QUE DIOS TE BENDIGA Abigail Moreno Zavala

Que Dios te Bendiga

by Abigail Morena Zavala

WRIT 1122: Rhetoric and Academic Writing | Professor Blake Sanz

WHEN I WAS SIX YEARS OLD, MY MOM ASKED ME TO PUT on a fluffy white dress and pinned on a sparkly crown to my head. I was being fussy, and I didn’t want to do anything but lie in my abuelita’s air-conditioned room watching cartoons.

So she told me I was going to become a princess. And I believed her.

All of us—my aunts, uncles, cousins, abuela, my mom, and I— packed into three cars and we drove to a giant church towards the center of the city. It was early. The sun was just rising from the horizon as a light breeze made my aunts and I huddle closer together. The birds chirped as we walked into the brightly lit church and through the creaky pews towards the far right side of the building.

It felt like several hours had passed before my mom finally took my hand and guided me to the front of the church where the pastor stood next to a basin of holy water. He grabbed my face as he wiped the holy water on my forehead in the shape of a cross.

I wasn’t receiving my first communion. I was becoming a princess.

When I was nine years old, my mom took me to a church near our house and had me join their choir. I loved singing! Any chance I could get, I would sing. And, because my mom loved to hear me sing, joining the choir was something I’d gladly do for her. I mean, my

friends were in the choir too, which was pretty fun. I didn’t know what I was singing.

I would just flip through a thick binder filled with pages of lyrics, and sing out whatever words were written on them. I didn’t know what any of the words meant. Our choir teacher would tell us things like, “Sing with more emotion! Think about who you’re singing for!” And, honestly, I’d get confused. These lyrics meant nothing to me: they were in Spanish, they talked about not sinning and supporting some guy who’s always watching you, and I only sang them because I liked singing. The only emotion I sang with was joy, knowing that I would get cookies after the service.

At some point, however, I got tired of going to practice every week, and when I told my mom I no longer wanted to go, she yelled at me for being so disrespectful towards God. I didn’t understand what it meant to “disrespect God,” but it felt horrible being yelled at, so I kept going to practice and never complained to my mom again.

When the leader of the choir group had to move away and the group no longer had to meet, I was happy. My mom was disappointed, but she never made me join another choir ever again.

When I was eleven years old, I yelled at my mom for placing a tall, lit candle under one of the shelves in our kitchen. The smoke from the candle was leaving marks under the shelf, and I told her it was a fire hazard.

She said I was evil.

The candle was lit for La Virgin de Guadalupe, so that she could protect us. I cried. What could the candle be protecting us from if it nearly caused a fire in our house? Why was I seen as a horrible person? I didn’t want to hurt anybody!

The next day, my mother moved the candle. She placed it above the sink, and it only stayed lit at night. I still saw it as a hazard, but I never said anything about it, and I apologized to my mom for hurting her. It hurt me to see her so angry.

When I was twelve years old, my mom placed a dish full of dry white rice on top of the microwave

“Sing with more emotion! Think about who you’re

singing for!” These lyrics meant nothing to me: they

were in Spanish, they talked about not sinning and

supporting some guy who’s always watching you,

and I only sang them because I liked singing. The

only emotion I sang with was joy, knowing that I

would get cookies after the service.

and asked us to put all of our spare change into the platter when we could. When I asked her why she put it on top of the microwave, she laughed and said it was because we used the microwave so often to heat up food, so she knew we would see it often enough to remember to put our change in it.

I got angry when I asked her what we were saving up for and she said it was for the church.

We were saving up money to give to the church?

It wasn’t even a month before that we had been left cold in the dark because our electricity and gas were shut off for missing a payment.

I told her that we needed that money more than the church, and she yelled at me.

She said that if we gave to the church, they would give us something back. But I was smarter then—I knew the church never gave you anything back. They only gave you “prayers” that never worked. Prayers didn’t keep us out of the cold, or put food on the table, or keep us clothed. We had to work for what we had, and “prayers” had nothing to do with that.

But I was smarter then—I knew the church never

gave you anything back. They only gave you

“prayers” that never worked. Prayers didn’t keep us

out of the cold, or put food on the table, or keep

us clothed. We had to work for what we had, and

“prayers” had nothing to do with that.

From that day forward, I would steal quarters from the dish and spend them on scented pencils at school. The church didn’t need our spare change. I needed it more than them.

When I was thirteen years old, my mom held on tightly to my hand as she wiped away her tears with the other. I’d never seen her cry before. And I knew I never wanted to see her cry again.

Her eyes were bloodshot red. The bags under them were deep. Her hands, although holding on to me tightly, felt fragile and weak… ready to just… let go… She was tired. She asked me to pray with her. And I did.

I held her hand as she prayed for our family, for us to be able to afford the house, for better health, “Que Dios nos proteja.” That God protects us.

I didn’t know who I was speaking to… who was listening. So I made some wishes… .

“God, please let us keep our house. Please keep my parents together. Please let us be happy.”

Everything was okay for a while. Until one day, I came home. My mom looked at me, again, with her tired eyes and she said, “Abigail, perdimos la casa”.

We lost the house.

I went and cried in my mother’s arms. I was hysterical.

We lost the house. It was my fault. I didn’t pray enough. I asked God to help us, to save us and protect us. And he didn’t listen. It was my fault. I didn’t believe enough.

EXPLANATION OF QUE DIOS TE BENDIGA

Reading Langston Hughes’ “Salvation,” I was immediately reminded of my childhood and the times I spent in church wondering why I was there and what the point of any of it was. Hughes was able to describe the overwhelming and almost traumatic experience of being “saved” at church in such an artistic way that it evoked so many emotionally charged memories from my childhood and convinced me of an argument that wasn’t explicitly stated. Being forced to support and practice a religion without being given the chance to understand and develop your own healthy relationship with spirituality as a child can have long-lasting, harmful effects. It can lead to a child feeling guilty for not understanding something so important to their parents or even lead them to resent religion.

I agreed with Hughes’ overall argument, and so, I kept it in my cover of his piece. However, I used different rhetorical devices and commonplaces within my piece in order to make the argument more applicable to an audience of Mexican-American Catholics who grew up during the 2000s. Langston Hughes was a famous black writer who contributed greatly to the Harlem Renaissance from the 1920s until his death in the 1960s. He wrote of the shared experience of the black community during that era, which made him distinguishable from other black writers of his time. Many other writers had begun to write more about themselves, while he specifically wanted his work to be accessible to a community of black people who could relate to it. I am a 19-year-old, Hispanic, agnostic woman writing this piece for a college publication. To me, this piece helped me explore the role religion played in my life growing up, and it allowed me to explain the complicated relationship I’ve had with religion to an audience of people who probably don’t get it.

In the case of Hughes, he wrote about experiences he lived through in a Black, Christian Church; specifically, about being saved and witnessing the Holy Ghost. Although there were certain sermons at the church I grew up going to where I witnessed the Holy Spirit being evoked, I, personally, was not so greatly impacted by these images as a child in the way that Hughes was. This is why, in my piece, instead of having just one defining story that shaped my relationship with Catholicism, I included several stories that ultimately made me develop a sort of skepticism and distrust of the religion.

I also included images that commonly reflect the shared experience of growing up in a Hispanic household in America. Tall jar candles with images of Catholic saints and phrases like “Que dios te bendiga” (“God bless you”) are commonly used within Hispanic households and hold large cultural significance. They are things that we use when we are going through tough times.

Overall, however, I used Hughes’ method of telling personal stories in order to establish a strong ethos in relation to an argument. Because a reader learns that what we are arguing about is something that we have personally lived through and suffered the consequences of, we are found more credible and we are able to evoke some sort of empathy and understanding from the reader, and that makes the reader more likely to accept our argument. In writing a personal narrative, the use of dialogue (for example, my mom talking to me in my piece and Hughes’ aunt talking to him in his piece) and detailed imagery allow for a reader almost to relive these moments themselves.

I was also able to use asyndeton in my piece much as Hughes used it in his own. This rhetorical device allowed us to develop a rhythm within our pieces, and, much like Hughes I was able to use it within the final sentences in my work in order to dramatize the ending and express the guilty and overbearing thoughts I had in that moment in my life. Each short line is followed by a pause, which gives a reader time to fully absorb and understand the emotions attached to those thoughts.

Langston Hughes’ “Salvation” was a piece reflective of religion within black communities of Hughes’ time and was able to indirectly convey the argument that forcing religion onto children may lead to them developing an unhealthy and harmful relationship with spirituality and religion. By using Hughes’ rhetorical strategies with my own cultural commonplaces, I was able to convey a similar argument, but to a different audience.

image provided by author

Abigail Moreno Zavala is a sophomore at DU majoring in molecular biology with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience. She was born and raised in Greeley, Colorado; however, she spent many of her winters with her family in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico. Although she is passionate about learning about the brain and hopes to become a neuroengineer, she also values expressing herself through many artistic mediums including making music, writing, and doodling. She ultimately aspires to live a healthy and fun life and looks forward to the many exciting adventures she will take on within her lifetime.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

During the winter quarter of my freshman year of college, I was prompted by my writing professor to analyze a rhetorical piece by Langston Hughes called “Salvation” and implement some of the rhetorical methods Hughes used in his piece into my own transformation of his work. This came around the same time I had started actively pursuing therapy for my anxiety and reading Hughes’ piece had immediately reminded me of how a resentment of religion I’d developed in my childhood had led to me feeling disconnected from my own spirituality which ultimately kept me disconnected from my super Catholic mother. It was through writing this piece that I found a form of therapy and was able to really analyze moments from my childhood and begin to understand how they might have shaped me into the person I am today.

I was vulnerable when I wrote this piece, which not only allowed me to establish an ethos and give my piece a unique and powerful voice, but personally allowed me to become comfortable with expressing the vulnerable parts of myself. I hope that a reader can get that from this piece, too, and that they’re inspired to confront any parts of their past they keep wanting to run away from and are motivated to also put themselves out into the world without fear.