• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Blogs / TALES OF TORRES 4.07.19 “I WAS A TEENAGE ESSAY WHORE”

TALES OF TORRES 4.07.19 “I WAS A TEENAGE ESSAY WHORE”

April 7, 2019 by Tia Tenopia

A bit like Claude Rains in “Casablanca,” I’m shocked. Shocked at news of the scandalous college admissions scandal. Wow! Stop the presses: it’s news that wealth, position and prestige confer benefits.”

As a guy from L.A.’s eastside who got through undergraduate school and graduate school (in the Ivy League) by means of part time jobs and scholarships, I marveled at the proportions of the buy-your-kid-a-slot in your preferred top tier college scheme.

But the revelations got more outrageous day after day. One family apparently paid out $6.5 million to fraudulently buy a spot for their college-bound son or daughter.

The rich kids who were apparently too busy twiddling on their smart phones to read or study sat comfortably at home while professional test takers took their exams for them. SAT.CAT. ACT. Professional essay writers – for a hefty fee – wrote their “personal” essays. When reading about that aspect of the college admissions scandal, an alarm went off in my head. It triggered a memory I had basically buried deep in my brain.

A National Enquirer-type would-be headline flashed through my consciousness: “I Was a Teenage Essay Writing Whore.” The news of the scandal reminded me of something I did more than 50 years ago. Something of which I’m certainly not proud. Something journalistically and editorially unethical. It happened when I was in the eighth grade.

This was at Lincoln Junior High School in Lincoln Heights. (We didn’t have middle schools back in the Pleistocene.) It was probably in 1965. (Criminals apparently don’t always remember the specifics of their crimes.) It’s a cliché but I was a voracious reader. I devoured just about everything in our school library as well as 50 cent used paperbacks that I bought at a dusty bookstore in downtown L.A. (This is before the people started calling in DTLA.)

I had a brother in high school. He and his friends were paranderos. They liked to party; they didn’t like to study. They passed classes by the skin of their teeth. My brother asked me to “help” a friend of his who was on the cusp of failing an English class. He needed to turn in a book review. I met with this guy. I don’t remember the details of this mini Mafia negotiation. When I spoke to him it became clear that he couldn’t write a grocery list, let alone a coherent book review comprising illuminating declarative sentences, woven together seamlessly with pristine paragraph transitions. No way.

I agreed to write the book review for him. The price: TEN LARGE. I was 13 years old and earned a bit more than a dollar an hour cleaning a restaurant in the mornings before I schlepped to school. (I lived on the border of Boyle Heights, where residue of previous, pre-Mexican immigrant occupations remained.)

I think the book was “Grapes of Wrath.” It may have been “Tortilla Flat.” I’m not sure. But I am sure it was a John Steinbeck novel. As a kid I gobbled up everything by Steinbeck, partly because he was the only writer who included Mexicans or Chicanos in the tales. Literature didn’t use the term “Chicano” back then, but we knew who we were.

My payment of ten bucks for prostituting myself editorially is nothing compared to the six-and-a-half-million dollars some family paid to open the side door, the transom, the window, the cellar trapdoor or whatever portal was available to get the kid into the college of his/her choice. Six-and-a-half-million samolions! That would pay for a boatload of scholarships for deserving students from East L.A. or South L.A. (Or heck, the Inland Empire for that matter.)

My fee was minuscule by comparison. But as a principle it was equally wrong. Trust me, I ain’t proud of it as I look back at something that happened more than 50 years ago when I was a kid, wielding a dangerous weapon – a manual typewriter.

These things make us think—or at least—should make us think—about the moral and ethical imperatives involved in such issues. Over a long career as a journalist, university professor and author I have tried diligently to do the right thing. I’m pleased with my record, but in retrospect I’m bummed that I succumbed and did what I did in the eighth grade.

By the way, my brother’s homie got an “A” on his book review.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Copyright 2019 by Luis R. Torres. Torres a product of East L.A. and a resident of Pasadena, is a veteran freelance journalist, university professor and author. He holds a masters degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of a forthcoming biography of former Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina.

 

 

Filed Under: Blogs, Tales of Torres Tagged With: I was Teenage Essay Whore, Luis R.. Torres, Tales of Torres

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 7.17.25 ART “QUINCEANERA” AT THE BORDERLANDS

July 17, 2025 By wpengine

An Art “Quinceanera” in the Borderlands. An exhibition featuring large prints by a talented cohort of borderland artists opened last week  [July 12, 2025] at the Centro Cultural Aztlan in San Antonio, Texas.  The Centro press release described the exhibit as a prime example of community artists engaging “in the deeply rooted democratic art form of […]

TALES OF TORRES 7.17.25 DONALD TRUMP- TERROR AND INTIMIDATION

July 17, 2025 By wpengine

Terror and Intimidation Are the Order of the Day The Pendejo-in-Chief got to sign his Big Beautiful Baloney Bill into law. The consequences will be felt for a long time. None of them good, unless you are among the wealthiest folks in the country. They will get permanent tax breaks and other nest-feathering favors. For […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 07.10.25 LUIS LOPEZ BORDERLANDS ARTIST

July 10, 2025 By wpengine

Luis Lopez: Borderlands Artist Looks Forward to His Exhibit in Mexico Borderland artist Luis Lopez moved from Laredo, Texas to San Antonio nearly 50 years ago to pursue his passion for creating art. Over the past five decades, Lopez has received recognition on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border for his diverse and transformative body […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA (ENGLISH) 07.10.25 WE WILL CONTINUE TO CONSPIRE

July 10, 2025 By wpengine

We’ve been able to…or not. The signature is on paper and the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) that dictates the domestic policy for President Trump’s second administration is the current mandate for the United States. The Institute of Taxes and Economic Policy anticipates three options to meet the law: cut investment in health and food assistance, […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA ART SONIA ROMERO 2

By Tia Tenopia on October 20, 2013

Sonia Romero is a graphic artist,muralist and print maker. In this second profile on Sonia and her work, Latinopia explores Sonia’s public murals, in particular the “Urban Oasis” mural at the MacArthur Park Metro Station in Los Angeles, California.

Category: Art, LATINOPIA ART

LATINOPIA WORD JOSÉ MONTOYA “PACHUCO PORTFOLIO”

By Tia Tenopia on June 12, 2011

José Montoya is a renowned poet, artist and activist who has been in the forefront of the Chicano art movement. One of his most celebrated poems is titled “Pachuco Portfolio” which pays homage to the iconic and enduring character of El Pachuco, the 1940s  Mexican American youth who dressed in the stylish Zoot Suit.

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

LATINOPIA WORD XOCHITL JULISA BERMEJO “OUR LADY OF THE WATER GALLONS”

By Tia Tenopia on May 26, 2013

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a poet and teacher from Asuza, California. She volunteered with No More Deaths, a humanitarian organization providing water bottles in the Arizona desert where immigrants crossing from Mexico often die of exposure. She read her poem, “Our Lady of the Water Gallons” at a Mental Cocido (Mental Stew) gathering of Latino authors […]

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

© 2025 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin