats. Women stared. The ball flew farther than anyone thought possible. A moonshot lost in the clouds only to scream down and smash a car window five rows deep. The crowd whistled and hollered. Ted felt alive. Redeemed. Vindicated. He couldn’t wait to get back to Fenway. As soon as they arrived in Kansas City, Ted planned to skip the game and catch the first train to Chicago. Then Cleveland, Buffalo and onward to Boston.
But Ted didn’t account for the spectacle that was Satchel Paige.
***
Joe had originally been coy about their opponents in Kansas City. “We’re gonna face the best pitcher in the game,” Joe had promised. Ted thought maybe Lefty Grove or Dizzy Dean.
Tall, lanky, Satchel was a man who knew all the angles and the importance of flirting with the crowd. Ted watched as Satchel walked a batter. Then another. And another. Loaded the bases with no outs. Ted turned to leave. It wasn’t his day. Then the crowd stood. Cheers grew. Anticipation shot through the air.
Ted took notice. A ruse was about to unfold.
The ball exploded in the catcher’s mitt. Again and again. In a matter of blinks, Satchel struck out three consecutive hitters in nine pitches. The bleachers beneath Ted rumbled. Now he was the one who was awestruck. Greatness seemed to exist beyond the altar of numbers and statistics. This wasn’t baseball—it was poetry with a fastball.
Boston could wait.
In the dugout, Joe introduced Ted to Satchel.
“My uncle used to pull that trick,” Ted said. “Except he’d go to the other team and collect bets first.”
Satchel smiled. “In the Negro Leagues, we don’t eat our own. A courtesy we don’t extend to outsiders.”
Ted recognized his equal, even superior, and instead of shrinking, he thrilled at the challenge. “Give me all you got,” Ted said.
Paige obliged with eleven pitches. Fouls, balls, near-misses. Heat, curve, overhand, submarine—anything to push the limits of physics and man. The ballpark shook. It was electric. Ted had never experienced anything like it. In the end, Ted had met his match and realized an invaluable truth. He didn’t need Boston and Tom Yawkey to play against the titans of the game. He didn’t need to hide who he was. He didn’t need to be white to prove his worth.
From right field, Ted witnessed Josh Gibson hit a home run that sailed so far Ted thought it struck an airplane. The field was full of guys who deserved to play in the Major Leagues but couldn’t. Ted held on to his belief that the door was still cracked open for him. If not Boston, maybe some other team. Still, barnstorming with the Negro League players showcased the best of America. They transcended wins and losses and played for their people. Each game was a relief from repression. On the diamond, they were patrons of cultural enlightenment. Ted too had been afforded this blessing but did not know how to truly embrace it.
Unbeknownst to Ted, Jorge Pasquel sat in the stands. The charismatic titan of Mexican baseball had come to Kansas City to recruit Satchel and Josh to his burgeoning Mexican League. He promised high salaries that the Negro Leagues couldn’t offer and the respect that the Major Leagues refused to. Pasquel offered Ted.
“I’ve never been to Mexico,” Ted said.
“Never? Pasquel asked.
“My mother was born in Chihuahua.”
Pasquel puffed his cigar. “What’s her family name?”
“Venzor.”
“Teodoro … Teo. Teo Venzor. Rolls off the tongue, no? Mexico is good weather, better food. Little love, lots of flare. I followed you in the papers. Tom Yawkey is a damn fool.”
Ted sized up Pasquel. “His loss.”
“America’s loss.” Pasquel glanced to Satchel and Josh and grew serious, recalling a memory. “On my seventh birthday, the United States Navy invaded my hometown. Stuck their noses in our business. Stole from my neighbors. My family. My friends.”
Ted considered this. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Mr. Yawkey could afford to lose you because Major League Baseball is an illegal monopoly. They control their players como paisonos. Revenge, Señor Venzor, is patient.”
The fastest way to Boston, Pasquel explained, was not by train, but envy. When Yawkey and the other owners got a whiff of the Mexican League’s success, they’d come poaching, no matter creed or color.
Ted was conflicted. He didn’t want to leave for Mexico. America had given him everything. But perhaps it had also taken more than he realized. His father’s soul vanquished in the Philippines. A casualty of the new American Empire, picking the territorial bones of old Spanish Kings. His mother had endured racial discrimination. To overcome lusting eyes and vicious slurs, she hardened her resolve. America made them both cold, distant and hard to love.
***
In Mexico, Ted grew to love the country he’d once spat on. The off-season jaunt turned into a full spring and summer season.
Ted, Satchel and Josh strolled leisurely into restaurants, cafes and movie theaters. They weren’t treated like Gods, but like men. Ted’s game changed. His fingers no longer choked the bat, they danced. No longer did he see the crowd as extractive – channeling his hits and strikeouts through their own hardships. Instead, Ted absorbed their desires and jubilation, playing for the privilege of the game. Fans cheered him in Spanish. Most of all, Ted played defense.
But America was changing too.
Just as Pasquel had promised, a scout arrived with whispers of integration. The scout asked Ted, “Will you take the first step?”
Ted looked at the Mexican crowd waving flags with his adopted name. Ted could not shake the betrayal. By his team and his country.
“You, Mr. Venzor, are exactly what the Boston Red Sox need.”
Ted froze. In the same way he froze on that fateful train platform. Ted was sure the scout would come to his senses and recognize him but never did. Ted had spent his whole life swinging at ghosts—at shame, at anger, at the lie that he had to be someone else to be great.
Now he knew better.
Greatness wasn’t in the uniform or the league or his batting average. It was the courage to stand as the man he truly was. To honor Joe and the barnstormers. To honor his mother. And himself.
For the first time, Ted Williams—Teodoro Venzor—felt ready to step up to the plate without flinching. Ready to be whole. His destiny was not in statistics but in representation. He had learned to play with heart and compassion. He could change the game from the inside. For the kids who were denied entry into Fenway. He didn’t need to outrun who he was. He needed to embrace it.
“Okay,” Ted told the scout. “Take me to Boston.”
Ted planned to show Tom Yawkey and the Boston faithful that he was a new player. But, that winter, war came to America.
***
Ted’s parents met in Hawaii. His father was stationed there after WWI, after the Philippines. He would claim he fought under Theodore Roosevelt and his famous Rough Riders. Meanwhile, his mother established herself as a young soldier in the Salvation Army. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor jolted Ted to his sense of duty. His deep-rooted sense of patriotism.
“What’s your name?” the Army recruiter asked.
Ted considered. His mother’s name had grown comfortable.
“Ted Venzor,” Ted said.
The Army recruiter banished Ted to the 200th Regiment. The Bushmasters. Made up entirely of Mexican-American and Native American young men from California and Arizona. During runs, white soldiers ridiculed them. Spat on them. Ted saw in those soldiers what he was now ashamed that his uncles, aunts and young cousins saw in him. What he had revealed himself to be. A man with rage in his heart. Contempt masked in fear. Instead of loving those who loved him, he’d turned his back. And in that shame, cowardice festered. Ted saw in those ignorant white soldiers what he could have become. So he rose above. He became a leader, a sergeant.
Ted and the 200th were sent to the Philippines. The land where his father fought. The jungle where his father had lost his soul. Ted fought in the mud alongside the sons of men his father may have wounded or killed. The incarnate irony of war and empire. Rain pounded the men. Daily. Nightly. Relentlessly. Under the canopy, Ted understood how war was responsible for his father’s shortcomings and short fuse. Why his father found more comfort in the bottle than in the mirror. Why he left his family. In the midst of battle, solace washed over Ted. A reconciliation of sorts, with a ghost, a memory. With the little boy inside of him who craved to be loved by his father.
Ted and his men fought hard. They were brave in the face of insurmountable odds. But ultimately, they were abandoned. Abandonment seemed to run in Ted’s veins like a sickness, passed down from generation to generation. Ted and his fellow units were overwhelmed and cut off from supplies. The opponents were unremitting. The terrain equally unforgiving. There was no choice.
Ted and his men were forced to surrender at Bataan.
***
The men marched in columns through the jungle and rice paddies. Mosquitos the size of fists preyed with an insatiable bloodlust. The sweltering heat suffocated all hope. Ted witnessed the random cruelty of the Japanese bayonet. Logic had no determination to its impale and execution. He and his fellow men had become less than human in the eyes of their captors, now the victims of a feeling he’d once espoused. Except there was no prejudice in their violence and terror. The Japanese didn’t see white or Mexican or Native American. They saw dishonor. Men who valued survival over collective sacrifice.
They saw American.
Though Ted’s eyes witnessed the atrocities of war, and his body buckled from starvation and thirst, he maintained his strength of mind. Regret kept his spirits. Not for his current malaise. He was damn proud to fight alongside men like Chavez, Rodriguez and Alvarado. He had learned to be part of a unit. He had accepted his culture. His only regret was that it had taken him so long. His blessings were in vain. But it was this regret that pushed him to endure. To focus. To be grateful for his Tio Saul and Tia Teresa. For his mother.
Living in constant fear made Ted’s mouth grow bitter. His nose smelled nothing but humid death. His ears heard primal cries. The sun blistered their heads. Hope began to fade.
But suddenly, Ted heard the crack of a baseball bat. It echoed through the trees. The incessant buzz of flies over corpses transformed into the whizz of Satchel’s fastball. His nose tingled with the spicy aroma of freshly-unwrapped tamales. The cries of agony bled into the proud cheers of his family awaiting his return at the train station.
Day became night. The sun above, so mercilessly taunting him, transformed into those nighttime lights above North Park. Once again, Ted returned to his porch steps staring at his destiny. Those lights illuminating his path to redemption, calling him home.
To his beloved country.
And his people.
***
Eric Salinas Nebel is a Mexican-American writer from Houston who spent summers with family in the Rio Grande Valley, lived in Spain and graduated from The University of Texas at Austin. For the last 10 years he has worked in the entertainment industry and recently published his debut book, Hispanic in the Box: Inside the Power of Latin-Americana. From his time mentoring at Inside Out Writers and hitting the pavement for grassroots political campaigns, Eric’s writing explores themes of duplexity grounded in cultural empowerment. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.
Instagram/Threads: eric.nebel
