11.25.23

Chavez.

I spent the majority of my life living with the last name Losorelli. When I married, I took my husband’s last name, Doronio. When my marriage imploded, I did an inventory on both of those names. The heaviness of the patriarchal trauma they carried in them had caught up with me in real-time and it was exhausting for me to see those names next to mine. I was tired of carrying their baggage and needed to identify with something powerful to get me through the battle I had found myself in. I started using my Dad’s birth name Chavez—his mother’s last name—to invoke the power it carried. If any name deserves to be recognized alongside my victories and accomplishments as a woman, it’s the name that my Nana was born with.

My Nana was born with the name Innocencia Chavez, on December 28th, in 1939 or 1940, depending on which piece of paper you are looking at. Her parents were Marcel and Cerila Chavez. Marcel was Mestizo of French and Mexican descent, Cerila was a self-proclaimed “Ranchera” of strong Indio heritage. Marcel, a train engineer and a widower, hired Cerila to help him care for his children. He fell in love with her, they married, and went on to grow their family to a total of 12 children. Tragically, Marcel was killed in a train accident when my nana was only 13. She loved her father dearly, and every time she speaks of him, it is with love, joy, and gratitude.

My father José Arturo Amayo Chavez was born on June 12, 1958 in Tecate Mexico. His father married my grandmother using the name Amayo, it turned out to be one of many fictional names that man had used in many fictional marriages. He was a con artist, an abuser, a thief of hearts, and an agent of chaos and suffering everywhere he went.

After being widowed, Nana’s mother —Big Nana— had moved the family closer and closer to the border of California. She ran a little taco shop in Tijuana, one of the very few women to own and run such a business. Even today that market is predominantly male. Her cooking was so good that her competitors tried to sabotage and discourage Cerila Chavez anytime they had the chance. But she always came back...better. When my Nana broke free from her abusive husband, it was her family—the Chavez family—that helped her raise her children while she crisscrossed the border working sewing jobs and making up her mind to not just get out of the marriage, but out of Mexico altogether.

Nana told her mom “I’m getting us out of here, we are going to live in Estados Unidos in a beautiful house, and my kids are going to have their own rooms and wear nice clothes!”

“¡Está loca!” Big Nana would tell her she was crazy.

One of the sewing customers at the shop Nana worked at was an Italian immigrant named Francesco Losorelli. He was 20 years older than her, he had immigrated to the US and fought in WWII. I like to imagine that he was enamored with her auburn hair and her boisterous sense of humor. He adopted her children when they married, and he helped her get all of their paperwork straight so they could stay in the US permanently. I knew this man as Papa; he was my adopted grandfather. Nana and Papa also helped bring several members of the Chavez family into the US, including Big Nana. Together they started a furniture upholstery business and despite his gambling problems, Nana managed to stash enough money away for them to buy a home in the suburbs, and a home in Tijuana for the family who stayed in Mexico.

She wasn’t crazy. She did what she said she would do. Nana’s kids had their own rooms, and wore nice clothes. They went to American schools and got good jobs when they grew up. Nana’s kids bought their own houses, and their kids went to college. Inocencia Chavez did that. Even when racism, and patriarchy, and broken men tried to stop her, she did what she said she would do—she came back better.

11.30.23

Pocha.

I learned to speak enough Spanish to know when the Chulitas at school were talking shit about me. I would say “¡Cállate!” or “!Tu Madré!” or “Comé caca!” in my blended chicana-valley-girl patois, their mouths would drop open in surprise, and we would all laugh. I didn’t push it though, I would never say "¡Pinche Putas!” because I saw the beatdown these girls could deliver. I saw hoops snatched from ear lobes, and fist fulls of hair torn from scalps. I didn’t fuck with that.

I spent weekends traveling to National City and Tijuana to visit family with my dad. We ate menudo and watched Chespirito. We changed the channels on Big Nana’s TV set with a pair of pliers. The first time I got drunk it was by accident at cousin Leti’s wedding with a spiked punch bowl. I knew we were Mexican, I knew my dad was born in Mexico, but I never saw anything on TV or in the movies that resembled our Mexican life. I still haven’t. I didn’t kick it with the Chulitas at school, and I only knew one other halfsican kid, Derek Glenridge. I had developed a little crush on him in the 7th grade.

It was 1993, and we were entering the eighth grade. Shit was getting real. Dr.Dre’s “Chronic” was on every kid’s Christmas list and the gangster rap renaissance was hitting the suburbs. On the first day of the new school year, Derek walked into class looking like Lou Diamond Phillips from 'Stand and Deliver.' His hair was slicked back in a fishnet cap, and he was wearing size 40 Dickies with a canvas belt and a “G” on the belt buckle. He sat at his desk with his locs propped up on his forehead. I was wearing thrifted corduroy dad-shorts, a ringer tee, Doc Martens, and a black lace choker with chola lipstick on my face. I knew all the words to “Nothin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” but I had asked for Sonic Youth’s album “Dirty” for Christmas. We had both gone through our own pubescent cultural transformations. The Derek I knew a few months ago (the one I had a crush on) was cholo’ed out the last time I saw him.

“What up Derek?! Nice belt!” My tone was snarky. “The ‘G stands for Garcia’ alright? That’s my dad’s name,” his whole speaking voice and accent matched his new outfit. “If you say so, pocho,” I joked. “TSSSS.” he sneered, and turned away. He was committed to his part, and I was committed to mine and those two worlds did not overlap.

Derek picked one of the two choices he was given and I got that. I understood his desire to “pick a side.” Not having a side meant being called a coconut, or a sell-out by the brown kids, while the white kids and their parents made jokes about your race at the dinner table they had invited you to. I had already tried fitting in—and found I didn’t. I also wasn’t comfortable with smashing myself into a racist Mexican trope. I picked a third way that I had to figure out on my own — just being myself. I was a teenage girl of mixed race, raised on MTV while living in the white flight fallout of suburban of Los Angeles, in the 1990s.

12.02.23

YT Privilege.

White privilege is often treated like a mythological creature in our cultural discourse. There are the experts for whom this is not a debate; there are the believers who have seen it, and the faithful who haven’t needed to see it to know it exists. Then there are the doubters, who argue that white privilege is not a real thing. This statement is usually followed by, 'I worked hard for everything I have,' as if hard work and white privilege exist on the same spectrum of influence over outcomes.

I know white privilege is real, because both sides of my family tried to convince me that I had it, even if they weren't explicitly aware of it at the time.

I remember my dad coaching me, telling me how to respond to the question “What are you?” when people asked about my race. He said “Tell them you are European, your last name is Losorelli, all they need to know is you are European.” I was being coached to try and use my most Eurocentric feature (skin lighter than his) to pass as something closer to white, and further from Mexican. Passing meant I would be safer in the world, subject to less scrutiny, given more credibility. In exchanges like these I understood that successful passing would make my life easier, later I understood the difficulty of passing when I felt the sting of failing at it. I began understanding that a physical body can be like a colonized territory, a land with different laws and rights as defined by someone who is not native to it.

My dad was a loan officer in the late 80s, as the California real estate market was booming. Our dining table was regularly covered in piles of thick binders, canons of personal financial records belonging to hopeful home buyers. It was my dad’s job to shepherd these hopefuls through the process, in exchange for a commission, a percentage of the total loan upon the close of Escrow. His grumbling at this process is a core memory of mine. “This is why I never pushed you guys to learn Spanish. Look at all of these loans I’m working on. Do you know who they belong to? Mexicans.” I wasn’t yet picking up the connection. “They only speak Spanish—which means the company sends them to me. Since I’m the only one who speaks Spanish and English, I end up working harder, and making less money than the loan officers who only speak English.” I’m still not fully understanding, and he can tell. “Mexican families don’t qualify for big loans, they don’t have a lot of money, or good jobs. So, my commissions are smaller.” then he added, “Half of these loans won’t even close.” I suddenly understood many things about how brown lives and white lives were different. I recalled this memory the first time I heard the phrase the “White Privilege.”

In the second grade, my teacher looked at me and began speaking very loudly “CRAY OH LA” I remember her face in mine as she held up a box of crayons. She pulled one out and said “RO HO CRAY OH LA. OK?” I was extremely confused. In the classroom space, I was grouped at a table with a few other children and a couple of times a week another teacher would gather us up, and take us to a small room, where we would say words in Spanish and English. I had no idea what was going on. Thankfully the ELL teacher figured out what was going on pretty quickly and she returned me to the classroom. I was not an ELL kid.

My same second-grade teacher would belittle me in class, make note of my failures and lack of intelligence, and send classwork home covered in red ink. My mom, a white woman, was confused by red marks. From what she could tell—my classwork was correct. She set up a conference with the teacher, where it became immediately clear that this woman had a problem with me, and now her. My mom went to the office and demanded that I be placed in a different class with a different teacher immediately. The change in environments was instantly noticeable. In my new classroom te teacher did not speak loudly in my face or ridicule me. I didn’t feel isolated or ashamed. By the end of the first semester, I was testing an entire grade level ahead in reading and writing, and I was recommended to the GATE program for enrichment.

That first teacher assumed that I was not English-speaking and was from a non-English-speaking household. She believed she could hold me back, and there wouldn't be a person at home who could understand what she was doing—much less call out her behavior. When I first heard the phrase “White Privilege” I also remembered the power my mom had always had to make changes in my life, a power that brown and black moms had less access to.

Racial ambiguity also carries its level of white privilege, directly linked to skin color and physical features. Among my dad’s three mixed children, there exists a spectrum of skin tones, hair textures, and physical features. Each of us has encountered the world in varying ways based on these physical attributes and how quickly those around us discern our racial or ethnic background. Until someone identifies our race, they're uncertain which racial lens to use in perceiving us. In that gap of time we have access to White Privlige, as Whiteness is viewed by so many White folks as the basis of all life. Before they figure out what you are, or aren’t, you are given the benefit of the doubt.

In my own life, I like to exploit that grey zone of privilege. It happens when I find myself invited to certain spaces, and conversations by White folks who read me as mostly “white” but “brown enough” to check some bureaucratic or performative DEI box. Once I am in those rooms, I foreground my Chicana identity, I call on the holy power of the Chingona, and I speak ¡Sin Vergüenza! I use my privilege to suck the polite air out of the room, and replace it with tough questions, and historical knowledge. I advocate for more voices in the room and push for critical thinking that decenters whiteness when we are making policies, or designing communication.

I know that White Privilege is real when a White person rolls their eyes ansays things to me they would never say to my father, to my husband, to my cousins, or to my friends. As a woman wearing a hijab walks by they say to me “They’ll never be us, you know. Not when they dress like that.” I look at them and ask “How would you like her to dress?” She says “I dunno in blue jeans maybe?” I ask a clarifying question “So if she wears blue jeans you won’t have a problem with her anymore?” The woman gawks, shakes her head, and gives up. As a mother checking out at Vallarta pays with WIC coupons the White woman in front of me turns around, rolls her eyes and says “Our tax dollars at work!” “Do you not know where you are right now?” I remind her that this space was not created with her comfort in mind, I stare at her dead in the face. She turns back around, ass cheeks freshly puckered.

I know White Privilege is real.

12.09.23

Anti-Excellence Learning Spaces.

Excellence is begging for your right to exist.
—ALOK

Two gates permit access to higher education—the price at one gate is cash, while the other requires excellence. Because of this system, those of us who do not come from money, are forced to trade in “merit.”

Systems designed to close the equity gap between wealthy privileged people, and under-resourced marginalized people reduce themselves to being purely performative when they hold the marginalized people to a higher academic standard than is expected of their privileged counterparts.

My classmate “Pierre” and I received the same degree from OTIS College of Art & Design. Pierre spent most of his time under the constant threat of not passing his classes and often scraped by with Cs and Ds. His only concern was meeting the bare minimum of passing, the correlation between grades and funding his education was non-existent for him. He was a cash customer.

Meanwhile, I stressed over an A- lowering my GPA in a way that would make me less competitive for grants and scholarship funding that would allow me to continue my studies into the next semester. For me grades were a cash equivalent earned through perfection—a quality that exists even above time and effort.

When someone keyed Pierre’s BMW in the parking lot, his dad bought him a new one. When I missed a class because my mother was in a psychiatric hold and I was trying to figure out how to get her out of a predatory mental health facility so she could go back to raising my two younger brothers—the department chair said I needed a letter from the hospital to prove what I was saying was true. Thankfully she backed down when I refused her request and said “Why would I make up such a gross story to get out of classes that I borrowed $20,000 a year for?”

Though I’ve lived it, I was reminded again today of the performative nature of “Academic Equity” programs.

My student B sent me a text this morning worried about not being able to finish her AA degree if she didn’t get a C or better in her Math class. Without that C, she would be put on academic probation and potentially lose her grant eligibility for the Spring —forcing her to drop out. B faces multiple challenges, including a learning disability, single motherhood, and recently contending with an illegal eviction. The precarious difference between a grade of 69.8% and the requisite 70% to elevate her grade from a D to a C poses significant stress. If she were a cash-paying student, this academic predicament would not exist, her learning disability would likely not impede her access to education, and housing insecurities would not be a concern.

It would be nice to believe that the tangible injustice of these situations escape the notice of policy-makers responsible for creating such systems. Yet, recurrent exposure to these scenarios reveals that these failing points are an integral part of maintaining the balance of power and privilege. When you are forced to pay your way with excellence (a currency that exhausts, and usurps all your humanity), and by some rare chance you reach that place of access to resources, you dare not misstep, for fear of losing it all.

While advocating for forthcoming policy changes and innovative concepts like 'un-grading' remains crucial in the pursuit of equitable access to education—educators need ground-level strategies now. We cannot keep waiting for top-down changes. One such approach involves the integration of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) within the classroom, coupled with a comprehensive understanding of its underlying significance. This method stands as a pivotal means to render Equity Programs genuinely equitable and less performative.

At this juncture, the primary obstacle to achieving equity lies within the educators themselves. This obstacle may stem from genuine ignorance or, in some cases, active participation in perpetuating inequities.

Like all good design processes finding a solution begins with asking the right questions:

What can we do to reach through, and teach through those obstacles?
How do we dissolve the shameof “not knowing” in academia?
How do we chip away at the egoic belief that everything is earned by equal measure?
What do educators need in order to be comfortable enough to show up like students again?

Some ideas:

1. Normalize Not Knowing: Encourage a culture where questions and uncertainties are welcomed. Highlight the value of curiosity and the process of exploration, emphasizing that not knowing is an opportunity for growth rather than a flaw.

2. Foster Vulnerability: Create spaces where educators feel safe to acknowledge their gaps in knowledge or understanding. Model vulnerability by sharing personal learning experiences and embracing the process of continuous improvement.

3. Emphasize Collective Learning: Shift the focus from individual achievement to collaborative learning environments. Encourage educators to engage in peer-to-peer learning, mentorship, and sharing of best practices.

Exercise 1: Choose one of the three points and describe a real-world experience from your career as an educator that is relative. For example, think of a time when you experienced “not knowing” as your students looked to you for knowledge. How did you respond? What can you learn or teach others from this experience?

Exercise 2: Add an idea to this list! How else can we facilitate adopting boots-on-the-ground equity work for faculty who are intimidated? How can we change the minds of those who are resistant? Is there such a thing as an unteachable educator? IS there anything to be done about that?

12.09.23

Su Casa, Es Mi Casa

This piece of writing is going to need some explanatory commas around historical contexts and Nahutl translations.

The most-visited Catholic shrine in the world, is in Mexico City, a city built on what was once the capital of the Aztec Empire. The shrine is dedicated to an apparition of the Virgin Mary who appeared in the year 1531 to a Chichimec peasant and his uncle—Juan Diego and Juan Bernardino—whose story was documented in Nahuatl—a pre-colonial language belonging to the Aztec/Mexica people and later translated to Spanish.

According to the legend, an apparition appeared before Juan Diego at the top of Tepeyac Hill, she spoke to him in Nahuatl and identified herself as the “mother of the very true deity”. She instructed Juan Diego to erect a church at that site in her honor.

Juan Diego sought to fulfill her wish with the help of the Catholic Church, he approached the Archbishop and shared the request of the holy mother, and (shocker) the Archbishop did not believe Juan, instead he instructed him to return to the site of his vision, and ask her to validate her claim in the form of a miracle. 

Juan returned to the site and encountered her once again, upon relaying the request of the Archbishop, she agreed to deliver a miracle and instructed him to return the following day. Unfortunately, Juan’s uncle (also named Juan), became very ill and required his care, and Juan was unable to return to receive the miracle as instructed. Eventually, Uncle Juan Bernardino became so ill, that Juan Diego decided to head to Tlatelolco in search of a priest to hear his final confession. The simplest route would have take him directly through the site of his apparition, but consumed in shame Juan Diego decided to duck out on her, instead choosing a longer route that would not require passage through Tepeyac Hill.

As he made his way to the priest, guess who showed up? “¿No estoy yo aquí que soy tu madre?” she chided him for not fulfilling his commitment to receive her miracle. She told him that she had cured his uncle, and instructed him to gather flowers from Tepeyac Hill (normally barren at this time of year), and bring them to the Archbishop. As Juan reached the summit he saw the hill was covered in red roses, a flower not native to Mexico. The Holy Mother met him there and stuffed his tilmàtli full of the flowers. 

Juan journeyed again to the Archbishop to deliver the miracle and plead once again for a church to be erected in her honor. As he approached the Archbishop, Juan opened his cloak, and the flowers fell to the floor, revealing the divine image of his apparition on the fabric. An Image of a divine feminine, emerging from the womb, surrounded by golden swords.

Upon returning home, Juan found his Uncle Juan had fully recovered and had also been visited bedside by the spirit of the Mother. She instructed him to tell the story of his miraculous recovery to the same Archbishop, adding that she wished to be called by the name Guadalupe.

----

“Those Spaniards have nearly wiped us out completely!” Xōchiquetzal wailed. “The people do not visit our altars, or leave flowers, or dance like they used to!” her brother Xōchipilli groaned. “Who could dance draped in all that fabric?” Xochiquetzal replied. “Hideeeeeous!” Xōchipilli waved his hands on either side of his face in disgust.

“Chalchiuhtotolin has warned us of a coming plague, and without an altar or offerings, we will not have the power to save them,” Xōchiquetzal said.

“If the plague comes, and all of them die, all of us will be lost forever,” Xōchipilli was starting to feel sick.

“We have to think of something. How can we save them? How can we save ourselves?” Xōchiquetzal asked.

“We need a new temple, one they won’t abandon or tear down. We need a temple that we know belongs to us, but the Spaniards think belongs to them,” Xōchipilli began to plot.

“How will we know it belongs to us?” Xōchiquetzal asked.

“We will instruct the humans to build it at the top of Tepeyac, and we will know it stands in honor of our once great empire,” Xōchipilli answered.

“Brilliant! Again our people will celebrate us with a festival,” Xōchiquetzal began to get excited.

“Yes! The festival will be full of dancing and flowers like back in the day! You remember!” Xōchipilli matched her enthusiasm.

“Yeah, but no more sacrifices, we can’t afford to lose more of them.” Xōchiquetzal clarified.

Xōchipilli suddenly stopped, looking worried. “How will we include the others, Auntie Chalchiuhtlicue, Uncle Tláloc? We can’t leave them behind!’

Xōchiquetzal thought for a minute and answered, ‘Since we have all had dominion over snakes, we will call ourselves “Coatlaxopeuh.”

12.16.23

SIN VERGÜENZA

“¡Aye Dios mija! Tu tienes no vergüenza. ¡Nada!”

I could tell by my Dad’s tone that I was being chastised for something, but being raised a ‘no sabo’ kid—meant he had to translate the admonishment into English. 

“You have no SHAME! NONE!” he said

Something was definitely lost in that translation because I took it as a complimement—and later it bacame my super-power. Everytime he said it, I would think “Who wants to have shame? That sounds awful! I never want to be with shame?” I turned the critique into a compliment.

My application of alchemy to this phrase grew stronger with my understanding of the nuance and the context of this statement. It seemed to show up anytime whenever women and girls did something that broke gender norms and expectations. The transgressions ranged from burping, to saying bad words, or having a messy room. It showed uo when I was  calling out sexism, to rejecting machismo expectations.

“¡Aye Dios mija! Tu tienes no vergüenza.” he would say, exasperated and stunned—and I would smile. 

“Fuck right.” I would think to myslef. 

I refused to have shame around my body, my thoughts, or my feelings. I would let my opinions come bursting from my boca grande at family parties. I would wear a crazy outfit to the family Disneyland trip. My laugh was obnoxious like mariachi trumpets. I wore combat boots with daisy dukes and blue lipstick. I ate too fast, I slept too much, and I hung out with the ‘hotitos.’ I wrote poems about periods, and then I photocopied them and gave them to people.   

There were times though, when he would look at me, and I would catch a glimpse of pride hiding in the machismo.

“Aye Dios mija, tu tienes no vergüenza.” my father would say gently, and give me a hug.