The Miami Herald, Inc.; Thursday, February 20, 1997
Fabiola Santiago; Herald Staff Writer

When he returned to suburban New Jersey after spending several years living in Venezuela, some of Campo's new elementary school classmates beat him up. They called him "faggot," or maybe it was "spic."

"I cannot remember which," Campo writes in his new book of essays, The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity and Desire (W.W. Norton, $23), a chronicle of his struggle to reconcile being Hispanic and gay.

"My sense that I was in some way different led me to write," Campo said during a recent visit to Miami Beach. "I began writing at a very young age to try to heal the fractures, the differences. The act of writing represented an opportunity for healing. Not only was I different ethnically from my peers, but I began to understand I was different in terms of my sexual orientation as well."

Born of immigrants

Campo, 32, was born in New Jersey of immigrant parents who met in college. His mother is Italian. His Cuban father came to the United States after the Cuban Revolution. One of his fondest childhood memories is the voice of his father reading him poems in melodious Spanish. Raised in a bilingual household, Campo spent part of his childhood in Venezuela and part in New Jersey, where his impeccable grades in public schools won him scholarships to Amherst College and Harvard Medical School.

"I thought medicine could provide me a camouflage, or shield me from those in the majority who could never understand my being different," said Campo, who now teaches and practices medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital of Boston, where he is an internist.

In his book, he writes, "As a child of immigrants, I imagined that my white coat might make up for, possibly even purify, my nonwhite skin; learning the medical jargon might be the ultimate refutation of any questions about what my first language had been."

Tried to deny differences

Throughout young adulthood, Campo tried to deny to himself and hide his sexuality and heritage from others. His gnawing need to write made him an even greater target of ridicule, even within his family, who thought writing was "queer and sissy."

Medical school, he felt, "could contain me and straighten me out." On campus, he and his friend Jorge Arroyo, who later became his lifelong companion, shut out their sexual feelings for each other by chasing girls like other college men.

"I thought I could cure myself of my own emerging identities; perhaps drinking too much guava nectar and listening too intently to merengues had made me too obviously Cuban, or masturbating too much had made me gay," he writes.

Meeting Arroyo, who is Puerto Rican, at predominantly Anglo Amherst brought him closer to his identity as a Hispanic American, Campo said. Their developing friendship and later love -- "confirming what we had known for almost two years" -- gave Campo the courage to accept who he was. They've been together now for 11 years.

Medicine to literature

And medical school -- a training process he found "so demanding and dehumanizing, with such disrespect for the suffering people" -- gave him the motivation he needed to take a risk and do something many considered outrageous. In his third year of medical school, Campo took a detour to go to graduate school and study literature.

In the process, he wrote two books of poetry, The Other Man Was Me, published by Houston's Arte Publico Press in 1994 and the winner of the National Poetry Series Prize, and What the Body Told. His essays also found readers not in scientific publications, but in prestigious, popular magazines such as The New York Times Magazine and the Boston Review.

In writing The Poetry of Healing, Campo has broken with at least one taboo in the Hispanic community -- the code of silence when it comes to gay lifestyles.

"I don't think Latin culture is more homophobic than the Anglo culture," said Eduardo Aparicio, who publishes Perra, a magazine for South Florida's Hispanic gay community. "It's just that there is a different code of behavior: You don't flaunt it.

"In the Anglo culture, you verbalize all these things, you talk publicly about sexuality, you demand your rights through laws, you give testimonials on TV," Aparicio said. "But in Latin families, what occurs is an acceptance without talking about the issue. That, however, doesn't mean there is a rejection. On the contrary, there is almost a sheltering, a need to protect from others. That's why your mother will tell you, `It's OK, but don't tell your cousin or your uncle.' "

Breaking the silence

Telling his parents he was gay was difficult, but the distance that the silence had put between them was more painful, Campo said.

"Being able to give voice to some of this has allowed me to have a dialogue with them, and they have accepted me," Campo said. "Healing is to love when love seems not possible. They have been able to love me despite this issue, which is still very difficult for them in many respects. My partner, however, has not been so fortunate. His father has practically disowned him."

Campo said his willingness to reveal himself also has enriched his practice of medicine. His patients, many of whom are Hispanic and are living with HIV, often ask, "Are you married? Do you have children?"

"I'm very open with them," he said. "I haven't had a single patient react with anything but acceptance. It's part of the therapeutic relationship. There is so much power in the ability to talk about issues, to share in suffering. They can understand the pain I felt in being rejected in the same way I try to understand their pain and suffering in living with their illness. It's amazing how that provides the opportunity for a deepening of the relationship. I think I'm very lucky that way."

Campo is developing a course on literature and medicine, "a way to share some of the writing I found so useful." He plans to keep writing about how culture and identity affect the healing process.

What he learns every day is so important it must be published, Campo said, despite his fears of others in his profession who may not be so tolerant of differences. After all, he said, he has already conquered his greatest demon.

"Now, I realize," Campo said, "that for a long time, what I had feared most was my own humanity."

MARICE COHN BAND / Herald Staff TIME TO HEAL: Rafael Campos, a doctor in Massachusetts, reads from The Poetry of Healing, which he wrote in his struggle to identify himself as gay and Hispanic.

CAPTION: photo: Rafael Campos (a)

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