05.28.24
GD2 Summary
Looking back at GD2:
I feel extremely blessed and fortunate to have spent this leg of my MFA journey under the mentorship and guidance of Yoon Soo Lee. At the end of GD1, my advisor Silas Munro sang the praises of Yoon Soo and suggested that I get to know her a bit at winter residency and consider requesting her as my next advisor. From the minute I met her, I knew I had found someone special—another member of what I call “my nerd herd.” I am a believer in everyday magic, fate, and spiritual interventions, and with every interaction there were moments of kismet that pointed toward confirmation that I was working with exactly the right mentor at the right time. The first of these moments happened when she solved the mystery of what is happening inside a butterfly chrysalis as it transitions into it’s final form - GOOP.
Gooping became a theme through this semester, I allowed myself some more space for mystery and exploration and discovery in the present—while trusting that the everything would come together—instead of worrying too much about the end product.
On teaching/learning
In my experience, teaching is very similar to parenting. Much of how I practice is based on how I learned—the good parts are kept and passed on to the next generation, and the not-so-good parts are mended by mindfully avoiding repeating the same behavior, and instead creating new and informed strategies to take their place.
There are very clear and tangible ways Yoon Soo has helped me grow even closer to the educator I want to be. As Yoon Soo’s mentee, I learned strategies for continuing to lean into my teaching practice with authenticity, and equity at the top of my value system. A few of the ideas that I found to be extremely helpful were strategies for shifting how we participate in grading and maybe even employing ungrading. Her Functional Criticism strategy helped me find another way for my students to also hold the center of the critique process and get the kind of feedback they really want and need. The concept of “consent” at eer stage of the learning process supports my goal to de-capitalize and de-colonize my practice and the spaces where I am facilitating teaching and learning.
There are also very special and nuanced ways I have grown as an educator while working with Yoon Soo, my interactions also left me feeling confident, curious, and excited about where I was headed next. She led me toward solutions through casual conversation and vulnerable sharing of life experiences, which is how I also interact with my students. I’ve often wondered if I am “too candid” “too organic” or “too anything” for academia, but often receive confirmation that what I am doing is working when I see my students work, and watch them bloom. Working with Yoon Soo let me be that student, working under that kind of teacher, and receive confirmation from this side of things that this is a fruitful way to mentor and teach.
Reciprocity
There are some things I get out of teaching that I feel a little low-key guilty about. One of the biggest would probably be hope. I can get pretty angsty, anxious, and dystopic, and if I spend too much time in those places, I can spiral pretty easily. My students, their work, and their joy and excitement make me feel like everything is going to be okay—and I sometimes ask myself if that exchange is healthy. Is it okay to ride on the slipstream of the energy my students radiate? Am I putting out as much as I take in? In one of our advisory meetings, Yoon Soo remarked that the work that I and her other mentees are putting out gives her that same feeling of hope, and I sighed a huge sigh of relief. It was confirmation that I am putting back out into the psychic ether what I am taking in, and that reciprocity does not have to be a feedback loop between two bodies but can be a ripple across many. I realized that I was seeing it through a transactional lens (thanks, childhood) and Yoon Soo shifted that into a communal lens.
Expanding on the idea of growing comfortable with GOOPING all parts of self into something that holds tremendous imaginal potential
Our shared experiences as human beings, women, daughters, partners, mothers, artists, and educators provided so many moments of affirmation. In these moments with Yoon Soo, the message received was “You’re not crazy; life is really like that.” This interaction reflects some of my favorite moments with my own students. While I feel the joy of it as a mentor, I have often wondered what my students are getting out of it. This semester, I learned that this interaction increases a sense of safety. When we don’t feel crazy, we feel safe—and when we feel safe, we can create at our imagination’s full potential.
05.20.24
On the Color Spectrum
‘Did you ever wish you just were white?”
My former student Alysah is a professional cake, decorator and vegan baker. Her cake creations are gorgeous. You can find her online here. She’s been helping me create sculptural cakes for my Altars to Experience series. In our time together, we mix plaster frosting, pack frosting bags, choose icing tips, and talk about our shared experiences as first-generation mixed Mexican American kids.
My immediate reaction, to Alysah’s surprise, was “No!”
In Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye, the author describes a similar exchange between two young black girls. Pecola Breedlove fervently wishes for blue eyes so that she can be beautiful, while Claudia MacTeer is disturbed by the implications of this wish.
Honestly, it had never occurred to me to make such a wish. My combination of light caramel skin brown eyes and brown hair never felt like my problem, whenever I experienced racism or colorism it was obvious to me that if there was a problem, it was somebody else’s.
If longing and wishing are connected by desire, the thing I wanted was to see other people like me on TV, in movies, and in Doll form.
When Claudia receives a doll resembling Shirley Temple as a Christmas gift—she takes pleasure and relief in carrying out its destruction. I felt that.
I never had a problem with me. I had a problem with the white standards of beauty that made being me a problem for others.
When I ask Alyssah the same question, she admits that in her younger years, she had wished to be white, because she thought it would be easier. She says “...but now I am so grateful to not be ‘just white!’ and we both laugh.
-+-+-+-+-
“Yeah, but all the Latinos here are white-passing.”
A newly hired faculty coworker quickly dismisses the validity of our college’s demographic makeup as I remind her that we are a Hispanic-serving institution.
Her statement is a stab to my gut. She is not a member of the Latinadad, and I can only assume that she’s ignorant of the problematic concept of colorism that runs through our culture. I breathe in as much grace as I can and try my best to educate.
I start by saying, “I would caution you against openly labeling or sorting members of the Latinadad by color.” Her face looks surprised. “Really?!”
In my response, I acknowledge that colorism and privilege are indeed connected. Lighter-skinned people, regardless of their racial category, often have greater access to opportunities and social mobility. However, being labeled by anyone, especially by an outsider, in a way that either credits or discredits our legitimacy or cultural experience is hurtful.
I tell her about the gatekeeping of culture that often comes from one end of the color spectrum and the racism and oppression that comes from the other end of the color spectrum, and that being caught in the middle is one of the most socially isolating places in the world.
Her face tells me that she’s genuinely processing the information, and also surprised to learn that this dynamic exists.
“I always thought that being a light-skinned person of color meant that you had the best of both worlds!” I laugh.
-+-+-+-+-
In Junior High, the Cholita girls called me a “sellout” because I didn’t dress like them or go to ditch parties. I was an art nerd, equally interested in hip-hop and punk rock. I preferred making mixtapes, and drawing, and reading.
In High School my friend group was a collage of super minorities, halfers, and queer kids—we were all art weirdos of some form who shared the universal experience of being labeled by our parents and ethnic communities as “going through a phase.”
In art school, I made friends with the few Chicana art nerd girls in the program. We bonded over our common social grief, and how horrified our families were at the idea of us going to college, instead of getting married. And majoring in the arts instead of medicine, or law, or business.
My friend Hazel says “Everybody thinks I’m white except for white people.” and we all laugh.
-+-+-+-+-
The güerrita at my after-school retail job interrogates me during every shift. We are both in the same work-experience class, earning class credit for maintaining retail displays, and implementing store merchandising plans. It’s all fancy words for putting stuff on shelves.
She wants to know why Mexican houses all smell the same, and I wonder how she knows what our houses smell like.
She wants to know if it makes me sad that I don’t look more like my mom because “she’s so pretty” and I try not to jab my thumbs into her eyes.
She wants to know why I am not so hairy because she thought all Mexicans were hairy. She repeatedly accuses me of waxing my arms.
I spend most of my time frozen in anger, I try my best to tune her out.
Then one day she says “I heard Mexican guys have dark brown dicks, what color is your boyfriend’s dick?” “Is it brown?” she laughs.
The anger that spreads across my face is amusing to her. I tell her she should go find out about brown dick herself. She finally shuts up.
I only see her on one more shift after that. She is crying in the stockroom because she just found out she is pregnant. And I laugh.
-+-+-+-+-
My friend Jon says “You’re not Mexican unless the Mecca kids tried to recruit you in high school.” and we both laugh.
The “You’re not Mexican unless…” game becomes a favorite way to pass the time.
Jon and I worked in a record store together and we took turns playing music. We played albums by Morrissey, Micheal Jackson, Modest Mouse, Gang of Four, Wu-Tang, and Yellowman all in the same shift.
We bond over things our dads say and do, we talk about the beautiful and sad desperation of Mariachi music that explains the 80s Chicano kid penchant for The Smiths.
For my 18th birthday, he takes $20 out of the register and buys us forties of OE, and a pack of clove cigarettes. We make a list of the derogatory nicknames the Cholo/a kids made up for us in high school—and we roar with laughter.