Monthly Archives: May 2012

A Latina in academia: My individual experience

[A heads-up from the Daily Chicana: this is a long post, folks! Grab yourself a cocktail, put your feet up and get ready to read. And read. And read.]

Two days ago, in my post Latina/os in academia: A look at the numbers, I shared a several statistics concerning (both in the sense of “about” and “these numbers are sad and should concern us”) Latina/os’ overall educational attainment in the US. As you may recall, it was inspired by a story I read about three Latinas who just received their Ph.D.s in English from UTSA.

What inspired me to reflect on my own particular educational journey was how much it contrasts to those of the women featured in the article. For example, one of the women opens up about the lack of encouragement she received, even being told that she “wasn’t college material.” Nevertheless, she worked towards an associate degree from a community college over four and a half years and eventually ventured on to graduate work. Another of the women only started looking into the possibility of attending college after others expressed surprised to hear that she did not plan to apply. The third woman, who was on a more traditional educational track (going to college right after high school and then on to be a full-time graduate student), still notes wistfully that Latina/os often experience an identity crisis in classrooms where “your culture is repressed and your language isn’t validated” (emphasis added).

These kinds of stories are all too common. In fact, they represent the dominant narrative of  ”the” Latin@ educational experience (btw if you’re wondering, “Latin@” is shorter way of writing “Latina/o”). The related assumptions include: Latin@ students are often the first in their families to have been born in the US. They grow up with Spanish as their first language, learning English either through older siblings who are already in school or not until enrolling in kindergarten. They must frequently act as the primary translators for their parents in school settings (as well as in the world beyond). They do not receive much encouragement to consider college, either from their own family members or teachers and administrators in general.

I’m generalizing here, and I want to emphasize that many Latin@s do share this kind of experience and do overcome tremendous odds to make it into college and beyond. Low retention rates from K-12 and into post-secondary degrees clearly indicate that the struggles are intense, and far too many Latin@ youth fall by the wayside.

So with this as the background, I can say that it sometimes feels strange to be Latina and have an experience far different from most, or at least from what I see described in academic literature and represented in popular media (say, a film like Stand and Deliver). I didn’t realize the extent of the differences until I began teaching at my current institution, and when the realization set in, I felt very foolish to have been so blind to others’ struggles.

Continue reading →

Update: Satirical take on Rosario Dawson as Dolores Huerta

Yesterday I claimed that I would share my thoughts on class status and my education journey. Time got away from me today, so I will postpone that topic until tomorrow.

Instead I have a quick update related to my post about the politics of Rosario Dawson playing Dolores Huerta in the upcoming film Chavez, about Cesar Chavez. Pocho.com, a site for Chicano news and satire, had its own special post about the casting of a similar (fictitious) movie. Here’s a quote from “Hollywood Spaniards, Puerto Ricans plan ‘ultimate’ Chicano film“:

The film – Mi Familia Bound By Honor For Glory — begins when Hernán Cortés lands in the New World, follows the history of Latin America through colonialism, revolution, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” “Like Water for Chocolate,” “Destilando Amor,” through the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, the Raiders moving back to Oakland and to the current struggles of today’s Latinos — like bad cell phone reception.

“I feel like this project is important not only to me, and the rest of the cast, for professional and personal reasons. It’s the first time that we — are a bunch of people who are not Mexican-American but capitalize on pretending to be — have the chance to tell the authentic Mexican-American story,” said Cuban-American actress Eva Mendes, who is starring in the film as United Farm Worker co-founder Dolores Huerta. (She beat out Rosario Dawson for the role.)

Now, I know that the story is meant as a joke, and I do think it’s funny overall. My favorite part is the the fact that Esai Morales will star as himself, and I love the the title of the fictitious film, which makes fun of several classic Chicano movies that I find to be gloriously (if unintentionally) corny.

Looking past the humor, though, I find two elements particularly telling. First is the description of these Latino actors as “a bunch of people who are not Mexican-American but capitalize on pretending to be,” which raises the primary issue many Chicanos have with the casting of Dawson: namely, they feel that Chicano actors should be the first and only choice to play Chicano roles. There’s an oblique criticism here of non-Mexican American actors “taking” roles that aren’t mean for them.

Second is the inclusion of a gorgeous and scantily-clad Eva Mendes, for no other reason that to underscore the apparent ridiculousness of casting someone like her (i.e. non-Chicana) in the serious role of a famous, honorable Chicana labor organizer. By contrast, the included image of Lou Diamond Phillips (honorary Mexican American ever since he played Ritchie Valens in La Bamba) is a run-of-the-mill headshot. Here is the image of Mendes:

Image of Eva Mendes used in the satirical article.

Her ass, visible in her see-through panties, becomes a metaphor for the ass she makes of herself in the made up quote (included above) about how important the project is to her and the other non-Chicanos in the film. Again, I get it, guys: This is meant as satire. However, it would have been just as humorous without the knee-jerk sexism evident here.

I will admit that being an academic brings a certain danger: You end up taking a critical eye to just about everything you see and make the people around groan, “Come on, lighten up, lady.” But sometimes, when it comes to popular culture, it’s just too tempting not to analyze, especially when the fruit hangs so low.

Latina/os in academia: A look at numbers

Patricia Portales, Margaret Cantu-Sanchez, and Candace de Leon -Zepeda are receiving their doctorate degrees in English from UTSA this weekend [12 May 2012]. While Latinos make up 15 percent of the U.S. population, they account for only 3.6 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded in the United States and can be counted in the low thousands. Helen L. Montoya/San Antonio Express-News
Photo: HELEN L. MONTOYA, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS / ©2012 HELEN MONTOYA PHOTOGRAPHY

This past weekend, I came across ”Latinas blaze path to doctoral degrees” (12 May 2012), an article that tells the story of the three gorgeous Latinas pictured above, who are newly minted Ph.D.s in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio. First and foremost, I want to send out my congratulations to them and to wish them all the best as they continue their academic careers! I hope I will have the chance to meet these new colleagues in person one day. For now, I’ll just look forward to sharing their story with my students, who I know will be tremendously inspired by the challenges these women have overcome.

The nature of the challenges–and particularly the numbers and statistics behind them–are ones that I lose sight of all too easily, even though I myself was a first-generation doctoral graduate. The caption of the image above begins to hint at the rarity of what Dr.s Portales, Cantu-Sanchez and de Leon-Zepeda have achieved. Latina/os (note: the term “Latina/o” includes people whose origins extend to any Latin American country, not just Mexico) comprise 15% of the US population, yet according to the National Center for Education Statistics, we received only the following in 2009:

  • 8% of bachelors degrees
  • 6% of Master’s degrees
  • 3% of Ph.D.s.

Moroever, Latina/os comprise just 4% of college faculty. (By way of comparison, whites received 71.% of bachelors degrees, 64% of Master’s and 63% of Ph.D.s. and make up 75% of faculty.)

These numbers are made even smaller if we keep in mind how many Americans (25 years or older and of any race) earn a doctoral degree in the first place: 1.5% of the US population as a whole in 2011. Therefore, these three women and I represent a select group only .045%. We don’t even make up one half of one percentage point.

Now, to focus specifically on Mexican Americans, here is a handy flowchart and more numbers that astound me (and as a Humanities scholar, numbers usually don’t move me all that much):

From “Leaks in the Chicana and Chicano Educational Pipeline,” by Tara Yosso and David Solorzano, Latino Policy and Issues Brief No. 13 (March 2006).

Again, we see that Chicana/os do not make up a full percentage point of doctoral earners. Seeing this figure always shocks me, particularly when I discuss it in class with my students. (The part that always gets to me: of the seventeen students who attend a community college, only one will successfully transfer to a four-year institution…such a tremendous gap!) As I explain to students, I live in a strange world where most of my close friends are people of color with Ph.D.s and who are either tenured or on the tenure-track at top universities (as well as, of course, my colleagues and the people with whom I interact on a day-to-day basis at work). On some days, it seems to me, “Everybody gets a Ph.D. Big deal.” And yet it truly IS a big deal. You just have to conduct the most cursory examination of these facts and figures to appreciate it.

Looking at that flowchart again, I don’t have the time/space/energy to start get into all the reasons why Chicana/os graduate at such low rates. One thing I do want to do, though, is to caution against engaging in any theories of cultural deficiency, which basically means blaming some monolithic notion of Mexican American or Latino “culture” for whatever is “wrong” in Latino communities. For example, there is a terrible stereotype that Latino students don’t perform as well as whites as Asians simply because “Latinos just don’t care about education,” a pernicious idea that gets bandied about not just in popular media, but also from the mouths of administrators at my own university campus, who should know much better than to think this way. Instead, I will point you to the excellent work of Critical Race Theory and education scholars such as Tara Yosso, Daniel Solorzano and Marcos Pizarro, who are helping to transform our understanding of the Latina/o educational crisis by analyzing the impact  issues such as educational inequities, lack of funding, historical trauma, racial battle fatigue and microagressions.

Okay, so there are the numbers in my head for today; it’s a lot to wrap one’s brain around. However, this is the numerical groundwork I have to lay for an angsty post about my own education experience and class status that I have planned for tomorrow. Now doesn’t that sound like a fun read? See you tomorrow…

In search of inspiration

English poet Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)

Back in the early 2000s, when I was still struggling to complete my dissertation, I read Eviatar Zerubavel’s The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books. I remember gaining a number of insights about the writing process at the time that I read it, and I continue to recommend it to my Master’s students when they embark on their own theses. Years later, however, the main point I recall from the book is that we must do away with the romantic notion that writers only write when they are feeling inspired, when the Great Muse deigns to visit them.

Instead, successful writers are those who sit down and chip away at their projects (fiction and nonfiction alike) on a daily basis. They set modest and concrete daily goals, whether it’s a number of pages produced daily or the amount of time spent; they track their progress in a visible way (a spreadsheet, a wall chart) and set up rewards systems for themselves; they exercise an incredible amount of self-discipline. In short, they make the writing process a detailed business.

The problem with the “waiting for the muse” approach is that it is incredibly stressful. It turns you into someone like me: a binge-writer. I tend to postpone my writing–whether it’s the current research essay, a grant proposal or even just a department memo–until the last possible minute. Then, the night before the piece is due, I will pull an all-nighter to beat the deadline. This has been my approach since my college days; in fact, during one infamous finals week of my freshman year, I wrote four 6-8 page essays (each for a different course) within twenty-four hours. (Another time, in an effort to get an extension on a due date, I wrapped my hand in a bandage and told my professor I couldn’t type because my hand got slammed in a car door. But that’s a story that deserves its own commemorative post.) I’m not sure if my particular brand of binge-writing is due more to anxiety/perfectionism or laziness, or more likely, a powerful combination of these traits.

In any case, I resorted to this last-minute strategy time and again because I knew I was a strong writer who could a decent grade with a minimum of effort. Thus, my binge writing persisted throughout my graduate coursework and even into my dissertation. In fact, when I met with one of of my professors to hear his final feedback, he expressed amazement at my writing, as I’d shared with him what a difficult process it had been to write the dissertation and how I almost had abandoned ship. Flipping through the pages of my draft, he said, “Well, you really don’t write like someone who ‘hates’ writing. That kind of work is usually very painful to read, but your writing is quite engaging.”

Now, to the present-day: I am making a concerted effort to eschew my poor writing habits. As I mention on my resources page, I have read a host of writing self-help books (primarily guides intended for scholars) that have helped me better understand the contours of a productive, daily writing practice. Now, when I am seeking inspiration, I try not to wait for the Muse to come to me (because she rarely does) or for the deadline pressure to build up to an extent where I’m speed writing in fear, just to get the job done. Rather, I crack open one of these books and reread their advice, reminding myself that it’s never too late to begin afresh and renew my writing commitment. (It’s something that applied when I was on Weight Watchers in grad school: you don’t need to wait until the first of any year, month or day of the week to start integrating better eating habits–all you have to do is start today).

At the end the day, my biggest inspiration is my love of teaching. Publishing my work is something I must do in order to earn tenure and be in a position to continue doing the teaching that I love. I am passionate about working with my students and look forward to the daily challenge of getting them interested in the topics that interest me and, more importantly, trying to help them find their own critical questions and assert their scholarly voices. To be an instructor at the top of my game, I must necessarily know the latest trends and research in my field…which I means that I must be contributing to that conversation. I try to let my students be my ultimate motivation, as I do not want to lose the privilege of teaching them.

Some final thoughts for today come from Write to the Top!, by W. Brad Johnson and Carol Mullen. Here is what a glimpse into what they have to say about the writing/teaching connection:

The prolific professor frames the expectation for scholarship as a privilege that accompanies the status of college professor. . . . [P]rofessors are expected to be learned, invested in their students, unequivocally fair, and active contributors to the reservoir of knowledge through original research and writing. . . . When academics view themselves as fortunate participants in this time-honored and, quite frankly, privileged society of scholars, they are more likely to see sacred tradition and rich opportunity in the call to create in and contribute to their field. (61)

So…keeping these words in mind, tomorrow I will stay off fb and attempt once more to take up the sacred calling!

Mother’s Day 2012

When Mother’s Day comes around every year, I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I love my mom more than she will ever know. On the other hand, the lady sometimes drives me nuts, and in the past there have been times when I have had to limit my contact with her for the sake of my sanity. There are no Hallmark cards that capture the complexity of our relationship. When I see an aisle full of those flowery, “Mom, you’re my best friend” cards, I envy the people who might truly feel that way (and I know they do exist: for example, my cousins have a genuinely great, loving, best-friendy relationship with my aunt/godmother).

But today I want to focus not on the tough times my mom and I have had, and instead focus on the positive. Here, in no particular order, are some random things I love about my Daily Chicana Mama:

1. My mom is gloriously goofy. She has the silliest sense of humor of anyone I ever met. She will burst into opera at the drop of a hat; start a game of tag and run away; suddenly speak in a crazy accent or in a little kid’s voice, just to make you laugh. I used to be embarrassed of this when I was younger, but now it’s something I love about her.

2. She owns her opinions. Intensely. It doesn’t matter who you are, how long she has known you, or what the subject matter is—she will make her views known. Do you like Julia Roberts? “Ew, I can’t STAND Julia Roberts!” Did you see the Lifetime Drew Peterson movie? “That was so STUPID!” Can you believe what my colleague said to me? “She’s an ASS-WIPE!” Did you watch the royal wedding? “Kate Middleton looked so BEAUTIFUL!” And on and on.

3. My mom defends us ferociously. Although she personally never hesitates to gossip about and criticize my sister and me when she’s talking to either one of us, god protect anyone else who dares to say or do anything remotely bad to us in her presence. When we were in school and felt that a teacher had been unfair, my mom went straight to the principal to demand an apology. When I was twenty-three years old and experienced an episode of sexual harassment at work, my mom wanted to accompany me to talk with my manager about the situation and confront the harasser herself, even though I told her I could handle it on my own. She always protects us.

4. She never was afraid to be unique or to follow her gut instinct. My mom has never been one to feel obliged to go along with any crowd. She had the courage to get divorced, for example, even though her immediate family frowned upon the decision. And when I was little, she applied for and got her first part-time job because she wanted some money of her own and greater personal freedom, despite the fact that she was told that being a stay-at-home mom was supposed to be her dream in life. I respect her strong will.

5. My mom wanted my sister and me to enjoy even the smallest of opportunities that had been denied to her. For instance, when she was growing up, my grandmother did not allow her to go to attend sleepovers, because in Mexican culture, the only reason you would stay the night at someone else’s home is because you are related to them by blood. My mom tried to explain that in the US, it was a social thing that kids did all the time, but my grandma could never see it that way. So when my sister and I were young, we could have friends stay over all the time and take up any invitations we had to do the same. Likewise, my mom never had really her own bedroom when she was growing up; she often had to share her room with relatives who visited from Mexico and stayed for months at a time. So again, no matter where we lived, she made sure that my sister and I had each our own personal space, which we never had to share unless we wanted to.

So that’s a little tribute to my mom on this special day. She’s going to be visiting me next week and I hereby publicly promise that, keeping in mind this list of some things I adore about her, I will make ever effort to be patient with her and get along with her the best I can.

Confession: I wasted time yesterday

One of my goals here at the Daily Chicana is to live up to the title of my blog: to post new writing on a daily basis. Yesterday I had every intention of writing something substantial, but, as you can see by my having posted only a link to a Cure song on YouTube, I never got around to it. Today I am going to explain–or rather, confess, in the spirit of my fellow blogger, Academic Sins (tagline: “O, my dissertation, I am heartfully sorry for having neglected you”)–what went wrong yesterday and every day.

Every weekday morning, I make a pot of coffee (insofar as “a pot” can be made by a tiny 5-cup machine) and as I set out the sugar and milk, I harbor visions of myself as A Writer, a romantic figure sitting at her desk, hair glistening in the delicate light of dawn, fingers flying over the keys as she stares intensely at the laptop screen, full of energy and great ideas.

Instead, what usually happens is I don’t even roll out of bed until about 9am or so (hey, I’m still on sabbatical). As I make breakfast, I think, “I’ll just watch an episode of [Mad Men, Top Chef, Smash, Intervention or 16 and Pregnant] while I eat. It will just be 45 minutes. Then I’ll get started on my work.”

When the show is over, I spend another extended period of time checking out the TV blogs and reviews at Entertainment Weekly, Slate and Salon [especially if I've just watched Mad Men]. This is part of the problem of being a Cultural Studies type of scholar: watching TV can sort of be justified as “research” if I spend time contemplating representations of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.

Then it is time to log into facebook, the greatest time-suck of all. Many of my fb friends are scholars who post links to interesting news stories, blogs, websites, etc. that relate to areas of my teaching, research, politics of higher ed, immigration, you name it. So facebook is a big ol’ rabbit hole even when I’m not looking at my friends’ latest vacation and/or baby pics.

After fb–and the ensuing snuggle time with my dog–and in a half-hearted attempt to get focused on my real work, I take a look at what’s happening on ProfHacker, the Job Advice articles at the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Lifehacker. I’m a sucker for productivity porn, the name for what happens when you’re so determined to become more efficient that researching how to be efficient becomes the new way to procrastinate. I am always on the lookout for new software, note taking methods, planners, to-do lists, office products…the list goes on and on. Despite many years of experience knowing there’s no single cure-all other then devotion to a daily writing practice, I still cling desperately to the belief that there is a magic product out there that will turn me into the world’s most prolific writer.

And so that’s how my day goes, until it’s time to make dinner. At times, I’ll console myself by thinking, “I can do some writing after dinner, then reward myself with a glass of wine.” Yet I go on to reason, “Well, I always do my best work in the morning, so let me just get a fresh start tomorrow. Mmm…I’ll get up early, make some coffee, sit at my desk, then start writing.” [Proceed to paragraph three above, and repeat.]

Fridays are even more of a challenge because now that I live on my own, I no longer have the budget or need for cleaning ladies, so I have to set aside a couple of hours to clean the house and do laundry. I procrastinated on these tasks yesterday by doing all of the usual wasteful activities and adding to it a stroll through Netflix, which is how I found myself at 4:30pm having accomplished absolutely no writing or cleaning but instead sitting through a random and needless viewing of the French film Mozart’s Sister.

I entered a panic: “Where has my day gone?!” I began scurrying through the house, doing a frantic cleaning. I was going to be late for meeting up with my boyfriend. Then it hit me: “I still gotta post something on my blog!” I didn’t want to let myself down with yet another of my goals. So a quick song had to suffice.

Sharing this confession wasn’t exactly the cathartic experience I envisioned. In fact, it’s pretty embarrassing. But I’m hoping that an open acknowledgment of my extreme procrastination methods is necessary step towards remaking my writing “process.” A friend once recommended a major shift in my thinking: Rather than consider academic writing something I had to do and therefore increase the likelihood that it would feel like a burden, I should instead think of writing as something I deserve to do, an activity that brings real pleasure. Many of my colleagues honor the writing process in this way; they are happy  to wrap up their grading for the semester because it means that they can finally dedicate all of their time to their writing projects. Their cheerful fb status updates say, “Just about to play my favorite song and clear my head for writing.” I yearn to be among them. Maybe one day I will be. Just as soon as I turn off the damn TV!

Friday I’m in Love

Happy Friday, folks!

Right now I’m in a rush to straighten up the house, then get ready for date night. So I’m going to let the music do the talking for me. So here’s an acoustic version of a Friday song…brings back high school memories…

Enjoy!

“Friday I’m in Love,” by the Cure (1992)

I don’t care if Monday’s blue
Tuesday’s gray and Wednesday too
Thursday I don’t care about you
It’s Friday, I’m in love

Monday you can fall apart
Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart
Oh, Thursday doesn’t even start
It’s Friday I’m in love

Saturday, wait
And Sunday always comes too late
But Friday, never hesitate…

I don’t care if Mondays black
Tuesday, Wednesday – heart attack
Thursday, never looking back
It’s Friday, I’m in love

Monday, you can hold your head
Tuesday, Wednesday stay in bed
Or Thursday – watch the walls instead
It’s Friday, I’m in love

Saturday, wait
And Sunday always comes too late
But Friday, never hesitate…

Dressed up to the eyes
It’s a wonderful surprise
To see your shoes and your spirits rise
Throwing out your frown
And just smiling at the sound
And as sleek as a sheik
Spinning round and round
Always take a big bite
It’s such a gorgeous sight
To see you eat in the middle of the night
You can never get enough
Enough of this stuff
It’s Friday, I’m in love

I don’t care if Monday’s blue
Tuesday’s gray and Wednesday too
Thursday I don’t care about you
It’s Friday, I’m in love

Monday you can fall apart
Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart
Thursday doesn’t even start
It’s Friday I’m in love

A reflection

Today was a rainy day, the kind that makes me thankful to have a job that I can do from the comfort of home, where I can be cozy, listen to the thunderstorms and watch the rain fall, enjoy a cup of tea, etc. (The downside, of course, is a kitchen full of snacks and the siren song of HGTV.) Inspired by this type of weather, I was in a pensive mood. I was mainly thinking of is how different my life was just one year ago.

Last May, I was wrapping up my courses for the semester and counting down the final days, hours and minutes until my year-long sabbatical would begin. I was coming up on my fifth year of marriage (to someone I’d been with for nearly eleven years), living in a house with our dog. I had hand-crafted a planner with elaborate timelines for the multiple research projects I’d planned to complete; I was determined to finally put into practice a daily writing habit and become an article-writing machine. I thought I’d spend the year living in my home city, riding my bright orange bike to and from campus. It seemed like my life was set and secure.

Yet here I am, one year later, living a totally different reality. Last June, I worked up the courage to initiate a divorce, something I’d been considering for more than two years but had been scared to do. Seeking a true fresh start, I moved cross-country to a city where I’d always been curious to live, even though I didn’t know anyone there. I found a great apartment for me and my little dog–the very first place I’d rented on my own (for I’d always lived with family, a roommate or my former husband). I joined meetups and encountered all kinds of interesting people (among whom was a hippie who proudly told me that he once stole a nut from a squirrel). One night I took a chance and went to a random party, where I met the amazing man I’m dating now. And I’ve only completed one of the five projects I’d so carefully planned out before.

My previous life wasn’t a bad one, by any stretch of the imagination. But it certainly wasn’t all that it could be. While recently rereading Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, I came across a passage that I’d highlighted. Here Atwood is describing the protagonist, Jimmy:

So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he’d been invited, but at an address he couldn’t actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only, right at the moment, it wasn’t him.*

I don’t remember highlighting these words. But there they were. Reading them and realizing that they had resonated with me came as a total shock: “Oh my god. That is how I used to feel about my life.” Who was that sad, disconnected person? How did she get into such a rut? And why in the world was she allowing herself to feel that way?

I am thankful that I don’t recognize that person anymore. I’ve been through some dramatic changes and my life felt like the most stereotypical telenovela at times…but I am happy. What a difference a year–and yes, sometimes even just a day–makes.

* Note: I hate not citing my sources correctly, but I have this novel on my 2nd generation Kindle, which doesn’t have page numbers. Instead, all I can tell you is that the quote occurs at 67%/locations 3218-24.

Increasing the visibility

Two things for today:

First, a special announcement: the Daily Chicana has a new page! On the Resources for Academic Writers tab, you will find a list of websites and books for grad students and faculty seeking new ideas in their writing, teaching and productivity. My motto is, “I will struggle to re-invent the wheel…so that you don’t have to!” Actually, part of what I seek to do–with my undergrads and grad students in class, and now in sharing my writing struggle here at the Daily Chicana–is to make academic work more open and visible. It is all too easily to feel alone, as though you’re the only struggling to complete a writing project or to engage students in class. In reality, however, there are many resources out there…you just have to know where to look. So consider the resources I’m sharing as a starting point.

Second–and on a related note of making the invisible more visible–I am excited to share the work of a Los Angeles artist I just learned about: Ramiro Gomez. His work seeks to highlight the integral role of immigrant labor in keeping the fancy homes of LA looking so nice. I found out about his project through this post at Colorlines, and immediately checked out Gomez’s blog, Happy Hills. Fascinating! I encourage you to check him out. I especially like his pieces that paint immigrant laborers on top of advertisements and “beautiful homes” types of magazines.

“Dolores and Concepcion at 3pm on a Thursday afternoon”

On Rosario Dawson as Dolores Huerta

A couple of days ago, I learned through a friend’s fb post that actor/director Diego Luna (of Y Tu Mamá También, as well as Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights fame) is making a film about the one and only Cesar Chavez, Mexican American civil-rights activist and the co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. The film is currently entitled, Chavez. Now, I don’t ever get especially hopeful or excited about any of Hollywood’s “Hispanic” films, but in this case I am crossing my fingers that it will at least be decent enough to use in one of my undergraduate classes.

Apparently Rosario Dawson has just signed on to play Dolores Huerta, the other co-founder of the UFW. The choice of Dawson surprised me; aside from having long hair, I just don’t think they look much alike. Here is Huerta, back in the day:

Meanwhile, here is the Dawson:

At first, I thought, maybe America Ferrera would have been a better choice, but it turns out that she already was cast in the role of Chavez’s wife Helen in the film…because, you know, there’s slim pickins if you’re seeking recognizable Latina actors in Hollywood. Btw I’m not the only one who envisioned Ferrera as Huerta; check out this homage to Huerta from Glamour magazine a couple of years back:

In any case, I’m bracing for the usual outrage on the part of many Chicanos that one of our most beloved she-roes will be portrayed by someone who is not of Chicana or Mexican descent. Just remember back to the late ’90s when some folks freaked out when another beloved Chicana icon, singer Selena Quintanilla, was to be portrayed by Puerto Rican actress Jennifer Lopez (btw it was the 1997 movie Selena that inspired JLo to launch her singing career…so now we know who to blame: director Gregory Nava.) And on a similar note, many were angry that Italian American Madonna would be playing Argentina leader Eva Peron in Evita. We can thank god, I suppose for small mercies: Salma Hayek ended up portraying Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in Frida, though I encourage you to read Isabel Molina-Guzman’s powerful critique of that film in her excellent book, Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media.

Anyway, in cases like the Huerta-Dawson match-up, the people get up in arms and cry out, “There wasn’t a single Mexican American actress you could have found to play Huerta?!” In fact, such commentary has already started: You can scroll down to some of the poorly-worded and ungrammatical replies to a HuffPost article about how nervous Dawson is to do justice to the role. Among the responses is this one:

…this is poor casting. Dawson looks nothing like Huerta. It’s a joke! UFW was not co-founded by a black woman. [emphasis added]

Comments like these expose a sensitive issue within many Latina/o communities: race. Latina/os are far from racial or ethnic homogeneity; we can lay claim to diverse racial backgrounds, which accounts for a wide-range of physical appearances even among people in the same family. However, some like to fancy the idea that Mexicans are primarily a “lighter” blend of native and Spanish peoples, while people from Carribbean countries are typically the darker ones, thanks to their African “blood.” But this is simply not true–even Mexicans have African ancestry, and if this is news to you, then I suggest you read Martha Menchaca’s Recovering History, Constructing Race asap. Nevertheless, those in our communities with lighter skin and fairer features are frequently praised as more beautiful than the darker ones among us. Even in mainstream entertainment, Latinas like Dawson and Zoe Saldaña are more often cast in African American roles or as the “exotic” beauties in sic-fi and action films, because studio execs can only envision “Latina” to look like JLo, Hayek, Penelope Cruz, etc. (And most of the time, they are supposed to sound like Sofia Vergara.)

To me, this outrage is misplaced. In the end, I don’t care who plays Huerta, as long as she does a good job at it. If she were a Chicana actor, sure, that would be great, but as my friend Michelle pointed out in our conversation on this topic earlier today, what’s more important is the fact that, by reaching mainstream audiences, a film like Chavez can raise awareness about his and Huerta’s accomplishments and therefore broaden people’s general understanding about Chicana/o history. Moreover, Michelle rightly noted that in the case of Selena, many Chicana/os didn’t really know who JLo was, and many Nuyoricans didn’t know anything about Selena, but in the end, we all went to see the movie and learned a little something. (I will admit that until seeing the film, I didn’t even know that Selena was born in the US and that English was her first language…which means I prolly should hand back my Chicana identity card. Also, one last excellent observation from Michelle: there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of backlash when Chicano Edward James Olmos was cast as Bolivian math teacher Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver. It seems that perhaps Chicano outrage only flows in one direction!)

Rather, the real issue that should be getting people worked up is the dire lack of representation of Latinas in the mainstream media as a whole. That is the true problem. It would be so refreshing to see a Latina in a role that isn’t specifically marked as “Latina.” We need roles that don’t require the performance of the usual ethnic stereotypes. One positive portrayal, for example, is Diana Maria Riva, who plays the role of Lieutenant Ana Ruiz on the TV show The Good Guys. In the show, she is a police lieutenant who just happens to be Latina. They don’t make a big issue out of her ethnicity: She doesn’t speak in a “Latin” accent, dress in a stereotypically ethnic way, or interject “Ay, caramba!” and the like into her conversations. She just goes about her job like a real person would.

That’s how I feel I live my life: I am Latina (specifically, of course, Mexican American). My ethnicity is an important part of my identity, but it’s not all of it. For example, I am a university professor, and despite my ethnicity, I don’t usually go to class dressed like this:

Which is not at all to say it is not my dream to do so…if only because I’d really love to see my students faces when I enter the room.

Anyway, there has been a lot of commentary lately about the lack of people of color in the HBO series Girls, which is set in Brooklyn, a borough that has a minority white population (for insightful examples of said commentary, check out Kendra James on Racialicious and this post by Dodai Stewart at Jezebel). It seems to me that it takes much more work to erase the people of color from mainstream media (particularly shows set in New York and Los Angeles) than it does to just show them as real people going about their daily business. So to all the studio execs and TV and film writers out there: Make it easier on yourselves! Take the characters you’re already writing about, and just cast a Latina in the role. Magic may happen–she may still seem like a real person…even though she’s Latina!

I’m just saying that when there are a broader range of Latina roles in the future–when we’ve been liberated from playing the grandmas, maids and sluts–then there won’t be so much pressure on films like Chavez to get the casting exactly right. Then we Chicana/os can find something better to complain about.