Student, Writer, and Cultural Critic

Thank you for visiting. I hope you will take the time to browse my Web site and learn more about me as a student, writer, and cultural critic, but also as an emerging New Media professional. You can follow me on Twitter or become my friend on Facebook; I also suggest visiting my other, more politically and socially minded Web site, ConFrijoles.com. There you can read some of what I’m thinking about on a more regular basis, and hopefully you will support some of the causes that I promote such as the Boycott Against Arizona and the Texas Democratic Party.

Who I am, is where I am from, and where I from is who I am.

Born in Houston, TX, to Juan DeDios and Patricia Puente in 1982. I started my formal education at Roosevelt Elementary school in 1987, and, quickly after that, those around me recognized that I was not like the other children in my class. I was rambunctious, talkative, and I liked to ask questions and make up fanciful stories from the answers I recieved. My inquisitive nature has guided much of my life since then, and still is a driving force behind much of my activities. In fact, when I reached Houston’s oldest Catholic high school, St. Thomas, in 1996 I was so inquisitive that it caused some problems at first. Never before had I been in an environment that promoted education, personal growth, and responsibility, like that of STH. I soaked up information like a sponge, but I also became aware of the ways other people outside of my small world live. St. Thomas Aquinas High School was a rude awakening to the reality of what I now understand to be the ‘common sense’ of racial formation.

My first year at St. Thomas was rough. Despite my desire to learn, I had to contend with my classmates who weren’t as welcoming of the brash gheto boy who’s invaded their sterilized environment. I learned from my own experiences the opposite of what they had learned. Even though I could not vote, I was a proud democrat because that’s what my grandfather was– and everyone else in my family (except for my dad, but that’s another story). I quickly clashed with my fellow students, and that made the first year hard. Eventually some of us proved our worth to each other and made it past the hangs-ups our parents passed down to us. Unfortunately, not all learned prejudices can be given up. I still don’t trust the uber-rich, and many of the uber-rich don’t trust me, but St. Thomas served me well as a place to incubate my nascent political, religious, and personal belief structure. That’s a good thing too, because after the crushing defeat of Al Gore in 2000, and then the attacks on September 11, I needed a foundation of understanding that did not come from cable news or extremely radical ideology.

Enter the University of Houston-Downtown. Not the most prestigious institution, I quickly found out that prestige is not an adequate measure of a school’s academic rigor. The first two years at UH-D were hard, even with the college preparatory education I received from St. Thomas. Working full time and not fully engaged in my academic career, I left school in the spring of 2002. From that summer when I moved from my mother’s home in Houston’s Northside to my first apartment in the Third Ward. Friends, money, and “freedom” dominated my attention. At this moment is when my career as a server in a restaurant kicked into gear. Hard, tiring, and humbling work, being a server in a restaurant in one of the city’s oldest restaurateur families fostered a love for all things food, wine, and beverage. The next four years I worked on my skills as a server of fine Italian, French, and American cuisine, as well as wine, beer, and spirits from around the world. It is not enough to take an order and carry plates and glasses to and from a table. Being a successful server requires a dedication to the customer’s dining experience. In the best restaurants, the service staff are, as much as the chef, genuinely interested in the diner’s enjoyment of their meal. This is something that I strove to provide to each and every customer that I served, and it is something that I look for now that I am the customer. While I love the restaurant, wine, and bar industry, my true love is knowledge. By the spring of 2006 I could not bear to go another day without working toward the completion of a baccalaureate degree.

In the fall of 2006 I re-enrolled at the University of Houston-Downtown and chose English as my major. The renewed vigor of my pursuit for knowledge pushed me to explore as many different avenues of study as possible. I took English classes, philosophy classes, and history classes, more than I technically needed to, but each one fit into a degree plan that I knew would carry me far into the future and beyond any one career. Some of the most memorable and foundational courses that I took, in fact, had to appealed to my dean in order for them to count as electives. That is the beauty of my alma mater. I was able to see my own vision realized, and that is a satisfying feeling. In May of 2010 I, along with nearly one thousand of my classmates, walked across the stage at Minute Maid Park to receive our well-earned degrees. I left the University of Houston-Downtown with the power to understand myself and the world around me as multilayered realities that cannot be understood by any one perspective.

As I move into my professional life this is becoming more and more important because the complexities of modern life require it. My current position as a Web Site Manager for GoLocal247.com employs this ability on a regular basis. My ultimate goal, to earn a PhD. will make these skills even more important. I am in the process of applying to graduate school for enrollment beginning in the Fall of 2011. Please stay tuned, and follow my progress. It hasn’t been easy, but that just makes it worth it even more.