ANTONIO, WE KNOW YOU

A man recounts his rise from a victim of abuse to an activist and lawyer in this debut memoir.

Salazar-Hobson was never supposed to be an attorney. Born the 11th of 14 children to a Mexican American family in Arizona, Antonio Salazar y Bailon was in the fields from a young age. His family lived in public housing and worked as crop pickers, rising early in the morning to labor in the cool hours before midday. He and his siblings would find respite from their drunken, abusive father—who worked as a timekeeper after losing an arm in a car accident—at the home of their kindly White neighbors, the Hobsons. Even after the childless Hobsons moved out of the projects, they invited the author over to their new home, where they began to abuse him sexually. They would have other adults over to abuse him as well. When his parents finally caught on, the Hobsons kidnapped and “adopted” him, raising him as Tony S. Hobson until he was 16 years old. The abuse continued. It was only in high school that Salazar-Hobson was able to break away from their influence, rediscover his roots through his Chicano farmworking neighbors, get involved in the labor movement, and meet the man who would forever shape his life: Cesar Chavez. The author’s prose is simple and direct, describing his emotional journey in inspirational language: “I was not defeated by the Hobsons. I was not a broken adolescent. I had already managed to recapture the fortification of my identity, and I gathered all my strength to survive…the brutality of my kidnapping and abuse forcing me into an advanced maturity about the world and its evils.” Salazar-Hobson’s account of abuse reads like something from a horror novel. It’s so disturbing and unusual that the more familiar topics of activism, education, love, and family—all covered in the book’s second half—feel somehow incongruous with what has come before. But for all the violence and predation, the author’s story is a comprehensive one, encompassing the issues of exploitation, assimilation, and perseverance found at the heart of the wider Chicano experience.

A sometimes inspirational, often unsettling account of sexual abuse and survival.