Castiza Notebooks

The Kingdom of Heaven is Bullet-less

2012-01-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

Experiencing Easter at Medhane Alem Eritrean Orthodox Church in Washington, DC

“Meet Me There,” a mother’s t-shirt reads. On this balmy springtime evening in Washington, D.C., she and her two-year old son are just two of hundreds at a seven-hour mass at Medhane Alem Eritrean Orthodox Church hoping to get there to be with God by Easter Sunday.

Easter at Medhane Alem is a tri-partide process of doubt, faith, and eventual renewal. Over a three day period, parishioners stand together for a total of 16 hours to pray peace into existence, and somehow, someway, will the world back together. It is a powerful process of affirmation for an immigrant community in mired in displacement, and proof that things other than daffodils come back to life in the spring.

I. Good Friday

56 days of fasting have passed. Breakfast has been a bane, with butter-less bread and milk-less coffee. The sunny spring days have been dominated by too much pollen and too many lentils. Today, at the end of Holy Week, people have come to the corner of 2nd and S in the Howard-Shaw District to pay penance and see hope come alive this late April weekend in pre-election Washington.

At twelve noon, Good Friday officially begins. On the bottom floor of the two-story church, men sit on the left side of the church, and women sit on the right. The left hand side is a sea of slacks and dress shirts, and the right side a sea of white head scarves.

The Eastern Orthodox Church is a theater of the sacred. Looking through a large pewter cross made in the form of an ornate metal doily, Father Weldetrisae recites the Psalms with the rapid-fire cadence of a car salesman in the near-dead language of Ge’ez. Above him, hand-painted renditions of a North African Christ are cradled by the Eritrean flag to the right, and the U.S. flag to the left. The old, worn plaster of the two-story, converted, formerly Protestant church has been covered by framed pictures of the saints, and lush red carpets have been laid down to line the space for the presence of God.

At three o’clock, Christ officially dies, and the church goes black. Parishioners of both sexes weep, and a gruesome silence invades the place. Uninterrupted by the chirp of the birds outside or the small ray of sunlight peeping in through the cracks of what was once a stained glass window, the congregation sits in solemn observance of this metaphorical murder.

The silence is broken by the gentle voice of Father Tsemon, who walks forward in a tweed collar shirt, and with a calm smile on his face.

Speaking in colloquial Tigryna instead of the liturgical Ge’ez, Father Tsemon tells his congregation that it is the social responsibility of Christians to make God’s reign a reality here on earth. “Some things are wrong in our church, some things are wrong in our world,” he says, “but just like the two thieves hanging next to Jesus said that it was wrong to crucify him,. I have to say it if something is wrong. It could be the government, could be a brother, but at a certain time, someone has to say enough is enough. Our allegiance to God means that we have to condemn what is wrong, right there, right now.”

There are not enough beads on a rosary to count the wrongdoings the Eritrean Diaspora has faced.
Eritrea emerged from a bloody, 30-year war with Ethiopia just 15 years ago, and many are banned from returning to their home county. Those who weren’t banned left because of poverty; Eritrea is one of the poorest countries in the world. Eritreans in Washington joke about how many countries they passed through looking for asylum before they landed in the U.S., and how many Eritrean taxi drivers actually hold Ph.Ds. Eritreans in the Diaspora are a people who are defined by their land but who ironically find themselves landless, floating in the service sectors of the Global North with only a crucifix as a compass.

Believing strongly in the power of prayer to affect actions and outcomes, participation in the mass – and the church at large – is a deeply political act. Father Tseomon announces, “God is responsible for the hearts of people in power. In our country, we blame the leaders, but we should actually blame ourselves for not asking God, for not asking the source directly.”

“In this country, if we don’t pray about the election, we don’t know who is going to come to power. It’s our choice to decide, through prayer,” he poses.

In unison, the church announces, “We pray that God make [our leaders] considerate, very kind, generous, and smart, so they can always think good for other people/ We also pray for those in prison, farmers, businessmen, crops, those who are sick - for the whole world to be in peace/ Let none of keep in his heart malice or revenge or envy or hatred towards his neighbor/ God Bless our Bishop, and may he watch over Eritrea alem was alem – and the whole world over. Amen.”

With the endless “Our Fathers” and dozens of hours spent praying, one can only hope that God is listening.

While praying, the whole congregation turns and bows towards the four directions in choreographic obedience to God. After six hours of standing and siting, it is almost impossible to tell where the white of the walls starts and the white of the women’s headscarves ends.

Two large, goat-skin drums are then brought out from behind the Hoover vacuum cleaner in the storage room, and a deep boom-KAK-KAK slaps the air with sound. Four people total play – three middle-aged men, and one thin 18-year old girl with lime green trim around her white headwrap. Floating out into the middle of the group, Father Tsemon sings and then begins to dance, his arms creating gentle waves as if he’s swimming in a sea of melody. The whole church swells in claps, and presents a syncopated display of sympathy with Christ’s death.

This is the story of Christ made personal, but also made musical.

At the end of the mass, the priests bring out two short bunches of dried palm fronds. Although the mass is now officially over, a pious few remain to complete the final penance. As Father Tsemon or Father Weldetrisae approach each parishioner, he or she admits their sins committed during the previous year, and the priest assigns the recital of one zegbet, or kneeling prayer, per sin. The assignments are given with the tap of the palm fronds on the top of the back - one tap per sin. The room resounds with the soft flurry of flapping palm fronds. Tap-tap-tap-tap!

Some parishioners are finished after two or three zegbets, some are assigned to dozens.
The posture and movements of zegbets are all but identical to Muslim prayer. One starts standing, and brings the arms crossed at the shoulders down to the waist, then to the knees, then bends down to the ground, where one kisses the floor out of a sign of humility and obedience to God’s creation.

The strain of kneeling up and down some 40, 50 or even 60 times makes some adults’ feet go numb, and their joints so sore that they are unable to walk the next day.

Some flexible teenagers, however, are eager to show their devotion to their parents and friends, and bow quickly, and sometimes more than necessary.

The 18 year-old musician, now high up on the second level, appears to have a particularly gymnastic relationship with God. As some stop to give their knees a rest, she keeps going in her rotational prayer of arms-shoulders-knees-floor-bow. She ceaselessly continues her ministerial callisthenic all by herself, until God comes back tomorrow.

II. Holy Saturday

The pews are full today. There is no room to move about, and there are no fans or air conditioning in the 92 degree room. This is the most formal service of the year though, and no one would miss it.

Downstairs is mostly for the elderly, who have arrived at six o’clock sharp to get front row seats. On the lower level, some women have crosses permanently tattooed on their foreheads, a ritual which is generally not practiced anymore.

Upstairs is where the young people are, and where all the action is. Striking young couples with gelled hair sit down right next to each other, with the men in suits and women in long white and pastel-colored dresses. Pastel oranges and greens dot the pews.

The existence of the second level is due to a simple architectural accident: trad-itional Orthodox churches only have one level, and no pews. Standing or kneeling is seen as the only suitable way of worshipping, and sitting is considered disrespectful. Tradition is bendable here though, as the church happens to be converted, and also happens to be in Washington, the city of bendable rules.

The vessel of the word of God is a large iMac Powerbook, which projects a tri-lingual Ge’ez, Tigryna, and English-language liturgy onto a huge screen at the front of the church. Immanently visible from all angles of the church, the machine seems fed by the heavy incense augmenting its electronic glow. At a certain point in the service, the battery of the iMac dies, and the entire congregation sits and waits while the PowerPoint is brought back up again. Only the head priest can administer the almighty right click to bring the electronic liturgy to life.

Hour 13 of 16 passes. To make it through the mass, some people text message loved ones, and some accidentally doze off.

While the adults are busy dealing with the overwhelming (and long) realization of Christ’s death, the children prefer to play in the aisles of the church, and talk loudly in English.

Posing, one asks the other, “Hanna, do I look like Mommy? Ha, ha!! Do I??” Some particularly hammy two-year olds do a mock zegbets, with their diapered bottoms in the air and coy little smiles on their faces.

At the end of the evening, a Passion Play of eight-year olds fills the front of the church.

The Mary Magdalene character weeps a high-pitched, elementary-style sob into the microphone, and then is asked, “Woman, why are you crying?” The sobs suddenly stop, and the congregation breathes a laughing sigh of relief.

The Lord is Risen Indeed; Alleluia, Alleluia.

III. Easter

It’s 1:13am in the morning on Sunday, and the PowerPoint slide reads “Happy Resurrection.” The mock-crucified teenager looks up from under his sparkly silver crown; Easter is finally here for the Medhane Alem church.

People on the bottom floor have lit candles to represent renewed faith, and huge droplets of boiling hot wax fall on the floor. Older women yell “Ye-le-le-le-le-le-le!!” in celebration.

Tri-partide kiss greetings fill the air like a flock of overly affectionate butterflies. Teenagers greet their aunts, fathers greet their sons. The large, wooden church is filled with sounds of connection: people are shaking hands, patting each other on the back, and smiling.

The congregation ever so slowly makes its way out the door, grabs the shoes they removed before entering the church, and waits in line for the public nuzzling ceremony of kissing the cross. After that, people head downstairs to the church social hall. That’s where the kitchen is, and where the center of the church community is.

Medhane Alem church is a place of refuge in the most literal sense. Around 60% of Eritreans in Washington, D.C. emigrated as refugees. Hanna, the Sunday school teacher, explained that many Eritreans “came through Sudan, some through Somalia and Kenya.”

Simret, the teenage drum player pictured to the right, learned to play while in the choir at her Eritrean Orthdox Church in Kenya, where she grew up as a refugee.

Even Father Tsemon came as a refugee. His migration was sponsored by a Japanese-American scientist, who when visiting Asmara found the political situation to be eerily similar to the Manzanar internment camps in Central California, where he was detained during World War II.

Healing from the war with Ethiopia has been “very difficult”, Hanna explains. For that reason, she thinks “Easter is important as a holiday of peace, where we can think and pray together.”

Most Eritreans come to the U.S. as asylum seekers, but only a percentage are actually granted asylum status. Without a sponsor or a visa, many migrate to the U.S. the way most undocumented migrants do – by paying a coyote to cross them through the Mexican border. Many families unite in Northern Mexico first in order to cross together as a group. Standing in the candle-light dim of the Medhane Alem church, it’s difficult to imagine that these white-robed, jewel-adorned older women used to hear corridos on their way to the supermarket, and use their calling cards to call their families in Asmara - or Chihuahua.

In turn, the Eritrean Orthodox church community has experienced its own evolutions. Woldy, a lay minister at the church who works a lot with the youth programs, says that their Eritrean Orthodox church community here in the Shaw District is similar to how it was back home, except that “we’re more religious here than over there. We have younger, more energetic priests… our church is better here,” he concludes.

Woldy sees the increased religiosity as directly proportional to the decreased exposure to war and conflict. “During peacetime, you want to go to church,” he says. “But during wartime, religion is not really a priority.”

Elsa Berhane, a parishioner of Eritrean descent who grew up in Sudan, echoed a similar sentiment, saying “Eritreans were so focused on [national] liberation, growing up we didn’t see church as that big of a deal. Everyone was always away – away on the battlefield, away from home. Now, we’re together. It’s nice.”

Given the varied backgrounds of the parishioners, the arrival of Easter means different things for different people. For some parishioners, Easter carries only a religious tone. For Seleb, a Youngman in his twenties, “Easter means being cleaned from sins. It’s same thing every year, a nice tradition.”

For others, it is an omnipotent precursor towards a new era in the District of Politics.

For Ruth, a cheery-eyed matriarch, Easter is a chance for her to reflect on how to do God’s will on earth. For her, that means praying for Barack Obama.

“Ooh, every day I pray, pray, pray for him”, she said, shaking her head and wringing her hands “They say that Obama is about race or whatever, but this is what it really comes down to - Obama is about everybody having a chance. I want him to have a chance. I want to see what he can do as president, what he can be!”

“We don’t really talk about politics here, though,” she laughs. “We just go to church together.”

Downstairs, parishioners officially break their Lenten fast, and eat meat and dairy products for the first time in months. Not a lot is eaten at that hour, given that it is the wee hours of the morning. The real feast is left instead for Easter Sunday.

On Easter Sunday, families will spend hours cooking lamb and multiple courses to accompany it. Back home in Eritrea, mothers would wake up at 5 a.m. on Sunday to slaughter a lamb to roast for the Easter meal, and bleed it facing east to keep away ghosts for the rest of the year.

“We emphasize red meat,” Hanna, the Sunday school teacher said, “because all during Lent we haven’t been able to eat red meat. We eat everything we haven’t been able to eat for weeks, like special desserts and lots of rich foods.” she added.

“I love the process of Easter,” she says in a reflective tone of voice. “I love the prayer, I love the fasting. It’s a whole process in the way that Christmas is not. It makes you appreciate the holiday more.”

“It’s just a really special thing.”

2012

2012-01-06T14:51:00.000-08:00

2012 has gotten off to an auspicious start. Folks are saying either the world will end, or Obama will get re-elected. And let's face it: whether he does or doesn't win is, to most people, the equivalent of the entire world either stopping or starting all over again.

But what if the world doesn't end in 2012? What if it's Y2K, all over again? What if all that “happens” isn’t big enough to make headlines but is just a silent, tectonic shift in the world's disposition? (Which is what the Mayan prediction for 2012 actually is.)

That would be a big deal indeed. Maybe 2012 can be the year in which we stop worrying about the larger political picture, and just celebrate ourselves (to the tune of Common’s new song). Maybe we can liberate, and let love. Stop waiting on a social revolution, and raise our interior standard of living. It's the ultimate sense of freedom - loving just because you want to.

GOOD magazine has a great new video series up called "What Do You Love." , which profiles people doing careers and hobbies that they love. My favorite video about this, however, is Roberson Oliveira's video ‘Naldo’. It’s a series of video portraits of his family in São Paolo, Brazil.

Some of my favorite pictures are the ones at the end, with the Rayban sunglasses – hey, if the world is ending (or beginning again), we might as well be wearing Raybans!

Living on the Day of the Dead

2011-11-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

In this week's fantastic Alt Latino show on NPR, the first song they play is La Bruja/The Witch, in which the signer cries, "Oh, how beautiful it is to fly/At two in the morning/ At two in the morning, how beautiful it is to fly, ay, mama".

He's flying with a witch.

A hot witch.

The beautiful thing about Day of the Dead is its sex appeal - the Day of the Dead, or All Souls Day, is about celebrating the duality of life. It's about creation, and also about destruction. It embraces the two sides of existence, and in it, the poetry of existence itself. The Day of the Dead is about staring life down to the end of the road, and smiling.

The holiday is a glorious whirl of marigolds and miel; but this year, with as much death as there is in the Americas, and particularly in Mexico and Central America (where it is celebrated the strongest), it has a different tone. The drug wars in Mexico have turned it into a pais de lloronas, in the literal sense.

It might be easy to let death have the final word; to just give in, and fly with it. Let it slowly lessen the value of life, and overshadow its glow. That's the lazy option, and it's the wrong one. The harder one is to get on with the business of living. We know we respect the dead, and that the dead respect us.

But let's also have a little more respect for the living, - and live it like we mean it.

Let's make policies and communities that are life-affirming. Start by signing this Washington Office on Latin America petition to stop the arms smuggling that's driving so much death in Mexico by clicking here. Solo faltan 300 - they only need 300 more.

As the famous Los Fabulosos Cadillacs song Skeletons and Devils/Calaveras y Diablitos, reminds us:

Las tumbas son para los muertos...
Graves are for the dead
La vida es para gozarla
Life is about living well
La vida es para vivirla mejor.
Life is about living it better and better all the time.

The Feminista Mystique: What Would JLo Do?

2011-10-23T17:53:00.000-07:00

Positive thinking is all the rage these days. Everyone from Joel Osteen to Suzie Orman to your neighborhood pothead tells you It's Your Time! Stand in Your Truth! Don't Worry, Be Happy!

These mantras are the 21st century versions of the WWJD wristbands of the 90's. Although I didn't wear them then, if I did now, instead of asking about what Jesus would do, why not ask myself...what would JLo do?!

Maybe the best way to live like Jesus is actually to live like JLo: validate yourself to keep doing whatever it is you're doing, and do it well.

How did she do this? Ironically enough, by having no shame: she publicly burned through multiple marriages, flaunts her gigantic ass, and arrives at awards ceremonies in a see-through peacock robe. She made her performing weakness - singing - her emphasis, and keeps singing in front of thousands of people even though her voice cracks. The melody of "Get on the Floor" is stolen from a 1980's lambada song, and the outfits are glittery versions of footsie pajamas.

But by the looks of it, she - as Tina Fey writes in Bossypants - doesn't “...[expletive] care if you like it!” Her lack of shame is what makes her a feminist and has made her a success. Instead of falling into the female trap of self-punishment for not being perfect, she accepts her flaws and keeps it moving. Instead of hiding her hips, she got them insured for a million dollars.

Instead of shame, she has swagger - that je-ne-sais-JLo that took her from back up dancer to millionaire mother, all on her terms.

So similar to how songstress Demi Lovato has 'Stay Strong' tattooed on her wrists, I wrote a makeshift tattoo reminding myself of the power of La Yenifer. She reminds us that whatever it is we do, we, at the end of the day, are doin' it well.

Occupy Wall Street's Unexpected Successes

2011-10-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

Is Occupy Wall Street a real-life version of Rage Against the Machine's song "Bulls on Parade?"

I recently published an article through HyperVocal.com about how Occupy Wall Street has shaken up the activist exercise. In less than a month, it has brought about the following results: 1) It created an unexpected coalition between liberal whites and activists of color; 2) It changed Americans’ understanding of history and class; 3) It illuminated the failures of the Professional Left; and 4) It showed the shortcomings of traditional political strategy. Read the full article here.

Whatever its long-term results are, Occupy Wall Street has brought people out onto the streets, and put (Wall Street) bulls on parade.

Our Good Life

2011-09-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

The ten year anniversary of September 11th is tomorrow. Although that means many things (most of which I'm not going to dive into here), let's remember something: Patriot Act or not, it's pretty good to live in America.

It’s not perfect, and it’s not always easy, but it's good.

Somewhere in America, an immigrant is opening up their own business. There is a child being born. A vegetarian has unlimited food options. Women can marry each other. Someone can wear overalls to church, just because they want to.

Here in Washington, DC, many people forget about the good life, but back home in LA - a city of immigrants - there is an unshakeable feeling that life there was a privilege. For people from war-torn or broken countries, simple afternoons filled with the scent of homemade meals, fresh laundry, and laughing children is the good life.

Tranquility might not make the 6 o’clock news, but it’s the tick-tock of the new American heartland.

So, as Kanye says, throw your hands up for the good life.

The Flight

2011-08-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

En vez de escucharles a los politicos, escucha esta como si fuera la voz de Dios, hablandote al oido:

Dame la mano y vamos darnos una vuelta al mundo
Give me your hand and we'll go all around the round, round world

Darle una vuelta al mundo
All around the round, round world

Darle una vuelta al mundo
All around the round, round world

Verte a ti misma como Dios te ve - now that would make some changes!

The Bird's the Word

2011-07-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

In 1963, The Trashmen knew the bird was the word. Their song Surfin' Bird topped the charts.

Zuzuka Poderosa, below, has a beautiful new song out called Ms. Sandra (Dona Sandra).

Hipster chic has fashioned the video with, well, birds. But apparently that's the word...hipsters have moved on from being obsessed with deer to being obsessed with birds. Whatever works...it's a haunting piece with a slight sensation of being in flight.

The Vargas Story

2011-06-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas' My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant essay in the New York Times has shocked just about everyone. I was shocked to learn that Vargas, whom I met briefly through Georgetown's Journalism program, built his Pulitzer-winning career entirely without papers. (Wow!) Other, more conservative Americans were shocked to learn that smart, accomplished people like Vargas are among the ranks of the undocumented in this country.

That's a great thing, but here's the not-so-good thing: not every illegal immigrant has the privilege to be able to publicly declare their status. If most undocumented immigrants did what Vargas did, they wouldn’t be cooed over, they’d be deported.

Although the larger, Open Society Institute-funded goal behind Vargas’ Define American project is to increase support for the passage of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) and the DREAM Act, it is, in actuality, a career boost for Vargas and a clear reinforcement of the power line between the haves and the have-nots. What is supposed to be a story about lack of privilege is, inadvertently, a story showcasing privilege.

This high-profile essay will act as a shield for Vargas against the actual legal ramifications of declaring his status, illuminating the sharp class divides that, ironically enough, make immigrants out of people tired of the fact that legal and economic exceptions will never be made for them in their home countries.Vargas will probably get a book deal from this essay, but millions of undocumented workers need something else from its publication. They need the passage of CIR and the DREAM Act. As a testament to all those people that can't wedge the the New York Times between themselves and Immigration Customs Enforcement agents, let's celebrate Vargas' story and lobby to change the laws that shaped it.

Beyonce Bzzz

2011-05-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

Who runs the world? According to Beyonce, girls.

In her new video, the Queen Bee of pop runs a post-apocalyptic country in which cabaret-clad women dance Fosse with chained hyenas. While it might be weird, it’s timely for a week in which the former head of the IMF took a break from "investing" in Africa to assault an African hotel maid, and the former governor of California considered it okay to sleep with his wife and his maid at the same time.

These are times in which we need new visions of the future. Okay so this future is dusty and metallic, but it's good food for thought:

Castizo Closets

2011-05-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

It's confirmed: Arnold Schwarzenegger's "love child" is half Mexican. Given that he slept with a member of his domestic household staff, I figured that the woman was Latina, and turns out she is. Mildred Patricia Baena, to be exact. Somewhere in Southern California a certain Chicano kid has been smirking on the couch while his friends unknowingly joked, "I'll be back!".

While it's disappointing, a high-level politician cheating on his wife is too normal to really be newsworthy. (After all, nearly all high-level politicos from DC to CA - Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Gavin Newsom, Antonio Villaraigosa - have checked that box.) What is newsworthy is how old-school this is.

Schwarzenegger having a love-child with his Mexican maid is straight 19th century. It's casta California, a color-based caste and power system in which European landowners often had children with indigenous women who worked in or around their homes. That's the mission system every California 3rd grader has to re-create with styrofoam as a class project. While Anglo settlers rejected this loose, Latin American social system that allowed for racial mixing, it's a deeply ingrained idea in California's subconscious.

And is perhaps even more so now, because NAFTA has turned the best intentions of both the Minute Men and the reconquista (reconquest) activists on their heads: American corporations have rendered Mexico economically uninhabitable, pushing hundreds of thousands of Mexican nationals back into what was Northern Mexico just 150 years ago.

Who knew that of all people, Republicans would make the reconquista real. California is half Mexican now, and its "centrist" governor has sealed the deal.

In californio California, people wouldn't have blinked if a blond governor had a dark-haired son in the figurative closets of his large estate. Maybe Arnold's most famous line is really the voice of casta California: I'll be back!

Celia and Nicki

2011-04-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

Then:

Now:

Y la diferencia?

The All-American Schlep

2011-03-21T20:15:00.000-07:00

Why did I schlep around in the rain the other day? For America.

Not really.

But kind of.

I went car-less for environmental reasons. In my hometown of Los Angeles, I would spend two hours a day in traffic, and in 2006, I decided to move to the East Coast in order to live in a walkable city and get around the old-fashioned way: on foot.

Standing drenched in the rain the other day, though, clinging to a pathetic bounty of three CVS bags, I suddenly thought of my Irish forefathers in Bedstuy, Brooklyn and wondered, “(Why) am I… living like them? They left the East Coast for California so they wouldn’t have to do errands on foot… is this history repeating or just my dumb ass being stubborn?”

I imagined them looking at me, shaking their heads. Thinking, poor girl…100 years and a Masters degree later, and she's still living like this.

For the record, I would have taxied my errands, but npf (non profit salary). And I would have skipped church and the two mile walk there, but it’s Lent, and I do my Jessica's Affirmation's Catholic-style.

In the words of David Brooks, groups are smarter than individuals. Last year, a bunch of young people here in DC did a Tweed Ride, in support of “19th century transportation solutions.” They dressed up vintage and spent their Sunday afternoon on bicycles.

They did the All-American Schlep the smart way = in style, and in the sunshine.

Their event was an enormous success; because the end of the day, the All-American Schlep is a pretty good thing.

Just not when it’s raining.

DC Tweed Ride from ReadysetDC on Vimeo.

I Wanna Be Susan Sontag

2011-03-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

In my most caffeinated moments, I have written about subjects she wrote about, such as beauty, heartache, and film.

Well, let me clarify: I want to be Susan Sontag, but I don't want to be a couchsurfer. Susan Sontag slept on people's couches for much of her writing life. Porque? Porque la writing no pay.

The British Invasion

2011-02-25T12:13:00.000-08:00

Brits haven't sung the soul of the American South this well since the Stones.

She wants to be the new Aretha Franklin, and maybe she sort of is. The white British songstress of this our Black Atlantic.

Hapa Pop Show

2011-02-13T18:46:00.000-08:00

As per usual, Brazil is beating the U.S. at its own cultural game. Hapa musician Curumin, a mixed Japanese Brazilian, gets the sound of (inter) American life right.

Curumin's music ranges from Samba Japa, which layers auto-tuned Japanese chants on modern beats, to the crunk, 90's club style Caixa Preta.

I don't know who the American equivalent of Curumin is. Who does pop like this? Where can we hear Chinese L.A., or Pilipino San Francisco, in fun young music?

Let's get going. I want to hear it. Cuz serious musicianship + playful mixing = la cosa nostra.

Beautiful, Bu-ti-ful: The Culture of Facebook

2011-01-19T13:37:00.000-08:00

It's everything we wanted: to be constantly, and universally, told we're beautiful.

Facebook is the most popular platform in the world during a time in which its users are at their most physically beautiful. On it, twenty and thirty-somethings post pictures of their recreation, their child rearing, their rear ends. And the most common reaction is, "Beautiful!"

Millenial life is now a digital theater of gorgeous people, and its culture of praise makes people feel, in the words of Rihanna, like they're the "only girl in the world."

Beauty, like everything else, reaches a point of diminishing returns, and that'll happen soon on Facebook. In a couple years, the commentary might not matter as much.

But as of now, it does. And why would it not? It builds self-esteem, and builds community.

Larry David said it best: Whatever works. At the end of the day, it's all beautiful, bu-ti-ful.

The Story of One Chinese Mother

2011-01-17T12:22:00.000-08:00

Amy Chua has caused quite an uproar with her recent Wall Street Journal article 'Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.' The article has garnered some 6,767 comments, and Chua has received both praise and hate mail from non-Asian Americans and Asian Americans alike.

When I first read it, I thought, "Okay. Some of this is true. And some of this has been common knowledge since the 70's. What...exactly...is the big deal?"

I think the big deal is this, though: her overarching point - that Chinese mothers are superior - is not true. The word superior, in the piece and the title itself, comes off as 'superlative'. Yes, there are better ways to parent than others, but there is not a best way.

Having grown up in an area of greater Los Angeles that is almost half Chinese, I was raised around girls like Chua's daughters. The ones that couldn't go to sleepovers, and studied piano only after Chinese school and SAT prep classes were finished with.

Chua's parenting techniques raise smart and successful adults. But those techniques can also raise adults who don't fare well when not being given directions. Ten years out of high school, the AP and the SAT crowd has 'grown up', but for a long while there, they hadn't. High-school meet-ups during college were meetings of twenty year olds who still acted like fifteen year olds, joking about sex (that they hadn't had yet) and complaining about homework.

So her subtle suggestion that American society would be magically transformed if every child had to play the violin sounds bogus to me. It also sounds classist; not everyone needs to have a B.A. in order to be a good person.

In the end, Chua's article taught a lot of people about a world they didn't know about. And that's good. But Chua's article is exaggerated to the point where it's almost untrue; and that all but negates the power of her argument.

She sold a hyperbole in order to get a book deal. And since misunderstanding equals media squalor and media squalor equals web hits, both she and the WSJ are profiting. But it should be seen for what it is a - a hit. It's not an overarching statement about an ethnicity, it's one statement of one (superior-feeling) mother.

Surviving in Nicaragua

2010-12-20T12:14:00.000-08:00

I've been debating whether or not to write this. I sort of don't want to be the Lefty complainer that says, "Why is a TV show about Americans surviving in Nicaragua dope when no one films the 4 million Nicaraguans who worry about surviving...every day?"

But I'm going to anyway.

My Nicaraguan friends and family are glad that Survivor did a series in Nicaragua. After all, it did bring visibility and some tourism dollars to a country that needs both. It's the second poorest country in the hemisphere, next to Haiti. (Gulp.)

But surviving on this show is interesting because it's optional. And hardship is durable because it's temporary. If the West wants a real reality show, they should do a documentary on everyday Nicaraguan life.

Women & Microlending

2010-12-17T12:10:00.000-08:00

There's been some tumult in the microlending world. It came out that microlending companies were making more than a micro-sized profit off of their microloans to women, which pissed off a lot of the women who were scrapping every penny together to make their loans on time.

It's a conundrum: many micro-lending institutions are for-profit companies. While their mission is always interpreted as purely pro-social, they are actually just private businesses who made a decision to do business with a niche market segment - women in developing countries - and happened to make a profit off of doing so. Yes, they lent capital to those who had none, but they also targeted a very responsible (and responsive!) consumer base: mothers.

Ironically enough, the eradication of poverty is good for capitalism.

So the outrage over profit margins begs the question - how much do women fundamentally buy into the idea of profit itself? Individual profit, that is?

If they are working for their families, and receive money for their work, do women on a certain level conceive of money as a communal item?

Ten Ways to Tell You’re in a Latino House

2010-12-05T13:08:00.000-08:00

1) People will not let their bare feet touch the floor. They wear flip flops on carpet. While wearing socks.
2) The whole house smells like Fabuloso.
3) The bakeware is kept in the oven itself.
4) There’s whole milk in the fridge.
5) There are more than two pictures or statuettes of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in the house.
6) The newest electronic in the house is the TV. And it’s huge.
7) Univision is on TV, but no one is watching it. They're just listening to it.
8) There are early risers in the house.
9) Most food products say 'Goya'.
10) The residents of the house are both better looking and have better judgment than the idiots on Univision in the background.

Obama in South Philly windowsills: Hope and Change on 11.2.2010

2010-11-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

Just like some Latino families have faded pictures of the Virgen de Guadalupe or the Holy Family in their windowsills, some black families have pictures of the First Family in their windowsills.

On Election Day 2010, I volunteered to canvass South Philadelphia neighborhoods in order to get folks out to the polls. I saw a lot of crumbling buildings, and brownfields, but also a lot - a LOT - of images of Obama.

In South Philadelphia, Obama seemed to BE the Democratic party. "Obama needs your help - vote today!" some of the literature said. And most said they were going to. The neighborhood was economically depressed, but almost every SINGLE person I talked to - no joke - said they voted, or were on their way to vote, and knew where their polling place was. Contrary to popular belief, neighborhoods other than rich ones vote early and often.

It is, in public sector speak, an "engaged community." Here's the thing, though: being civically engaged and being served are two very different things entirely.

The Stimulus Bill was supposed to fix problems like elderly people being swindled into bad deals or out of their homes. One older man who pointed to a grassy field across the street from him and said that a developer came in there, started to build something, tore it down, and let it lie fallow. This man tried to re-model his home using that same developer, only to find later that the developer had gone bankrupt and the money he poured into improving his home had been lost forever.

"That man robbed 51 senior citizens," he said. "And I've never seen a dime of my money back."

Residents of South Philly might "made their voices heard" at the polls, but they're just not listened to.

Which leads me to this conclusion: engagement is not enough.

The public sector needs to check itself; dialogue and participation are no substitutes for respect.

The fairest conversations are ones in which both sides listen to each other; but politics is a blood sport.

Rick and Jon

2010-10-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

Former CNN anchor Rick Sanchez - the one my grandma looked forward to saying, "La foto del diiiia!" every afternoon - has been fired from CNN.

Because he said what he thought.

I thought both Rick Sanchez and Jon Stewart worked for...news networks. And that the idea of the news is a search for the truth. Rick's truth is that the sense of persecution so central to Jewish American identity is no longer relevant, as Jews hold enormous (and hard-earned!) influence over the media, academia, and finance. His truth is that the power dichotomy in America is no longer about WASP or Jew, crucifix or dreidel; it's about white vs. brown. This truth holds that you're not only not going to get into the country club, but you might get pulled over, you might be asked if you're American even if you're born here, and you might even be a victim of a hate crime. And not because your last name is Polish as opposed to British; because your skin is brown.

Jon's truth is different. And that's fine. This isn't just about "speaking truth to power"; it's about multiple truths.

Isn't journalism supposed to want all sides of a story? Isn't it supposed to not just tolerate, but welcome, dissent?

Paul and Julio down by the schoolyard

2010-09-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

When all else fails, leave it to Paul Simon. In times like these in which white and Latino worlds so often miss each other - rock vs. reggaeton, praise of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vs. hate of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer - Paul Simon's song "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" reminds us of a different way.

Not that everything was fine in the 60's, but all this song does is describe an easy friendship and sing an occasional shout-out to Rosie, the "queen of Corona." It's nice.

Maybe the modern-day equivalent of this song is Armada Latina, the Cypress Hill and Pitbull re-make of the classic CSNY song "Sweet Judy Blue Eyes." (I majorly heart both. It's hippie and hard-core at the same time. It's like a tofu taco with extra-hot salsa.) But even the name of the song signals a different tone. Instead of "Me and Julio" (plural), its translation is "Latin Army." It's a different sound.

On Gentry, and Gentrification

2010-09-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

The Fenty vs. Gray mayoral race here in Washington, D.C. has brought to light old feelings about the g-word. That word that every city planner, journalist, and city resident cringes at: gentrification.

The big-G banks on the idea that Gentry - folks with new Masters degrees, a new job, and a big checkbook - will line up to buy condos that cost as much or more than a home would, all for the charm of living in the city. It banks on all of the Gentry choosing not to move into or in some cases moving out of the suburbs into inner cities and in doing so transforming (read = eradicating) either poor or struggling neighborhoods.

The idea sounds gross, and the practice is by and large gross. But it's also more complicated than we think.

The Gentry that the fancy new "multi-use" housing developments are built for don’t really exist. None of those structures have offered a return on the investment needed to build them; hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into them, yet development upon development lays unoccupied. Half-finished. Failed.

And that’s because middle class people - not the upper class Gentry - are the ones moving into big cities across America. These people are assumed to be Gentry, but they're not. The Left howled and whined when the new commercial development in Columbia Heights was built here in Washington, D.C., claiming that the area's residents, mostly Latino, couldn't afford Target, a gym, Best Buy, or...Payless. That turns out to be untrue; that Target (the Macy's of the masses) is the only store in the District that is actually diverse in terms of race and class, and that Washington Sports Club is the only one in the District to have a sizable amount of Central American immigrants as members.

While it was well-intentioned, the Left's argument there was actually a racist one; Latinos are seen as "disadvantaged" American consumers only because they are assumed to be so. But when businesses come to their area, Latinos participate like any other consumers.

And so works the "invisible hand" of the market: the consumer base for Target is large, as Target is low-priced, but the consumer base for half a million dollar lofts is very small. And amongst the young hipster adults moving into cities, it's even smaller. I mean, let's face it: hipsters are broke as f***. They make property values go up as people move in to try to live like them, but they themselves can't keep up with those prices.

What made a dirty port city known for manufacturing, shipping, and schlepping into the "New York City" of Carrie Bradshaw-awe are the broke-ass artists and writers who defined Broadway, the Village, and Brooklyn from very small, rented rooms. The big new lofts of Williamsburg, NY and the Arts District in Downtown LA were built for (hipster) Gentry, but the hipsters who create work there can't afford them. (And if they can afford a $400,000 condo, then they're not hipsters. They're attorneys in skinny jeans.)

I have friends in Columbia Heights, Washington, D.C. who had to get on affordable housing lists to buy a "gentrified" condo because "people like them" (read = college grads) were assumed to be able to make those price points, but in real life, "people like them" who work in non-profits make less than plumbers and elevator repairmen.

Plumbers and elevator repairmen buy homes in the suburbs whose prices aren't over ninety percent dependent on subsidies, loans, or the kind of ballooned mortgage structure that caused the housing collapse in the first place.

So while the Gentry do gentrify, loft by loft, they don't in the kinds of large numbers needed to make the policies of people like Mayor Fenty even work. When Fenty catered to those he thought wanted to improve the city by "gentrifying" it, he was actually catering to nobody. The Gentry bought cheap in quiet ol' Virginia, and those who vote early and often in the District live along the Anacostia River.

Ramadan Mubarak

2010-09-06T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon might be administering a War on Terror abroad, but here in the District of Columbia, some young residents are administering a different politik.

These aspiring diplomats, International Affairs graduate students, and Arabic-speaking Wisconsinites all know that it's Ramadan right now, and make their respect for it known.

They form their usual 2 am weekend lines in DuPont Cafe, a popular gyro shop in the DuPont circle area, but preface their orders with "Ramadan Mubarak." And instead of saying "thank you" after ordering, these young adults exclaim "Shukran. Shukran!" with fervish nods.

The Syrian shop owner smiles to himself, nods, and responds, "You're welcome."

A couple in the back discusses why everyone's spontaneously trying to speak Arabic . "It's Ramadan, their holy month," a twenty-something man explains to his girlfriend. "During Ramadan, you say 'Ramadan Mubarak', which basically means Happy Ramadan."

"Oh," the girlfriend muses. "Cool!"

Contra-Culture

2010-07-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

If Calle 13's video inspires one word, it's: dang.

In this sneak peek video of their “Calma Pueblo” song, Rene says he writes so he doesn't end up blowing himself up in the White House and says the world's biggest mafia lives in the Vatican. This is the type of systemic chant/rant analysis that Rage Against the Machine did in the 90's. And that the Rolling Stones did, to a limited degree.

Here is fully-formed counter-culture, in Spanish, for the 21st century.

Romeo + Juliet, Revisited

2010-07-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

It's been almost fifteen years since director Baz Luhrmann re-made Romeo and Juliet. I loved it at the time, but didn't realize how prescient it was. Although it was made in the nineties, and was supposed to be about Europe, I realize it looks a lot like the Americas in 2010.

The re-make takes place in a vaguely Latin-ate place of neon crucifixes and low-riders. The technical scene is Italy, but barons get around in private helicopters as they do in Sao Paolo, and shirtless, aimless twenty-somethings hang out on the beach as they do in Miami or Los Angeles. Gangsters sport the Virgen de Guadalupe on their vests, and walk around in silver-spurred boots.

The Romeo + Juliet world looks like Shakespeare's, but with a charged, electro-twist:

The word "Catholic" means universal. This scenario is now universal throughout our hemisphere: feuding families monopolizing cities, from New Jersey to Nuevo Leon. Maybe in Shakespeare's time feuding families traded other goods, but in the post-Bush, pre-Santos Americas, the Capulet - Montague feud just looks like two warring drug cartels.

If the Church was what "universalized" our hemisphere 500 years ago, are drugs our new church? Is cocaine the new communion?

On Community

2010-07-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

I think of horses as things on ranches. Or in stables. I mean, one time I saw a man riding a horse down the street in the City of Industry in Southern California, but that was just one time. The man looked like he had recently immigrated from rural Mexico, so he was just getting around the way he was used to getting around. But no one else in the City of Industry does that; everyone's in their cars.

In my workplace here in the Washington, D.C. area, one woman has four horses, like in her backyard. She lives in rural Virginia; every morning, her eleven year old daughter exercises two of their own horses, and two others.

On the weekends, the daughter and her neighbor take a 21-mile ride, stopping along the way at local Virginia wineries and also at neighbors' houses, where they are offered water.

Like Mary and Joseph on the way to Bethlehem, they stop and get water at strangers' doors, get back on their horses, and go about their merry way.

Having grown up in SoCal sprawl, my immediate reaction is to wonder 'What is that?' But on second thought, I guess it's, well, community.

The Brand of Russell Brand

2010-06-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

Russell Brand is a brand.

It’s high British bohème: Mick Jagger, 40 years later; high livin', big thinking; leather pants.

Russell Brand re-branded American male humor = it still looks and sounds like American Pie or Forgetting Sarah Marshall , but with just a touch of absynth. It's the American Dream, on hash. In spite of the drugs, and the orgies, and the vaguely Boy George haircuts, Brand won some hearts in America's heartland.

Unlike other things from Hollywood - like public financing of elections - Brand’s messaging works well among Republicans. It's unfettered, all the time. It's liberated, and lean.

Get Him to the Greek breaks through party lines. Whoever thought that a beautiful Brit could make us bi-partisan?

I'm on the Pavement, Thinking 'Bout the Government

2010-06-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

"Johnny's in the basement, mixing up the medicine/ I'm on the pavement, thinking 'bout the government." Bob Dylan wrote those lyrics 40 years ago, before BP spilled thousands of barrels of oil into the gulf.

I wasn't born 40 years ago, but I'm doing the same thing.

There seems to be a very pervasive, and perverse, understanding of the relationship between government and business. Most of the time, people think it's good for business to be the most powerful force in society. That the private sector should be the first and last court of appeals. That the invisible hand of the market is the best one to shape our lives with - until that invisible hand becomes soaked in oil.

Then the government is to blame for not controlling the private sector. But why not the company that runs the machinery and uh...owns the oil? When taxes must be paid in order for the government to serve people, it's somehow politicians' faults. But when businesses don't serve people, is that not the fault of business? Why doesn't the doesn't the blame go to the sector that committed the error?

As per whose hands are dirtiest here - the White House or BP - just ask Bobby D. "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Little Ms. Illicit

2010-05-13T15:29:00.000-07:00

Illegality is in. The Stimulus bill isn’t working, and the gulf is drowned in oil.

What’s left to do? Make movies!

The TV show Weeds and new movie The Joneses star two women conducting their life just on the wrong side of legal, and loving it. These women, maybe 15 years ago, would have done things the right way, but are just kind of over it. One sells pot, and the other uses the pre-fab name of Mrs. Jones to sell…well, herself.

These new Sopranos of the American Sunbelt are interesting to a country in the midst of a recession, a country vaguely fascinated by the fact that there is now a black market in white suburbia. That there is an informal sector - the Hot Dog Vendor On the Corner sector - but with an asking price of $2,000, not $2. The type of profession where your boss doesn't chat with you by the water cooler but pulls up in a black limo and says, "Get in."

As U.S. suburbia gets broker and broker, the people living it will become more and more broken.

Maybe Demi Moore’s chose her lifestyle because she thinks being a real Mrs. Jones might be boring, and Nancy, is, as Andy her brother in law says, just terrified of being ordinary. But eventually, emotions get the best of them. Ms. Jones ended her fake wifery and took up being a real one, and Nancy Botwin is...well...chingada.

A woman who started off as a soccer mom in the San Fernando Valley chased non-taxable money far enough down a rabbit’s hole to find, at the root of it, men who teach her that mota = money. The higher she ranks in the drug trade in Southern California, the more Latino her life becomes. She ends up baby mama to a drug kinpin-gone-politico in Tijuana, unable to leave the house and stuck in the strands of a real politik she doesn't understand. She is the hacienda wife of the hacendado landowner, nothing more, but gladly enough, nothing less.

Ms. Illicit’s 21st century America of Rich vs. Poor, of Get Yours, doesn’t look all that different from Latin America. The neighborhoods of the Nancy Botwins of the world, and the Joneses of the world, might soon be adding new steps to a popular tune in Latin America.

What wouldn’t Ms. Illicit do for love or money? Por la plata baila el mono – would the monkey dance for money? (Que si, que si! )

Where We're From

2010-04-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

The Digable Planets are back in style. Why do we miss the 90’s when they were only uh…10 years ago?

Angelenos move to New York to experience where the Diggable Planets are from. To experience the Brooklyn of Biggie Smalls, the late 80’s and early 90’s East Coast rap that preceded the TuPac stuff we grew up on.

Likewise, New Yorkers move to Los Angeles to get away from a continually gentrified metropolis, and experience a groaning, growing city in all of its discomfort, its dirt, and dysfunction.

But what about the places where, to quote the song, kids don’t “be reading Marx” or “dig some sounds coming from a jeep”? Doesn’t it get exhausting to always be on the lookout for the epicenter of cool?

Beyond where we’re from, let’s just be…where we are.

Dianne Sawyer and the Census

2010-04-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of going on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer on national Census Day to talk about the complexities of filling out the Census for people of Latino (or part Latino) descent. I went on behalf of the organization I work for, Voto Latino.

The April 1st, 2010 segment asks the question, 'Can the census form adequately capture a concept as complex as racial identity?' The answer: not really. Check out what these castiza airwaves have to say about who the new national American 'me' is...

The Gender of Despair

2010-03-28T18:02:00.000-07:00

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has a new article out this week called The Boys Have Fallen Behind. While the opener makes the kind acknowledgement that women are the less powerful of the two genders globally, it goes straight into a wailing party about the low academic achievements of America’s boys at home.

Cry me a river, homes!

Although it’s true that more men have lost their jobs in the recession than women, and that boys’ test scores are lower than girls are, men still hold more power than women do. And it’s going to take a lot more than a couple of 3^rd grade math tests to change that.

Here’s why.

Although industries that have bottomed out have been heavily male – such as banking – but the industries that women are left standing in are still as low-paying now as they were before. Industries that exist to benefit groups, and not just individuals, are predominantly female, and are predominantly under-funded. Those industries include social work, teaching, the arts, and yes, even journalism. Industries in which words are important, in which self-expression is considered a core competency, are ones in which women excel.

This is due to what prominent female psychologists call “the psychology of We.” Women by and large make decisions collectively, and feel downright uncomfortable not doing so. (Ever been at a dinner table of 8 women deciding if appetizers should be ordered, and if so how they should be shared?)

This wiring to consider another’s needs before one’s own (wiring to take care of families?) is the exact type of behavior that doesn’t work well in very male industries like finance; collective decisions that benefit the whole are often voted down in corporate environments. Women also take time weighing decisions. In business environments, decisions need to be made quickly, and often. The quality of the decision sometimes matters less than the fact that it is made; not making decisions is simply not tolerated.

As a result, men flock to high-risk industries, and women prefer high-comfort ones. (As business execs love to say, profit is made at the margins, not in the middle.) In Fall 2008, many high-risk businesses went bankrupt while high-comfort ones didn’t. But even then, amidst a failure of almost cosmic proportions, men still rewarded other men in high-risk industries.

Goldman Sachs has a bunch of ‘em.

So remind me again why the falling behind of boys is something to lament? Due to their altruistic nature, women still earn only 75% of what men do for the same work, and on top of that, are expected to be the breadwinners in increasingly matriarchal (read= single mother) households. Despite less education, men will still get “better”, i.e., higher paying jobs just because of personal disposition.

Let's skip the Kleenex.

I thought a post-feminist world was one in which both genders had an equal grab at power, not one in which liberal men look at increased female achievement with confusion. Or surprise. Or maybe, underneath it all, anger?

Until the publisher of the New York Times – and not just their copy editor - is female, and women start cutting men’s checks, Kristof shouldn’t worry about it. Besides, women pay well. Women are fair, and are not heavy-handed with their despair.

The Animal Kingdom

2010-03-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

I've been seeing a lot of deers everywhere. And like, not real ones. Like taxidermied deers. Or cartoon ones. Or deers made of frosting.

And goats! (Went to a bar called The Surly Goat the other day. Nice spot.)

Hipsterdom seems to be fascinated with the taxidermied past. The real. The bucolic. The just-killed. Which is weird for a bunch of vegetarians (okay, sorry, sometimes vegans.)

What is that? The Do-It-Yourself culture of Hipsterlandia compounded by its #1 love: Retro. The deer fascination takes us from the 21st century to the 19th, back to the times when one had to not only cook one's own food but hunt it and kill it. Our urban backyard gardens are no replacement for a forest-y past; maybe city dwellers yearn for some woods? (And not just woodsi-ness?)

Well, here's the upside: this fetish is more environmentally friendly than its predecessor. After all, if a deer is made of frosting it doesn't have to die before going still...

The Boho Express

2010-03-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

Call it the Boho Expressway. The lure of $20 calls young bohos from all over the Northeast Corridor to the City of New York. It’s not as bookish as Boston, or as political as Washington. Its pizza is good, and its streets are numbered.

It’s a quick thrill, a weekend in New York City.

And while you’re in New York’s trains, taxis, and automobiles, you’ll get to hear conversations like these:

*****************************************

Girl, he still talking about your poofy haiuh? Like three years latuh? Oh, that’s fucked up.

*****************************************

- Where are you from?

- California.

- No, I mean, where are you from?

- I’m a third generation Californian; I really am from California.

- Oh, well….you smile. People from here don’t smile.

- Where are you from?

- Belize. Well , 125^th Street , this is my exit. Veggie burger, you know.

- I’m sorry?

- They have good veggie burgers around here.

*****************************************

- Went to Sundance, man!

- Did you hobknob with the right people?

- (Shy laugh) Yeah, I did.

*****************************************

- O pos, a cierta gente le gusta el ruido de mi guitarra, y a cierta gente no. Tu sabes, ay tengo mi esposa y un nino de 3 anos alli en Queens. Ay gano lo que puedo…

*****************************************

- Samba samba samba samba, whiney, whiney, whiney, whiney!!! (Squeels the Japanese samba instructor in a leopard-print catsuit.)

*****************************************

- Unknown Hebrew word.

- I’m sorry?

- Oh, you’re not Jewish?

- No.

- Oh, that means marriage dates. That phone call was about a marriage date. This time, it’s someone in Israel. How old are you?

- 27.
- You are of the perfect age to get some marriage dates. If you’d like some advice about marriage, ask the Rabbi. Go to ohel.com, no sorry, dot org. Ask him; he knows! O-h-e-l dot org.

He’s supposed to be the closest person to God. So just write him on the Internet, he will respond to you. Write him with any question. He just knows what everyone’s going through, you know?

Man, Judaism is really wild!

Coffee or Tea?

2010-03-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

You used to just get asked “paper or plastic.” Maybe if you were at Red Lobster, surf or turf. Now, your choice of hot beverage signifies your political affiliation. If you like Peet’s, you’re a Democrat. If you like Lipton, you’re a Republican.

This is too much to think about.

Wait, no it’s not. It’s just hilarious to think about.

The Culture Wars (ahem, Tea Baggers) have robbed us of our right to caffeinate as we please. It’s no longer just Obama vs. the Blue Dogs, or even Obama vs. Rush Limbaugh. It’s now…Starbucks vs. Lipton.

Is there no such thing as dual affiliation? Can't I be an Independent, and like Sumatra and Ceylon at the same time?

As if it wasn’t already enough that Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on the value of taxes, on health care, on how children learn and what they should be taught, on gun laws, on abortion laws, on the value of ethanol, on the value of tofu, on the future of the automobile industry, on the future of the banking industry, on the role of religion in politics, on the role of America in the Global South and on the role of America in the Global North, on whether or not purple states are more red than blue or more blue than red, we are now to argue over coffee vs. tea.

Immigration reform and health care reform are being voted upon - or against – on Capitol Hill this weekend. I’m going to head to the National Mall on Sunday to see what’s up.

Hey, while I’m there maybe I’ll step over some loose-leaf tea strewn about in an act of political rage. I can just imagine the conversations that must have preceded it.

“You and your elitist liberal bullshit. Here, here’s some Lipton. Why don’t you try equality for a change?”

"Bitch, I drink Sanka!"

In the Land of the Well-Heeled

2010-01-30T17:15:00.000-08:00

Here in Washington, D.C.:

- People talk about post-graduate fellowships like everyone has one.
- Most people know someone who has been on TV; if not TV, then interviewed on the radio.
- The colors black and grey are the coolest.
- People actually know what Green Jobs are.
- People buy square-rimmed glasses instead of getting tattoos.
- Lattes are not considered a voluntary expense.
- Everyone is in the process of Getting Back to Someone.
- People commute to work on segways.
(They actually go to work on segways.)

In the Land of the Underemployed

2010-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

Back home in L.A. over the holidays, I re-discovered what the term "consumer heaven" means. The world is On Sale. Houses, cars, ear muffs, high heels.

Happiness.

Signs say all types of things. Signs say:

Grey Goose, $26.99
Jeans, $17.99
Sweaters, $7.99
Shoes, $6.99

In the Land of the Underemployed, everything is happening right now. (Either right now-right now, or later-later.) This is Ground Zero of the Stimulus Bill efforts; twenty percent unemployment, and that doesn't take into account those ‘underemployed’ UC Berkeley graduates who do work, but at a shoe store.

This is what the world looks like after the Bubble has burst; this is, without credit, what people can actually afford.

So, what can we expect, post-Crash and pre-gain? I can expect to buy these Fashion Sunglasses in my trusty undergraduate place of employment - ValuMart discount food warehouse - for $2.99.

And what's that like?

Noir, but nice!

Jessica and George

2010-01-18T10:25:00.001-08:00

Earlier last month, George Lopez interviewed Jessica Alba on his new TLC show, during which he made public the results of a DNA test he ran on her to find out her "real ethnicity".

The footage is painful to watch, as is the remedial effect it’ll have on understandings of race and ethnicity in Hollywood and beyond.

Apparently we're going backwards here; maybe Ellis Island-type head measurings are next. This is not 21st century 'post-racial' America, but rather plain, old-fashioned, institutionalized racism.

Perhaps what’s most disappointing is to hear this from a Chicano hard-liner bent on the politics of inclusion. Latino culture is built on mixture, and for Lopez to do this is to shoot that legacy in the foot.

Lopez looks all but ecstatic to tell her, "Jessica Alba: You're whiter than Larry David." (The same - rather questionable? - DNA tests that revealed that Alba is 13% Native American while prominent Jewish director Larry David is 37% Native American.)

Jessica Alba is not whiter than Larry David, and that's because she doesn’t look it.

People are treated based on how they look, and Jessica Alba was put in ESL as a child because she was brown. (Her teachers assumed she only spoke Spanish.)

I doubt Larry David had a similar experience.

Let’s face it: genes do not always equal phenotype. And a lot of people know this. Growing up in and around mixed white/Latino families, kids like me thought it a funny little secret that we could all play together – some with blond hair, some with black hair – and have the rest of the world not know that we were actually all of the same “racial” mix.

If Lopez is going to do DNA tests, he needs to at least acknowledge that they don’t mean what he thinks they do. Whatever it is he sought to prove, the only thing he will end up proving is that this type of “only if” Latino belonging is exactly what made Jessica Alba reluctant to identify as Latina in the first place.

The sort of “only if” litmus tests - the only if you’re Latino ‘all day, every day’, the only if you speak Spanish, tests - is what disqualified Jessica Alba from Hispanicity in Southern California but made her Latina to everyone outside of it. In the greater U.S., to be half Mexican is to be Mexican, but in many places in Southern California to be half-white, half-Mexican is to be white.

Big difference.

How do people expect her to accept something she is constantly rejected from? (And okay, maybe I’m partial to her because she has a castiza baby. But she can never seem to win Hollywood’s race game, and I don’t think she needs to.)

And why does someone have their own show if their favorite thing to say is, “You can’t play in my sandbox!” on network late night?

Please. In “GLo” terms, that is so MP: más puto.

I mean, where can he go from here? Run a DNA test on former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and announce to everyone that this Latin American man is not Latino because he's East Asian? Or better yet, run a DNA test on himself? What would Lopez do if his results said he was part European - or, as he put it to Jessica Alba, part 'Oh My God'? Say...oh, my God!?!

For Bobby

2010-01-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

It is said that everything that happens in the world happens first in California.

And now the first U.S. municipal official to die in the Mexico drug wars is from California.

El Monte, to be exact.

El Monte is about a mile away from where I grew up. I used to go running there after school. Our family buys cars there. El Monte is the subject of my favorite book, The People of Paper by Salvador Plasencia.

For the first time, El Monte was on the media map. It is the hometown of Bobby Salcedo, an Assistant Principal and School Board member killed in early January in Durango, Mexico. NPR reports refer to El Monte “an immigrant community." It is not an immigrant community; it is a community of color, but it is, by and large, a community of American-born folks living normal lives. Playing baseball, fixing up cars, or in the case of Bobby Salcedo, not just teaching kids but raising scholarship money for them.

News stories say that students like Crystal Delgado remember Bobby Salcedo as “not just a teacher; he was a friend. “

"He was always there for us,” she adds, “especially when I needed help. ...He was someone great who I will always remember."

Not that anyone should die in this conflict, but they especially shouldn't be the Bobby Salcedos of the world. Taking out the rival gang member, someone trying to snuff out new lines of business, that’s one thing. But to drag off and kill a Mexican-American success story, married to a Mexican national, who spent his time improving the quality of life in both his and her hometowns? Murdering the past President of South El Monte/ Durango, Mexico Sister City Organization - while they're having dinner?

That's who dies?

This is as emotionally puzzling as it is intellectually puzzling. The Merida Initiative is the U.S. policy initiative responsible for mitigating the drug wars, and subsequently, the violence caused by them. It is a hot topic among the prettied walls of the State Department. But part of me really wonders if drug cartels don’t make money off of the investments slated for fighting them; after all, the Colombian FARC grew fat with co-opted enforcement cash for a good 40 years.

And part of me wonders why the death of an (albeit low ranking) U.S. elected official won’t cause a blip in the larger policy picture.

Whatever their intent, the current "drug war" policies aren’t working: Bobby Salcedo is no longer around. And while his family might not be yet, I just hope he's at peace somewhere amongst the brush -the monte - between El Monte and Durango.

Migrations and Salutations

2009-12-21T18:19:00.000-08:00

In the halls of the Arcadia Methodist Hospital, migration and immigration mean two different things entirely. The Emergency Room sign says “Emergency” in English, Spanish, and Chinese, and even sorrow speaks different languages.

“Mom, you’re going to be fine. I know. I love you.” (Wipe tear off cheek.) She’s going down the hall, off to surgery.

“Everything’s going to be fine, okay? K, I’ll see you in a bit. (Kiss)

Bye.”

In the waiting room, the children of Saint Gabriel fill the waiting rooms with In and Out burgers. It is a sea of black jeans, highlights, and acrylic nails. Cousins have come. Girlfriends have come.

Families sit in circles, with black ponytails swishing above the straight-backed chairs.

People are accompanied.

Around the corner, the nurse in the elevator releases a quiet sigh.

"How are you?" I ask.

"Oh, I'm fine; just a bit tired, that's all.

I'm a glutton for self-punishment. I commute everyday from Hemet."

Amongst the quiet chit-chatting of everyday realities, a loud wail suddenly interrupts the silence.

Down the hall, a ponytailed woman in a zip-up jumpsuit is sobbing uncontrollably. Wailing in Spanish on a flip phone.

“But I did call his brother to tell him! He just doesn’t pick up!!!!”

Her sorrow is unbearable. Someone has died, and she can’t reach the people she needs to tell. Although she is in Arcadia, Mexico isn’t. Not only is her husband gone, her loved ones are far away from her.

In the ICU, my mother’s mind is elsewhere as her body sits in Unit 6. She breathes calmly. Her mind might be elsewhere, but she is there. With me.

2009-11-20T14:49:00.000-08:00

HispAnglos:

- Go to state schools
- Are big on cheddar cheese
- Wear hoop earrings
- Like football
- Drive Hondas
- Drive Toyotas
- Buy PC's
- Don't kiss on the cheek
- Buy whole wheat tortillas
- Are big on biceps
- Have a cousin in the army
- Smoke cigarettes
- Are un-phased by bankruptcy
- Never think about immigration
- Only mark 'Hispanic' on enrollment forms if they need scholarship money
- Don’t speak Spanish
- Don’t even speak Spanglish
- Are the Southwestern creoles of the New America

Gentlemen!

2009-11-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

So, Washington has a Human Rights scene. There are hearings, gatherings, of those abused and those defending. There are stop watches, speeches, and much clearing of throats.

Last week, I went to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission at the Organization of American States. It’s a twice-yearly affair. The same people offend, condescend, and proceed to file Claims in the System that never gives out answers.

These events, like the Lectures and the Symposia, are run by men in blue suits. (The Gentlemen.) If there is a central table in the room, they are sitting around it. Maybe eating. Discussing. Nodding.

Chewing.

Women, observers, reporters, and bystanders sit on the edges of the room. We listen, sometimes bored and sometimes awed when they utter things like, “There is a man in this room who has tortured one of my clients; he is sitting right across from me.” A collective gasp erupts: Civil Society accused the State! On the Record! The Blue Suit on the left beams with his administrative accomplishment while the Blue Suit on the right fumbles nervously.

“Sir! Please!” the Accused responds to the Judge. “I would like to emphasize that the Mexican government decries the use of torture against citizens, and furthermore, I would like to refer you to the referendum that the State of Baja California passed just last year, which details that…”

The hearing goes on. I can’t believe what I just heard. I am kind of stuck in my chair.

I slowly wander outside, where everyone in the entire building seems to have come to smoke. The Human Rights Lawyer takes a long puff, stares up at the sky, and sighs.

He then looks over his shoulder, and sees the exact person he accused of torture 43 minutes prior. This makes him smile. Widely.

“Gentlemen!” he grins. Wait, I think to myself - he knows them? And knows them well? And he…likes them? They proceed to pat each other on the back, and laugh.

“How’s it been?”

On Pundits...and Pico Rivera

2009-10-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

The pundit (reporter) Soledad O'Brien aired her second series exploring one part her tri-ethnic heritage. The Afro-Cuban-Irish media maverick's "Latino in America" aired nationally October 21st and 22nd.

I went to an advanced screening of CNN's "Latino in America" at the Newseum, and was asked some questions by a local DC blogger on the way out. Who knew he would use what I said and put it on YouTube?? And that 4,000 people have watched it by now?

(I can't decide if that's hilarious or weird.)

I then wrote a full review of the documentary, from a mixed Irish-Nicaraguan perspective. I talk a lot about Pico Rivera, cuz she mentioned it. So then I mentioned it. So I can be a pundit (reporter), like her.

On Camelot

2009-10-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Ted Kennedy is gone. Walter Cronkite is gone. Frank McCourt is gone. The chairs at the Camelot roundtable seem to be empty; but that’s because we’re not sitting in them.
On one level, this is deeply saddening. The Irish girl in me is particularly shocked. As a teenager, I would spend my summers reading Frank McCourt novels, and chat with my sister about the degree to which we could say our family was like the Kennedy’s.

Camelot disappearing almost feels like my grandpa dying, all over again; born in Irish-American Brooklyn, his belief in Catholicism was as stout as his belief in the value of newspapers. Sometimes I would give anything to be able to be in his living room, where pipe tobacco was smoked over old, yellowed books whose text never became irrelevant. Cigars weren’t thought to kill, and the politics of authorship weren’t yet something people talked about. His house was about leaving a trace; unlike his typewriter, my iMac’s keyboard makes a sound too faint to be noticed. Nothing in my office has a smell to it; in an eco-manical world, we’re never supposed to leave any trace.

On another level though, this is liberating. Walter Cronkite made his fame on telling America “And that’s the way it is.” And of course this is somewhat ridiculous: something can never be just one way. There are multiple ways to view things, and now, for the first time ever, multiple viewpoints – namely, those of women and people of color – don’t have to compete for being “the other” anymore. With the death of Camelot, the long-derided solitary White Male Voice is no longer the definitive one. We don’t have to listen to Walter Cronkite to get the news; we can now tell each other our news, and in different ways.

But this liberation comes with a new, and intimidating, set of possibilities. If Cronkite’s America was smugly self-content, the post-Cronkite America is honest enough to admit the degree to which it freaks itself out.

In these New, post-Kennedy Politics, there is no more dynasty; it is unclear who the scribes are and who the jesters are. Too confused at the idea of Camelot to imagine participating in it, we have instead become the jest of ourselves.

In Nora Ephron’s new film “Julie & Julia”, Julie, the modern-day would-be Julia Child, is pissed that the joke is on her. Depressed by the present, Julie looks to the past – specifically, nostalgic black and white videos of Julia Child’s cooking show.

And on the surface, she has reason for envy: Julia Child’s high heels were cuter than Julie’s; her voice, more melodic; her cooking, definitive. Her love life, more authentic.

Something funny happens in the process, though: in imitating Julia’s life, Julie founds out that her own is pretty dope. She finds out that she’s not only a good cook, but a great writer, too. Her little experiment at mimicking the past becomes the way she the way she validates the future. And even the present.

At the end, Julie finds, on the rooftop of an old pizzeria by the Hudson River, that her world is just as good as Julia’s was. And what’s more, that it is all her own.

Rudo Y Cursi give Diaspora a new name

2009-10-01T15:11:00.000-07:00

Hispanic Heritage Month is coming to an end, and Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna (might) have given us something to celebrate.

Or something to cry about.

The two teamed up to executive produce the Focus Features film Sin Nombre, a powerful drama about Central Americans emigrating to the U.S. via Mexico. And according to Sin Nombre, the name of the Diaspora is called miseria: misery.

For those of us concerned with cultural memory, what does this mean for what the word “Latino” means in the U.S.?

In Sin Nombre, to be Latino is to be displaced; an identity of never quite getting it right; of an identity of struggle. But there is a swagger in attempt; a glamour in trying. Sin Nombre narrates a land where Kool Aid, caló, and cochinita pibil mix under a relentless sun. Sin Nombre (which means ‘nameless’) is a chronicle to the millions of people that leave the lands where NAFTA has destroyed the remnants of what global capitalism called an economy, and come risk their lives on the top of trains bound for Texas, Arizona, and California. This journey is plagued by gangs – Mara Salvatrucha, specifically - from start to finish.

In real life, Gael and Diego - the stars of Rudo y Cursi - are neither rude, nor cheesy. They are urban intellectuals. Their fan base is, as well; their fans are folks that spend their days devising solutions to immigration as a transnational policy problem, not a personal one. Dressing up as poor rancheros and actually being poor rancheros are two different things entirely; so what does solidarity mean, both on and off film?

Cursi

Gang life as a Latino cultural legacy is a tricky one indeed. ‘Mi Vida Loca’ has been made into a cottage industry of Homey dolls and maroon-colored tee-shirts for Hispanic America. And while ‘homey’ is a cute term of endearment and white tank tops are good ways to show off nice biceps, gangs themselves are uh …not good things.

In my family, self-identifying as a Latino was to self-associate with gangs. In the cusp creole land that is east Los Angeles County (Whittier), the dividing line between white and Latino had to do with gangs. My mother, Maria Delsoccorro, with her almond eyes and long black hair, didn’t want to call herself Latina. She liked books, not fights.

“Why would I want to do that?,” she asked. “The Latinas carried knives in their hair.”

Caló (Chicano Spanglish) even carried itself into the land where carne asada is called steak. “Oh yeah, the huisa girls,” my Irish-American father remembers. Huisa, which means girl, was thought to mean chola, or the word for female gangster. Chicanas were huisas, and huisas were cholas. Semantics = sociology= Chicana girls were gangbangers.

Times change; after age 20 or so, I decided that I, as a bookish woman, would self-integrate into Latino circles. The Latino world I rotate in out here on the East Coast is filled with talk of community mobilization, and security studies, and cluster development. The guero (light) Latinos, the ones I fit in around, talk about getting a Masters vs. a Ph.D; we listen to Jorge Drexler. Sometimes people throw up a “w” hand sign for West Coast, but it is, at the end of the day, a joke.

Rudo

History aside, Sin Nombre reminds us that that la vida loca really is loca – and moreover, is horrifying.

Filled with brutal murders and a stomach-churning feeling that wherever you go, you won’t be wanted, Sin Nombre reminds us just how frightening, and confounding, the dividing really line is.

The subjects of this film feel that they don’t belong anywhere – and not like postmodern, Cultural Studies whining – but economically and socially feel homeless in their own Hemisphere. It is the fear that the world has locked you out, completely.

After surviving an attempted rape at the hands of the MS-13 gang lord with the letters ‘m’ and ‘s’ tattooed on either side of his face, the co-star’s greatest joy is to take a cold shower with her clothes on.

Pride aside, name-calling aside, these films make you wonder, does to be Latino mean to be always not-quite-there-yet? Is this what we are? And if so, why does it have to be like this?

Why is misery such an everyday part of (inter) American life?

Los Angeles Times writer Sonia Nazario stumbled upon the subject of Honduran immigration through Mexico by finding her Honduran maid crying in her kitchen one day, mumbling about trains. Sin Nombre is written in impeccable Spanish by hapa director Cary Fukunaga from the East Bay. More people need to create work about this subject, and give Latino life a wider range of names.

"Solitude" review published in Hispanic Link

2009-10-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

The Latino Theater Company’s new play “Solitude” opened on September 8th at the Los Angeles Theater Center. Written by Evelina Fernández and directed by José Luis Valenzuela, “Solitude” is about the loneliness of the class divide. Loosely based on Octavio Paz’s “Labyrinth of Solitude,” this Chicano existentialist piece explores what it means to “have” something and “be” somebody in 21st century Los Angeles.

The piece revolves around corporate lawyer Gabriel, who invites his childhood friends from “the neighborhood” to a funeral reception for his mother at his new, huge home in “the hills.” His friends accuse him of abandoning them in search of power and prestige, but he justifies his decision as an attempt to escape poverty.

To read the full article, click here.

La Perla (The Pearl)

2009-08-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

This is a really beautiful song by the Puerto Rican duo Calle 13 with Panamanian legend Ruben Blades. The inventors of smart reggaeton hook up with the inventor of smart salsa to make a musical tribute to the San Juan neighborhood that gets the worst press but a lot of slum-tourism: La Perla (The Pearl).

I recommend...

O Meu (McDonalds) Samba

2009-08-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

Don’t get me wrong – I love me some bossa nova. But why does every single food establishment that serves bread and water have to have a lil’ bossa in the background? Do they really think that French fries are not French fries with Bebel Gilberto on repeat? That I won’t eventually realize that I when I leave, I won’t be stepping onto some rooftop villa in Rio de Janeiro but rather onto a dirty sidewalk whose only soundtrack is that of honking horns? I thought Chipotle had faux-Mexican down pat…so why would they deviate from their copyrighted norm?

Cuz Brazil is the diverse, melting pot New World nation that corporate America thinks it wants to be, but isn’t quite. Brazil didn’t have to wait for an Obama to affirm mixed race folks as beautiful and symbolically representative of the nation itself. Brazil’s diversity, unlike America’s, actually is its national songbook.

Brazil is diversity in size 4 jeans, without Cultural Competency trainings. It does effortlessly what America does with much (pained) effort…take pride in its own complexity.

And since corporate America is ¡all-about-diversity!, I guess we’ll be hearing a lot of Brazilian pop in American chain restaurants.

Democra -siii!

2009-07-24T13:18:00.001-07:00

It seems that the Yes man has taken over the Americas. Jim Carrey, if he were…Honduran, would be dancing in the streets. Follow the “rule of law” and bring back an ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya? Yes!

Or, follow the (other) “rule of law” and have the Supreme Court-defended new President Roberto Micheletti stay because the other guy was trying to make himself ruler for life at an hour that the legislature would be too sleepy to notice?

Sure, why not!

After all, aren’t the Americas the place where we can be multiple things at the same time? Socialist Democrats, environmentalist evangelicals. Chinese-Panamanians, Turkish-Americans. Fish-eating vegetarians, Cuban Mormons. Our strength is that we say Yes to each other.

But what’s good personally is not always so good politically…

In Honduras, both sides are making their claims in the name of democracy. In Zelaya’s words, his attempt remain in power longer was done to prevent the de-stabilizing effects that shifts of power so often have on Central American countries. In his opponents’ words, Zelaya’s actions were an attempt to be the very type of dictator that so often robs and indefinitely holds onto power in Central America.

In Nicaragua, President Ortega complains that no one listens to him because he’s leftist, but then again he doesn’t listen to (or more often than not, shuts up) the segments of his citizenry that say things he doesn’t like.

We need to decide if we believe in actually upholding the law, or not. If we actually believe in social dialogue, or not. While we’re at it, we should also decide to close Guantanamo or keep it open; have a hands-on or hands-off approach to market economics…we can’t always just say Yes to everything.

Here in the United States, a very costly Stimulus Bill is being administered to lay the foundation for a new type of economy, but the reigning kingpins of the old economy are still running their hedge funds and eating their Kobe hamburgers in peace. Are we spending to save, or spending so those who spend a lot can uh…still spend?

Looks like both!

After all, this too is a democra -sííí!

Color Me Mine

2009-07-22T20:54:00.001-07:00

I found the Pax Americana in the mall.

And not just any mall, but my parents’ mall in the well-watered suburbs of greater Los Angeles. It is possibly the most democratic mall in all of the United States; nineteen-year olds with acrylic nails can buy twelve-dollar stretch jeans, and the affluent housewives of lower Pasadena can buy Nordstrom cardigans and plum-colored, high-comfort pumps.

In Macy’s, an elderly Chinese man is seated comfortably in the oversized armchairs. He has come to enjoy the air-conditioning, his retirement, and paint a while.

Smiling contentedly in the noon-day silence, he paints pictures of clothing mannequins using Chinese calligraphy pens.

It’s America as a mannequin and Macy’s as an art studio, but it is a peaceful one, nonetheless. Americana did not leave American print making when Norman Rockwell passed; this gentleman too is drawing America, as he sees it and as he sees fit.

Commodify My Dissent?

2009-07-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Turns out the revolution IS being televised; people are Auto-Tuning the news but no one knows how to make any money off of it. People make music, but don't sell CD's; make digital art that will never be bought, and contribute to the Creative Commons for the collective benefit of the Internet.

Too bad own their wallets don't benefit.

How can we commodify our dissent if we don't know how to monetize our work? How can we make new ideas and art forms valuable if their market value doesn't exist?

I mean, hell; I can't even make money off of this blog...

MTV Goes to the Theater

2009-06-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

It is said that the MTV generation doesn’t know how to make theater like they used to. But artists like Pearl Marill show that they do, and perhaps better than they used to.

Marill’s Remotor Control is a 45-minute dance theater piece about social conformity created for a generation stuck on the idea of being unique. It is the live, performative equivalent of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” for 21st century America. It is comic relief from the frantic and utterly exhausting journey of trying to keep up with what the screens expect of us.

In the beginning of the piece, a man with a gigantic remote control – a God-like character programming the stage (i.e. television) or the universe itself– screams “Go!” Six babies then proceed to “grow up” to the aspirations that society sets for them.

As newborns, clad in nude tights and diapers, they discover their bodies to the tunes of Lil’ John. This hilarious sequence is comprised of series of unintentional dry humps and overly saccharine smiles. As they grow older, they frantically compete for the white work shirts that fall from the ceiling, and fight back sleepiness at office jobs. The characters are driven mad by the urge to copy, but are too busy trying to copy the life they see on TV to really think about whether or not that differs from their own life, or whether that even matters.

The piece is ultimately a chronicle of the MTV generation’s quest to be, as the recent line of Dos Equis beer commercials, “The Most Interesting Man Alive.” But unlike the life of the Dos Equis hero, the lives of those onstage are full of awkward moments.

In fact, that’s the only kind of moment there is.

Attempts to connect are a series of meaningless, ill-conceived interactions. The awkward teenage sex ends with disgusted, horrified faces, and making everyday small talk is akin to pulling teeth. Halfway through the show, ensemble dancers Rebecca Wolfe and Marill herself (who dances in the show), see each other on the street, and in overly emphatic surprise, one yells, “Bekkie?!”

With equally excessive glee, the other responds, “Barbara!!”

After twenty seconds of incredible anguish of not knowing what to say – or, worse, have nothing really to say - both blink, and yell “Well, bye!”

At a certain level, her dancers are acting as the dialectic “subjects” of their own lives: her 20-something dancers are on stage acting out the sexual malaise of 20-somethings and the existential squeamishness of those who dread the arrival of “adulthood” but also dread a seemingly interminable childhood.

The piece is a modernist one in that it is concerned with the tensions of the will of the individual vs. the will of society, but is postmodern in its re-mix of multiple theater languages. Marill uses the aesthetic indulgence of hip hop to accent the didactic affect of Brechtian theater techniques, and also utilizes sparse elements of Vaudeville and Cunningham.

Remotor Control is the work of a creative mind in full throttle, and it’s really fun to watch.

It is dance theater is its best form; it is theatrical dance, in the most effective sense of the word. As such, Remotor Control stands out from the hundreds of performance art and postmodern theater works that throw in movement, text, and images seemingly at will without concern or understanding for the very different aesthetic languages of the three mediums, Marill has an intuitive sense of what they are, and when to deploy them. She develops characters well, and also understands how to accentuate the abilities of her dancers as actors.

We don’t need dance to understand the acting; or the acting to understand the dancing. Marill has created a sort of bilingual aesthetic here, and it is as powerful as it is effective. This isn’t literature that accidentally became a theatre script, or a live art experiment that just happens to have an audience. It’s just dance theater, period.

Marill’s theatrical approach is generous in that it offers itself to the audience; it is very friendly and high-energy, just like Marill is. Her work is immanently understandable, and it’s nice to feel like that’s the point. That extroverted expressiveness might indeed be the defining characteristic of Marill’s PumpDance Theater, a San Francisco-based dance theater ensemble of which she serves as the Founding Artistic Director. Her six-person ensemble includes Jorge De Hoyos, Rebecca Wolfe, Alexander Steinhaus, PJ Johnson, Valerie Scott, and herself. The five of them – who met studying together at the Theater Arts Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz – share an easy chemistry, and dance well together.

The show ends with a brief, unexpected arrival of peace; its unanticipated arrival is both funny and absurd. For it, ensemble dancer De Hoyos sits under a palm tree with a ridiculous grin of surprise that is as endearing as it is ancillary.

Given the show’s direct engagement with the audience in the form of comedy, the audience finds itself, laughing, talking amongst themselves…entertained. (Imagine, being entertained at a postmodern dance show!) The audience feels spoken to, spoken with. If pundits talk about the “participatory media” of young people, Marill’s dance theater is participatory in that it involves the audience underhandedly. It offers a clown-like life mirror in which everyone can recognize themselves, and accept their own misgivings. People are affirmed by this type of theater; they are engaged, and interested.

This is populist theater without the politics; theater for the MTV generation. Should more avant-garde young choreographers and playwrights dare to create work like this, they might not have such a problem with audience development.

The ending scene, danced to “Hope There’s Someone” by Antony and the Johnsons, offers a particularly moving ending to a high-emotion show. At the end of their lives, right when they got comfortable in their white shirts and were startling to settle in, the Remotor Control gives them a red balloon.

Their time is up, the show is over.

The dancers - unable to generate either an answer or a solution – are then forced to dance with death itself. The sweeping and heartfelt dance movements are both musically and thematically appropriate, as is the dancers’ sense of awe at the crushing realization that the programmed generation cannot program their own mortality, and real life, unlike TV life, actually ends someday.

In San Francisco, at the end of a work week, these kids are dancing at the edge of a country, with the notion that their dances, like their dreams, mean something. And for those in the seats, as well for those as onstage, they do.

Eucalyptus Trees and their Cool Water…Cologne?

2009-06-08T21:35:00.000-07:00

“Out of the entire natural world, ants and eucalyptus trees are the creatures that emit the most pheromones,” my friend Jairo told me this morning.

“And ants are blind,” he reminded. “They move simply by following each other’s smell.”

If humans were more like ants, would we fall in love only under eucalyptus trees? That could be a whole cottage industry: the Cool Musk of eucalyptus trees.

Buy it now: the olfactory of God, for only $13.99.

Desamor a lo Californiano

2009-05-17T20:49:00.001-07:00

The purple mountain people have a certain way of mourning.
When dust-size disaster strikes, there are two options:
tequila or banda.

Either option is sufficient. By biogenetic accident, the 20 million mouths that are English-only by day find themselves fluent in Spanish-language sadness by night. And coupled with the clean notes of cactus flowers, are comforted through the sunrise.

Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

Things to Throw Out in the 21st Century

2009-04-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

Bagel Shops

As much as Starbucks might not like to admit it, the 1990’s are over. And so is the need for bagel shops.

New York City was the star of 1990’s sitcoms, with Friends, Sex in the City, and Seinfeld shaping the late 20th century American imagination’s ideas about what it is to be learned, idle, urban, and glamorous. And coffee and bagels played important supporting roles in those now-iconic situational comedies about the upper middle class of upper Manhattan.

Coffee as the drink of the erudite elite - the beverage for those who process and those who linger - is here to stay. But carbo-loading is not.

Didn’t we spend a good ten years burning off all those linguini dinners we ate in a misguided, selective attempt to be more Euro? So why are we going to eat bagels everyday in some nostalgic, dietary nightmare called trying to be New Yorkers, but only in the morning? And only when it pertains to bready, high-calorie foods?

Making lattes available everywhere was a good thing; making bagels available everywhere was not.

Teva Sandals

The idea of the urban backpacker has lost its glamour. I mean, let’s get real: walking around the block does not require a 3-foot long backpack, water thermos, and flexible but durable sandals.

It just doesn’t.

The urban – or suburban – jungle is not actually a jungle, and hiking gear is not really necessary in most any situation the Teva wearer encounters on a daily or even monthly basis. Walking up a few stairs then down an evenly paved sidewalk is not akin to hiking Kilamanjaro, despite aspirations to the contrary.

“Back to nature” means a lot when a) you’re actually in nature. Backyards don’t count. Or, b) very few people have heard of that before.

Hmm, let’s see… neither option works.

This is the Green Century, and we’re eco-chic. The aesthetic iconoclasm of the 1970’s green movement is not only considered irrelevant by some progressives, it is also borderline rude. After all, what does sporting one’s unsightly toenails in the spring, summer, fall, and winter say about environmentalists as a group? Does the transition from car culture to street culture really have to be an eyesore?

The days of Tevas as the “Look at me!” Green accessory are over. We’re with it now. People bike in high heels and miniskirts, and take the Metro by choice, not out of necessity. People whose beliefs would have led them to be luddites 40 years ago are now living the iLife.

So why are the shoes stuck in the past?

It’s time to put the Tevas up in the attic. If you must, you can put them in a biodegradable box.

The Beats of Balkan Beat Box

2009-04-13T20:47:00.001-07:00

If only politics sounded like this.

Tomer Yosef of Balkan Beat Box is an Israeli punk rocker who sings the Levante as he hears it: as a frenetic and happy mix of made of klezmer, Roma, and Arab sounds, spiced with dub and reggae. This is the joy of brassy Sunday afternoons; full skirts and full futures. Of excess as a source of joy.

On stage, Yosef is the bright-eyed, bronze musical director of a pre-electronic Eden, screeching in an ecstatic symphony of minor-toned screams.

Prime Minister of his own sonic homeland…

What if the leaders of the Middle East could remember themselves like Yosef does? Cuz those are some great beats, those Balkan beats.

Televisa Reconciles...on TV

2009-03-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

From March 18th to 20th, I blogged the 2009 Reconciliation Forum for PODER Magazine and the Americas Business Council. It's stunning how much the power elite of Mexico City and Miami resembles the power elite of Beverly Hills...they just have cuter shoes and better haircuts.

At the forum, an arthritis-ridden Gorbachev found very poetic ways to complain, and Desmond Tutu made us feel like kids at storytelling time. Find out what the stories were about here.

Rihanna Lives Her Life

2009-03-08T12:08:00.001-07:00

Despite recent events to the contrary, Rihanna’s YouTube life hasn’t changed a bit. In videos such as Live Your Life, Rehab, and Hate That I Love You So, Rihanna is the long-lashed, pouty-lipped, omniscient heresayer. She is the Greek chorus of Hollywood excess, singing an alto psalm to those for whom things have gotten a bit out of control.

Except that things got a bit out of control for her.

How did all this happen to a Barbadian beauty queen? By living her life? By being, as she says in her thick Caribbean accent, a papah chasah?

In too many ways, Rihanna’s story is too old to be new. The young starlet sets foot on Industry floors and all goes wrong. In many of her videos, they have given Rihanna’s beautiful features a vintage look a la Dorothy Dandrige or Marilyn Monroe. When Rihanna sings, she sings with the sense of authority - and eternity - that only stars have. But stars like Dorothy Dandrige and Marilyn Monroe were both deeply anguished and emotionally tortured by fame and film. Is psychological (and physical) abuse really the legacy of stardom?

And is tragedy really timeless?

Tragedy, in all of its perceived inevitability and chaos, is glamorous. Almost as glamorous as small waists. Real tragedy, like real beauty, is seen as special because it is rare. And because they are rare, and because they are sexy, they are both immanently photograph-able.

But voyeurism, for as much as it drives sales of new web applications and catalog purchases of cheap satin clothing, is not a good thing. And in Rihanna’s case, it is disastrous.

All over the Internet, Rihanna is caught on tape singing about the very things that led the main character of Live Your Life to ruin: the quest for stardom and an addiction to being seen, being rich, and being needed. Many of her other videos are about dependence on men.

These hyper-syncopated lullabies to her own ruin now serve as some sort of weird Mulholland Drive, out-of-body moment for the American entertainment empire. While her own life is evolving off-tape, Google will forever cache Rihanna as yet another media hit job of a glamorous sweetheart abused by either her boyfriend, her ego, or fame itself.

The idea of women being unable to reckon with themselves – to be “hysterical”, as psychoanalysts used to call them – is unfortunately almost as old as domestic violence is. And while the public’s vague fascination with the psychic downfall of female entertainment stars is not new, the way in which this tragedy is constantly and absolutely public is new.

And it is creepy.

The catharsis of listening to Live Your Life, however oddly fascinating it might be, is a dangerous one. Both the Industry and consumers need a different set of goals and standards with which they make women – and men – into media phenomena.

Monuments by Moonlight: Star-struck in wartime Washington

2009-02-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

There are few things more beautiful than seeing the National Monuments by moonlight in Washington, D.C. Gigantic ivory marble structures stand illuminated and majestic amongst a nighttime cloud of purple silence. On the National Mall, our national memory is approachable – we can walk up and gaze at it. The glowing marble looks comfortable enough to stretch out and lie down on; this is History as bedfellow.

This is History as ours.

To heighten the romance factor in this citizen swoon-fest, soft breezes caress our awe-struck faces, and the air sings with the loud chirp of contented cicadas.

The monuments by moonlight are sexy.

However, after passing just a few monuments, one cannot help but notice something amiss: almost all of the monuments are related to war in one way or another. While the establishment and maintenance of independence and autonomy is a difficult and admirable feat, the absence of other types of histories along the Mall limits the way we think about ourselves as a country, and undermines our ability to fully appreciate it in all of its varied glory.

The National Mall abounds with the feeling of a large family picnic. The sound of relaxed banter and photo snapshots fill the humid twilit. Flashes of light appear and disappear out of nowhere: everyone is taking pictures.

A little girl whose little tennis shoes have bright, flashing red lights in the back of them emphatically states, “Mommy, all I want to do here is take pictures.” Unlike most family picnics, though, people are posing with larger-than-life, cemented renditions of individuals who bear no relation to them, but have a quite a bearing on the history of the United States.

Due to this, the Mall provides a strong “sentimental education” in what our country values. And judging from the buildings here, it values trauma. Indeed, it posits war as the only way we engage in collective life together.

There are eleven monuments and memorials under care of the National Parks Service along the National Mall. They include the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, the WWII Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the George Mason Memorial, the District of Colombia’s World War Memorial, and the statue of Ulysses S. Grant. Of these eleven, eight are related to warfare.

At the base of the Iwo Jima Memorial is a verbal banner listing every single armed conflict since the inception of the United States. The list is, to say the least, long. It reads: “Revolutionary War 1775-1783; War of 1812; Mexican War 1846-1848; Spanish-American War, 1896-1898; Philippine Conflict, 1898-1902; World War I, 1917-1918; World War 1941-1945; Korean Conflict, 1951-1953; Vietnam Conflict, 1959-1975; Nicaraguan Conflict, 1982-1989; Panama Conflict, 1989-1990; Operation Desert Storm, 1990-1991; Operation Iraqi Freedom…..”

To some visitors to the National Monuments, the abundance of warfare is not shocking. Andrew Fretwell and Benjamin Perlstein, both participants in the Tel Yehudah camp for young Jewish leaders, say that the ubiquity of war along the Mall doesn’t strike them as strange.

Andrew posited that “Nationalism is a form of tribalism. Tribalism is a means of protection.”

Stemming from that, Benjamin added that national identity itself “stems from the recognition of threat from another.”

Andrew agreed, adding that people are stirred to a heightened sense of community by trauma. Benjamin elaborated, saying “When people think of an example of national trauma, the first thing they think of is war. It’s the most clear-cut example of trauma there is.”

Both men agreed that the psychological geography of the Mall is designed to convey pride in certain social memories, and shame about others. The ‘centrality’ of certain monuments such as the World War II Memorial convey the fact that, as per Benjamin, “World War II was a great experience. We won.” The Vietnam Memorial, however, “understated, because the Vietnam War was built on misconception.”

“We don’t want to remember what Vietnam was like,” he said.

Some people disagree.

Along the Vietnam Memorial, a middle-aged woman from Connecticut named Terry postulates that “I think this is here so that we keep reminding ourselves…so that we remind ourselves how foolish this is.”

“This was such a monumental loss.”

Andrew and Benjamin postulate that Israel does not have National Monuments in the same way that the U.S. government does because of Israel’s millennia of history. As the epicenter of the Desert Religions, or People of the Book (Jews, Muslims, and Christians), a “spiritual mall, as opposed to a National Mall, is already there.”

As a secular society prone to personality worship, the National Monuments are thus the seats of the gods of civil society. This supports what political Hollywood producer Norman Lear calls his “civil religion.” Looking up at a Zeus-size Lincoln lit up in the middle of a Roman-style temple, this is indeed similar to a religious experience.

The one peaceful anomaly among the Mall can found in the FDR Memorial. The Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Memorial is an attempt to concretize the quotidian joys of American life in such a touching and artful manner. Those monuments are about vision, and aspirations. It is about accomplishment, not about loss.

This is the only monument on the mall that depicts everyday people not engaged in combat – instead, they are standing together, or sitting in their houses listening to the Fireside Chats next to a big, bronze radio.

Around the corner from that section, as a tribute to FDR’s Works Progress Association, images of faces, hands, and figures appear to be pushing through the fabric of memory. Partially protruding through the bronze cover are people who, with and through their government, made something out of nothing.

The architecture of the FDR memorial conveys about a beneficial symbiosis between citizen and president, between the government and the populace. It mirrors the ideological architecture of the FDR administration itself, which was marked by an equal emphasis on the leader and the people that he led.

On it, a group of gregarious high schoolers wanders throughout the FDR memorial cracking adolescent jokes and constantly fussing with their hair. One girl admits that out of all the monuments, “I like this one ‘cus it’s more interactive; there’s more to do. It’s more fun.”

Wandering through, they pose in a cheeky posture in-between the men waiting in the Depression-era bread line.

When asked if she knew what exactly she just posed with, she answered that she didn’t.

“That’s what that was?!?” she exclaimed through an embarrassed laugh.

Turning to her friend, she squeels, “We just took a picture with starving people! Don’t you feel awful?”

The FDR monument is chiefly an educational monument; what it is not is an emotional one. It is the art-house flick among blockbusters, destined to attract less crowds and less memories. According to ancient Greeks scholars, tragedy is an eternal art form because it withstands the test of time; loss, unlike happiness, is automatically “knowable”.

But do we only know what we feel? By way of our bronzing, it appears that we all as a nation have not felt anything else besides fight and flight, belation and exasperation.

And this is Washington in wartime. As said so often in this our hip-hop nation, can you feel it?

The current war in Iraq is the most pressing, and in many ways the most tragic, conflict in our “family history” of wartime. The war is the elephant in the room in all domestic political conversations, that expensive but un-mentionable thing. Over four thousand U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war in 2003, and the estimated Iraqi civilian casualties numbers above one million two hundred thousand. The cost of the war soars above five hundred forty three billion (yes, b for billion) dollars.

Due to an executive mandate, the war is also that un-photographable thing. No images of the dead bodies have been allowed to be run in any news media in the U.S.

To use a Richard Rodriguez term, this hunger of memory eats away at me. I know the war is happening; taxes from my paychecks are helping to pay for this. I read about it daily. But where are all these boys sent out from the deserts of Southern California, or the quiet suburbs of Kansas or the sunny streets of El Paso, Texas?

Where can I see them?

The one formally financed “memorial” to the war in Iraq hangs on a wall in the south entrance of the Rayburn office building of the House of Representatives. It is a large bronze plaque honoring those fallen in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Its circumference looks shorter than I am, and I hover just above 5 feet. People barely notice it amongst their preoccupation with doing more important things, like taking their Blackberries out of their pockets as they go through security. Apparently, checking for Speaker Pelosi’s latest press release about confronting President Bush on the FY09 budget is more important than reading the middle name of a fallen soldier.

The sheer inadequacy of this effort overwhelms me.

To top things off, this is a presidential election year. Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain are intent on proving their competency in matters of international diplomacy and foreign affairs. As the U.S. tries to win back the world’s favor, instead of being known as the flagrant and prideful teenager of the international community, a nation of people almost spiritually predisposed to mimicry and misjudgment, wouldn’t it help to know that as a nation we have psychologically on moved past fighting as our favorite thing to do?

What about honoring people who practice their nationality outside of that most moving – but basic – of acts: the saving or sacrificing of their physical life? This great social experiment called the U.S. has meant much more than lives saved and lives lost. What about what happens after that – isn’t that what makes us a country?

Other nations have slightly different ways of displaying their national histories in their capitol cities. In Brazil, Gandhi and Cuauhtemoc, the king of the Aztec empire, run free on the streets. In France, the Pantheon houses great thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, and Emile Zola. In Chile, one cannot go for a jog in the upper Santiago neighborhood of Las Condes without running into a huge cement head of their Nobel Prize-winning poet Gabriela Mistral resting quietly in the middle of an urban parkway.

In these locales, the people that invented and defined a collective language about what the country stood for - and indeed what it is – are honored in public view.

Aren’t we also defined by our other collective histories – what about our great economists and scientists; what about our artistic traditions and folk traditions? Do we not feel those – are they not fit for bronzing?

Instead of the beautiful but heartbreaking faces of exasperated soldiers, what about a memorial to Alexander Graham Bell, who lit up our homes and indeed our lives with the communications technologies that strengthen the ties that bind? Or to entrepreneurs like Henry Rockefeller or Bill Gates?

What about artistic innovators like Cab Calloway, Tommy Dorsey, and Lalo Guerrero collectively defining the first truly multi-cultural social dance of 20th century America - swing dance? What about social entrepreneurs like Susan B. Anthony and Joan Baez, or the great agrarian poet Walt Whitman and his urban counterpart Langston Hughes as he, too, sings America?

These people, like the apparition of the fireworks in the sky on the 4th of July, made something beautiful out of nothing. They helped defined the way the world understands the U.S. for what it is, not simply for what it defends.

When I look at the statue of the Vietnam Memorial nurses pictured to right, I am transfixed by the look of possibility and hope on this woman’s face. It is something else just beyond the clouds, something grand, and something meaningful. Water in an emotional desert. She is peaceful, and composed, beyond the conflict.

Beyond war, we find ourselves. Indeed, this brave New World has been and meant quite a lot considering its young age. This tiny swamp-town has given birth to some of the defining social movements of the last millennium, perhaps the most important of which is the idea of public life as fundamentally and definitionally pluralistic.

The future building of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial will help with that, but until that happens, all we have here along at Constitution Avenue is the eerie stillness of wartime silence hovering over these grassy expanses.

It’s hard to imagine this all started just 232 years ago down the river in Virginia, where two civilizations meeting each other produced the same accidental awe and the same sense of bewilderment at the incredible responsibility of making something new out of nothing – kind of like starting a statue from scratch.

The architects of this city – and of the National Mall – intended that our buildings clearly display this republic as a participatory one. Our national life is one marked by bravery, but it is also marked by social creativity.

So why can’t we find anything else to glow under the Mid-Atlantic moonlight?

*This article was written in July 2008*

Reggaeton on Broadway: No Pare, Sigue, Sigue!

2008-07-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

Reggaeton on Broadway: No pare, sigue, sigue!

*This article originally appeared on behalf of Hispanic Link.

The theater is dark, and the only sound to be heard throughout the Richard Rogers Theatre on 46th St. is the lush, languorous skip of a traditional Caribbean bolero. The audience is transported back in time, but not for long –the record soon begins to skip and repetitiously trip over itself until the song’s choppy new rhythm turns into hip-hop. Para siempre, para siempre, para siempre, we hear – forever, and ever, and ever.

The Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights about the Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights in upper New York City is a musical about making home. It is about permanence, and about meaning. In the Heights is about sticking around, and in the process, finding oneself. And while it has received critical praise for its original scoring, sharp acting, and expert storytelling techniques, it mainly deserves praise for marking a new phase in American musical theater by portraying – and celebrating – the modern Latino community as it is, on stage and in triple-time.

For the rest of the article, please click here: http://hispaniclink.blogspot.com

The Politics of Culture in Southern Cali

2008-06-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

The first place I ever really talked about politics was on the swing set of my elementary school playground. It was 1992, and Perot, Clinton, and George W. H. Bush were competing for the presidency. Recess was the time for discussing things – things like the paucity of the snack selection at school, or things like the future of the country. My best friend Grace and I both assumed that the other had watched the presidential debates on TV with our parents the night prior, and we proceeded to conduct a frank discussion about the valor of the candidates’ claims under the glare of the strong Southern California sun.

The element in question was whether George H. W. Bush or Bill Clinton was the one who started his speech with the seemingly idiotic phrase, “My fellow Americans.” The person that would actually say something like that in all seriousness was automatically discounted from our primary-school caucus. Our fourth-grade selves had reached a small, pixie quorum that men with big ears (like Ross Perot), or men who were uninventive enough to use that tired terminology, were clearly unfit for office. Inside, we both knew that Clinton was the one who had said it, but I liked Clinton, so I kept quiet and tried to fool her into thinking it was Perot. Grace had by now climbed up to the top of the monkey bars, and from the top of her world, laughed out loud at the pedantic dorkiness of the man who was to become the Commander-in-Chief of the decade that gave birth to welfare reform, the personal computer, and hip-hop as the new definitive music of American life.

There in the small, neglected, lower middle-class desert towns east of the Los Angeles film industry, we became “multi-culti” young politicos by accident. Immigration from East Asia and Latin America in the 90’s meant that it was normal to be Taiwanese, and everyone bragged about their vida loca, if it really wasn’t all that loca.

In junior high, the sounds of TuPac, Pearl Jam, and Selena all got equal turns on our CD players, and while we might of disagreed about taxes or abortion, at least we had an abundance of hair gel to glue us all together. Equipped with burritos, Boba milk tea and barbeque, we were the coincidental characters in Obama’s “next great chapter in the American story.”

Now in my mid-twenties, I live in Washington, D.C., a town full of people trying to actively script the next great chapter in the American story. However, like with most stories, the turns and twists – the variations on the plot – are the most exciting parts.

For professional political operatives, the politics of culture have come to mean more than previously thought. A progressive campaign speaking to the needs of those dis-serviced by Washington’s insiders actually won this time. Come to think of it, Obama might have even have gotten ahead by using the phrase “my fellow Americans”…but that doesn’t much matter now.

What does matter is that our candidates pay attention to the politics that matter most – the politics of every day life.

Back home in California, people have problems with home foreclosures, with environmental racism, with a failing economy. California is the fifth largest economy in the world, yet the state can’t balance its budget. In L.A., many young people don’t vote because they think it won’t make a difference; here in D.C., the most politicized, intellectually potent state of the union, people are very passionate about voting, but feel like they haven’t actually seen it make a difference yet.

It will make a difference, though. Our generation might lack consensus, but we’ll never lack a good soundtrack. We can help each other along the way, much like Lila Downs can maybe help our legislature do a little Capitol Hill cumbia in the direction of fairness, justice, and equality.

I’m from generation of dreams and downbeats – and that’s why I’m voting this November 4th.

California-place

2008-06-07T21:57:00.000-07:00

The shiniest skin
the most glorious (foreclosed) homes
the biggest cars
the largest utility bills
(truly)

Most nose jobs
most Salvadoreans outside of San Salvador
most bad folklórico
most stale air
most d’Anjou pears

Sunshine state
Most empty fields
Most green tomatoes
Most high school drop outs
Most blond hair dye

Most twisted tongues
Most silent rosemary
Most infatigable cactus
Most “job growth”
Most Best Buy positions
Most air-conditioned sighs

Most gay marriage petitions
Most transnational birds
Most Pepsi children

This is what the West won.

On Los Angeles and place...

2008-06-07T21:54:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you’re not Jewish in Beverly Hills
When you’re not Mexican in Huntington Park
When you’re not white in Santa Monica
When you’re black in Boyle Heights
When you’re Chinese in Baldwin Hills
When you’re Muslim in the Fairfax District
When you’re Catholic on Crenshaw
When you’re WASP in Alhambra
When you’re Ethiopian in the Valley

You return to your people in the Backbend Turnover March otherwise known as Rush Hour.
Returning to real estate, phone cards, and clothing that matches your kin.

Rush hour in Los Angeles is called North, South, East, West, this-is-how-we-do-unrest.

The Facebook Generation

2008-06-07T21:51:00.000-07:00

Unlike Watergate phone calls or the useless paper bills of Black Tuesday, the defining desperation of the new millennium isn’t one cataclysmic event. It isn’t 9-11, or (la one and only) Katrina. It isn’t even the stolen elections, or the YouTube broadcast of the murder of Saddam.

It’s the belligerent need to be SEEN. There is a desperation that the world will slip by without seeing you. That the revolution will happen without your face on its Facebook profile, that one’s fury to be known and be noticed, to matter in the midst of electronic matter, ultimately won’t. That the world, and the news outlets of the world, will go on without you – without your consent, without your money and without your emails.

It’s a semblance of shape in the midst of shadows, this stocky little self-importance. It’s worshipping at a temple that is edit-able. It’s a series of sign systems that sign them up for Eternity (just in case there is one.)

This is a generation of children who grew up on systems labeled as Don’t Work. WWII left everyone in shock, the Pinkie Bastards ruined what was left, and cocaine and Reagan took over from there.

Us, afterwards, have low-level bank accounts and a system of morals made up of leftovers.

Our time is spent raiding philosophical refrigerators, desperate to find something good to eat…

Thunderstorms in Washington

2008-06-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

Thunder storms in Washington calm everyone down, and shut everyone up. They're a chance to let your hair down, and soak up hot wet air. They remind us that all the green leaves glow, and that this city, rinsed off, is really pretty.

La lluvia es un abrazo morado que nos toca sin dejar chupete, y deja todo limpio, renewed, and re-flushed.

Rain is a way to count the time here in Washington. It comes like clockwork, these unexpected down-pours. Rain is for making the muck go away; and it always rains here in Washington.

El Desierto Chihuahense

2008-06-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

Chihuahua is a state made from the ground up. Its capitol city is manicured for good measure – the trees in white skirts (even the shrubs – to keep off the bugs!), the women in high heels, the men in high boots.

Men in thick, curve-lipped boots forming half the body weight of an average teenager. Silhouettes of hat, no butt, and boot. Turquoise, orange, white; sleek, bubbly, spiky; long, flat, and pointy – boots Off The Ground. (For good measure.)

In the plazas, the shoes are continually shined, the sidewalks are regularly swept, and sometimes, the lone yelp of a brass trumpet breaks the silence.

In Chihuahua, there is never enough money, pero sí hay es esfuerzo.

Every morning, el viento chihuahuense blows in a circular rotunda of effervescent pesos, a solidified boredom, and the drone of an acrylic nail file ready to grind the dirt off, grind the time away, and bring the day in...

Q & A with Ethiopian community radio host

2008-05-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

Off the Air with Abebe Belew of Addis Dimts Radio, D.C.

D.C. resident Abebe Belew is the host of the Addis Dimts radio show, a weekly Amharic talk show broadcast in D.C. via 1120 WUST AM/New World Radio and received in Ethiopia via 17845 kwh 17 mb. Emily Goulding caught him offline for a few minutes to ask him about radio, politics and power suits here in the Capitol region…

1. How did you decide to become a DJ? Were you a DJ in Ethiopia?
Well, actually I was a comedian in Ethiopia. And I was a traditional dancer, I used to work for a famous theater called the Ras Theater. Later, I became a host for an Ethiopian TV show called Variety Show. When I came here, I went back to my old job, entertaining Ethiopians at university campuses and stuff like that. Now, I have my own radio talk show here in Washington. I’m broadcasting on Sundays from 1pm to 2pm from D.C. all the way to Ethiopia.

2. How do you decide what your show topic is for the week?
It’s all about Ethiopians. It can be about sports, comedy, politics- any kind of topic.

3. What’s your favorite thing about being on the radio?
The main reason I decided to have a radio show is freedom of speech. Here, my show can one day be about restaurants, the next day about comedy. There is no such thing as private or free media in Ethiopia, so I’m living my dream by running free media.

4. When you call your family back home and tell them what it’s like to be Ethiopian in Washington, what do you say?
I tell them to come here to see it, it’s a very big difference. I grew up in a very strong culture, our culture was everything. The rule of law has no place in Ethiopia, so if it wasn’t for our culture, we wouldn’t be able to live in there. Our culture helps us live. Like for poor people, it doesn’t matter if they’re right or wrong, they just don’t have freedom. In that aspect, the United States is a dream that I wish all Ethiopians could see. Freedom is a great thing for all humanity.

5. Do you feel that you have a certain social responsibility as a radio host?
Yes, yes, I have a big responsibility both here and back home to represent all sides. Whatever people think, I give them a chance to explain. I feel a great responsibility to stand up for what I believe, for free media, for giving a chance to every point of view.

6. Do you know who Piolín de la Mañana is? Sí venimos a triunfar?
I haven’t heard of him, but I don’t think he’s a journalist, he might be an activist. If he believes a rule is wrong and wants people to go out and fight, I don’t think that’s wrong, but if he’s a journalist, he can’t just take one side.

7. What’s the most difficult topic that’s ever come up during an interview?
Religion is the most difficult topic to discuss. In Ethiopia, we are mostly Orthodox, but we’re also Muslim, so whenever those two religions have things going on, it’s very difficult to host that program. Also, as a radio host, I can’t know the outcome of my program. You never know who is listening or what they’re going to do.

8. What’s the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you while at WUST-AM?
The weirdest thing that happened to me is that people think I’m not good enough to be a journalist. They think that just because I was a comedian and a dancer, I can’t be a journalist. That’s weird to me, because I believe anyone can be anything they want to be.

9. Who wears nicer suits, Zenawi or Afewerki?
Zenawi (laughing). No, he’s actually a really funny-looking guy. In Ethiopia, people draw pictures to see who can make something that looks the closest to Zenawi… when you draw a goat and you take off the horns, you’ll see that it looks a lot like Zenawi.

10. And between Clinton and Obama?
Hillary looks better in a suit. Obama’s head is too little, so it looks kind of silly. Obama would look good in a runner’s outfit, or in a basketball uniform.

11. So who should I vote for?
If you don’t vote for Hillary, you should vote for me. (Laughs again.) Hillary has lots of experience, but I’ve never done anything in politics before, so if you don’t want experience, you should vote for me.

***********************

El Pasito NAFTA

2008-05-07T19:09:00.001-07:00

For the March 5th primaries, the North American Free Trade Agreement had its moment in the sun – it defined the parameters and victories of the election, and forced two left-of-center Democratic presidential candidates to expose their stances on such deeply significant issues as job growth, domestic trade, and foreign policy towards Latin America. However, instead of applying their self-described candidacy “for change” to deal with the complexities of NAFTA in new and thoughtful ways, Obama and Clinton instead performed a flight-footed, anxious little dance around it à la pasito durangüense.

The pasito durangüense – a jumpy cowboy dance equally popular in Durango, México as it is in Chicago, Illinois - is more fun to watch, though.

The overall issue for the March 5th primaries was not just the standard political shape-shifting we have grown accustomed to seeing in place of honest dialogue, nor even the candidates’ suspension of judgment about issues of immense social and economic import to the Hemisphere.

It’s the fact that they can’t seem to step to an even rhythm.

NAFTA forces Democrats to scoot around almost every single constituent group of the Democratic party: blue-collar workers whose jobs have been taken abroad, Latino voters whose families are directly affected by immigration policy via Mexico and Central America, and white-collar progressives who consider their sort of neo-protectionist economic policies part and parcel of the more equitable, just society they expect the Democratic party to administer.

Some of these folks clap on the upbeat; some clap on the downbeat. What’s a well-dressed, camera-ready Dem to do?!

Agarra su pareja! If the two are pro-protectionist, they please their union base and alienate their business base. They also alienate the growing numbers of immigrant Latino union members, who by very nature of being in the U.S. favor open trade and economic relationships with Mexico and Latin America. On the flip side, if Obama and Clinton are pro-free trade, they will please their business base and alienate their union base.

There is no easy win here; they have to (literally) draw a line in the sand with this one. Because neither Obama nor Clinton can claim to fix immigration, public education, or healthcare in this country without fixing NAFTA. Politics, like many things in life, is like dance class – if you can’t do a single turn, trying to do a triple turn is really a bad idea…

If Clinton and Obama really lived up to their claims of being “candidates for change,” they would publicly announce their willingness to undertake the task of fixing what has arguably been a gigantic (elephant-sized) disaster for both countries. Instead, the Senators of two of the largest, most important states in the union seem to prefer to pretend like NAFTA is unintelligible, or as seemingly unsolvable as the murders in Juarez. Instead, they prefer to scoot along to its rhythm with a cowboy hat and a stomp to match.

Quebrala!

While Obama and Clinton might find dancing el pasito NAFTA thrilling, but they’ve got to remember that for a lot of people, dancing el pasito NAFTA is really not so fun at all.