José Yglesias

            “Ybor City is a colony in the mother country. It’s a pacified village in Vietnam,” he said, “and if you don’t work for the revolution then you’re just jiving.” And he looked around to see if he had convinced anyone. The filmmakers were noncommittal; what mattered to them was their film, not Ybor City.

            I summoned all my sophistication and said, hoping my voice sounded light-hearted, “I’m an old man – I can’t do it!” But I was very hurt and Ralph left before the filmmakers, so that I was not able to have it out with him. After they were all gone, I sat in my study and brooded. I’d failed, I thought, I’d simply failed at passing on to my own son how I felt about my hometown, a feeling that was all the more galling because I foolishly agreed with him, yes, that Ybor City was a pacified village and no one had fought for it. Worse, I decided that the very hope that I could pass on some sort of inspirational tradition was literary nonsense, an attempt to compensate for the miserable facts of life. I looked at the bookcase ruefully, afraid to take down the little book I’d written about the readers’ strike because, in this mood, I’d be sure to find it false.

            Yet it was that little book that I thought had done more for Ralph than the many summers down there. 

The Truth About Them, pp. 188