“There’s only one race, the human race, with different cultures,” says the award-winning author Victor Villaseñor. “We need to start coming together, uniting.”
That is what the Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving is all about, and Victor would like to invite everyone to his Oceanside home to take part in it.
Victor did not learn to read until he was 20, a fact he believes allowed him to maintain a strong spiritual connection to universal stories untarnished by formal education.
The Snow Goose tradition started when he was promoting his acclaimed book Rain of Gold. An Indigenous man told him, “Rain of Gold is a book that shows the world how we indigenous people feel and think about the Mother Earth and the Father Sky… The sky has got to become sacred and beautiful again. And we look up at the eagle soaring. And then, our Mother Earth. Bring those back.”
Not knowing how to ‘bring them back,’ Victor promised to consult with the spirits of his grandmothers.
That night, he dreamt of flying across the sky with snow geese as they spoke to each other.
“The big male in front breaks the wind so that the females and the young use 30% less energy to keep up. But the big males that they keep changing in front don’t lead. They ‘follow in front’…Because if males led, they’d go too fast, and the females and the children would run out of energy, and they can’t follow,” he says.
The males also protect the flock from predators. “And that’s the way humans used to live, before organized religions and organized governments.”
He says when he woke up, his grandmother pushed him to write everything down, and that was how the Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving book was born, in one night’s writing.
He believes Thanksgiving is the most wonderful celebration the United States has, a celebration of peace and respect between the Pilgrims and the Native people.
“So, I want to bring that cooperation globally,” he says.
Everybody is a Writer
“I didn’t write my books. I’m not in charge of it. I receive and I give…,” says Victor.
His masterpiece Rain of Gold, published in 1991, tells the story of his family’s migration from Mexico to Southern California.
He says the ability to tell this tale was given to him by Indian knowledge.
For Victor, this sharing of information is the backbone of a writer’s existence. “As soon as you start taking credit, you develop ego and self-importance,” he says.
“I don’t know any more than you do. I just have experiences I can share with you,” he explains.
Victor says the French author Albert Camus summarized for him the tools to become a writer. “He said, ‘The story of one human being told deeply enough and well enough is the story of all humanity.’ I totally agree.”
Victor’s book Burro Genius is one of his most well-known works. He says this intimate tale of the hardships of his childhood has served as a bridge to the souls of others.
“If I write truthfully enough and well enough about intimate little things, then other people are going to say, ‘oh, I’m not alone in the world.’”
Victor believes everyone should be a writer, creating a journal written out in longhand, not typed.
“One for every year,” he says. “And then you go back 10 years later…and they give you a reflection of who you used to be.” He says a journal can be a place to write what might cause us embarrassment and work through it.
“The opposite of depression is expression,” he says he was once told. “When you express something in a journal and be creative, it takes it out of your overcrowded mind and makes room for something wonderful to come in.”
He also encourages everyone to write their family history, their “Bible” as he calls it.
“Interview parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles,” he urges. “Write your family Bible. Because the time has come for humanity to part the Red Sea, the global Red Sea of doubt and fear. We get rid of doubt and fear collectively, and we pass to other side as the Promised Land, full of hope and love and harmony. And the byproduct is peace. It’s time for us all to become our own writers.”
Victor explains, “When Rain of Gold first came out, a woman in a crowd leapt up and said, ‘You wrote about my family, and I’m German.’ That’s what good writing does. Good writing, everyone can identify with it. It goes beyond cultures.”
Burro Genius is a universal tale as well, he says. “The story has not changed for kids in school today, so the story is universal and everlasting.”
The Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving
1302 Stewart St.
Oceanside, CA 92054
November 20, beginning at 1 p.m. / a partir de la 1 p.m.
Due to Covid precautions, please bring your own picnic lunch.
Favor de traer su propia comida, debido a Covid.
https://www.victorvillasenor.com/snow-goose-global-thanksgiving/
