With his quiet demeanor and easy smile, Leonel Martinez hardly looks like a controversial person. “I like to shatter stereotypes,” he said, adjusting his black-rimmed glasses. And he does.
Going from a third generation Hispanic boy who didn’t even start speaking English until he was 5 years old to a successful reporter for Bakersfield’s major newspaper, The Californian, the soft spoken Martinez certainly does not fit any available stereotype.
Raised in the country by his mother and grandparents, he had no brothers or sisters. “It’s an ethnic impossibility, but I’m an only child,” he joked; he then grinned and admitted that he borrows the line from a comedian. Martinez takes obvious joy in storytelling and has such a delicate mastery of the English language that it is hard to imagine this is the same little boy who came home from school one day convinced he would never be able to learn to read.
Perhaps because he conquered his own language barriers, he remains optimistic when it comes to the issue of immigrant assimilation of the English language. “Wait, give them a couple years, they will learn English. Their kids will be wearing Nikes and complaining about taxes. They’re going to want a plasma TV. It happens. Just give them time.”
Despite a rough beginning, Martinez loves the English language and writing. “Someone once described style as the sounds words make on paper. I like the sound words make on paper,” he said, explaining how the love of his job has influenced his life’s course.
Martinez made his name as a reporter, working at the paper for nine years before dropping reporting for a job as an information specialist for the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office. He recently added a bimonthly Californian opinion column on Latino issues to his agenda.
The opinion column has ruffled a few feathers and garnered him vicious racism delivered to him via the Internet. “Your initial reaction is to get angry, just like they are,” he said earnestly. The self-declared introvert would rather sit down and have a quiet discussion than an angry argument through e-mail.
Speaking of his column at The Bakersfield Californian, Martinez’s voice has an underlying lilt of pride. “I lend a different voice to The Californian, a voice that has never been heard before.”
His advice, for both life and journalism, is practical. “Try it all and try a lot of it,” he urged. “The thing you think is the funnest, do that.”