A New Mexico Childhood

Growing up in New Mexico isn't quite like growing up elsewhere in the United States. Despite the illusion of far-flung open spaces, New Mexico is a sort of trap, or prison. Poverty of one form or another - money, ideas, experience - reduce life to a narrow niche. The advantage of youth is to flourish despite the difficulties. This is a memoir of growing up in Corrales, NM, near Albuquerque, in the Sixties and Early Seventies. It did not seem to me at the time that my childhood was unusual, but after the passage of half a century it seems distant, like a tale from a foreign land. Times and customs have changed. I'm collecting these stories here to make some sense of them. Marc Valdez was born in Albuquerque in 1956 and is a 1974 graduate of West Mesa High School (go Mustangs ) Marc Valdez has lived in Sacramento, California, since 1990.