native son

The freedom to engage with books like Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and Nathan McCall’s “Manchild in the Promised Land.” offered a connection to our personal stories and collective histories while augmenting our official instruction which emphasized the histories and accomplishments of white men.

And the great James Baldwin in his classic 1955 analysis of race in America, Notes of a Native Son, wrote:

But there is something else to Oshu’s love for its native son.

Though the stadium in Hermosillo, the Sonora state capital, has long been named after Fernando Valenzuela, here in Etchohuaquila — population maybe 500 — there is no public monument to the native son, now more than four decades after the heady summer of Fernandomania.

Angeli-Chansley was a true native son of the district, he told me, though its exact confines have changed somewhat during his near four decades of life because of redistricting.