The Self-Made Stranger
by Rey ArmenterosWhy pretend that you are marginalized? Am I that different? I could make an angle from the whole Cuban thing. I think that’s what certain publishers want. Recently, my book of essays got declined, and the publisher argued that it was interesting but that their publishing house focused on the disenfranchised. It was their brand.
And I put some thought to this. My essays focused on the plights of an artist. He had expressed interest when I had first sent him my query letter with the pitch. He thought it could fit with his label, and he requested the manuscript. I waited six months for the response. At one point, the publisher asked me some questions about how I envisioned aspects of the book, which gave me an optimistic outlook on his reception of it. Eventually, he rejected it based on their publishing philosophy. As he explained, they focused on underrepresented voices. I already knew that, certainly, but I had felt that an hispanic artist with a history of obstacles would comfortably fit within these parameters.
What can be more underrepresented than an artist that has been doing it his own way throughout most of his career? Someone who doesn’t fit his art into an accepted model of what the public considers an artist? A person who has had to struggle because ot this, who has affected his family because nothing is coming out of his work? This struggle was recreated in many of the essays, and I felt it was simpatico with the publisher’s needs.
There are all types of marginalized people, but I can’t think of one more marginalized than an artist that doesn’t fit into any mold. Then again, if marginalized is becoming an industry, there are very specific types most of the public has in mind, and such an artist who essentially constructed his own plight voluntarily would be left out of that marginalization.
Back in my Miami days, I was once told by someone in the gallery circuit in Coral Gables that I would have a much better chance if I labeled myself a Cuban painter. She was being serious. I knew what she was talking about. Cubans were escaping communism and dying of AIDS; of course there was big money in the martyrdom of likable people from weak countries. But I wasn’t that type of Cuban. I wasn’t going to make anything happen with communism because I never fled from it, unlike my parents and their parents, who might have made better artists with more pertinent messages in their work. I didn’t identify with politics. I just liked well-done comic books. I loved such things, and I saw myself becoming one of these great comic creators one day.
That never happened, but it still informs the artist today, the one that identifies with those years of love growing and then finally lost. I don’t have that fringe angle many artists have because it wouldn’t come natural. It would be that bullshit act during an art school painting critique when the accomplished bullshitters attained the most credibility, and therefore, the most success.
To be the type of artist I am is already fringe enough. I was coming from a different direction when I thought I was going to make it one day. I ignored the normal course, and I fled this country for personal reasons and not political, and when I came back, I noticed I had cut all ties with most everyone I knew. The more savvy grad school successes understand that you weren’t going to get a thing from getting a masters degree; the smart ones went to grad school to make important connections with people that were going to help them in their careers. I had dropped all my connections with one airplane trip, choosing a meandering path to success. Having lost everything that tied me to a social network, I breathed out as if a breath of fresh air, claiming now I can make it all work. I made a valiant effort of this folly, but it has gotten me what most people would have surmised: nothing. And I suppose if I were wily enough, I could turn this piece of foolishness into my artistic fringe, and I am sitting here now, actually thinking it over, because it’s the only angle I have left to hold onto.
