Hispanic Americans

"picking up the pen for Chicanas became a "political act." ...Women also founded and edited newspapers-El Grito (Betita Martinez); Encuentro Feminil (Adelaida del Castillo and Ana Nieto Gómez); Regeneracion (Francisca Flores); and El Chicano (Gloria Macias Harrison). Through their writings, Chicanas problematized and challenged prescribed gender roles at home (familial oligarchy); at school (the home economics track); and at meetings (the clean-up committee),"

""We have practiced a different kind of leadership, a leadership that empowers others, not a hierarchical kind of leadership." Elizabeth (Betita) Martínez echoed, "The leadership that empowers others is the leadership we need." Over fifty years ago, Luisa Moreno and Josefina Fierro de Bright provided this type of leadership."

"She was an innovative type of organizer. In all projects, she had a posse of young people working with her. She loved being around young people and they loved being around her."

"In this extraordinary volume, Elizabeth Martínez reveals what has thus far been hidden from our view, the rich and inspiring history of Chicana women, from the early days of the Spanish conquest to the contemporary struggles for immigrant rights. The book is a treasure trove of exciting information and striking images. It should become an indispensable part of everyone's library, and a special gift to future generations of the young, on whom we depend to change the world."

"…there was the portrait of John the Baptist draped in furs, with a long furry beard, long hair, bushy eyebrows, and so covered in hair. Well, to a child of I must have been, I'm like four or five now, and this would have been one of our return trips because to a child of that age, it could very easy look like a gorilla. And one of the reasons I mention this story is that, for me, my first impression of art was both horrifying and absolutely magical, because I really believed that was a gorilla…"

"That musical time is a way of like creating a rhythm within the piece. And it was an amazing experience for me to see how when lines, directional lines, went through forms -- how forms, if moved to fit within the ratio, to hit the points. Like in other words, if an arm flies out, it goes to the point. Suddenly there's this like visual kind of connection between the forms, and it fits like, clicks like pieces of a puzzle, right into place…"

"They very often would let me paint, you know, instead of doing some of the other lessons, because I didn't speak English well enough. So I had a lot of painting. And I brought the paintings home with great pride, and my mother kept them for years, so I do know that I sort of…That was a place that I actually remember the smell of those materials and the texture of the surfaces and just, you know, kind of having this real visceral love of moving that color around -- which is, I think, you know, I still have that…"

"Murals are not easel paintings,” Baca said. “They’re not individual works created for simple self-expression of your opinion in a public space. To do public works means that you’re making something. A real mural is connected to the architecture in which it’s placed, connected to the people for whom it’s painted and connected to who you paint with. And when it is incredibly well done, it’s like a choreographed dance."

"All my pieces are about resilience in the face of adversity"

"Jimmy Santiago Baca writes of poetry as a birth into the self out of a disarticulated, violently unworded condition, the Chicano taught to despise his own speech, the male prisoner in a world...run by men's rules and maintained by men's anger and brutish will to survive, forced to bury his feminine heart save in the act of opening a letter or in writing poems. Every poem is an infant labored into birth and I am drenched with sweating effort. Tired from the pain and hurt of being a man, in the poem I transform myself into woman. Released from the anguish of speechlessness (There was nothing so humiliating as being unable to express myself, and my inarticulateness increased my sense of jeopardy, of being endangered),' Baca transforms himself into a woman who has transcended the pain and hurt of being female, who has actually given birth to words, not to a living, crying, shitting child. But how balance the hard labor of bearing a poem against the early depletion of uneducated women bearing children year after year? Or against the effort for speech by a woman who culture has determined that women shall be silent?"

"Not knowing how to read and write is only the top of that morbid state of being. Not knowing how to read and write leads to not knowing where windows come from, how cars are made, how people pay for cars. Not knowing how to read and write is only the top of the problem, because behind that wall you don't know anything and how anything operates in society, and that's the nightmare."

"People of color and poor people, we have a self-hatred that is somehow like a virus, and the second you come out of your mother’s womb, the virus comes to you—that if you’re poor, and you’re a person of color, you have self-hatred. But each of us who gets educated—we educate those around us. Education for itself is worthless, but making education yours is priceless. I tell all of my students to make it theirs…"

"The white kids are being conditioned to feel superior—so you can’t attack the whites, you have to attack the system. But we have to attack with loving ourselves first. If we don’t love more, we ain’t revolutionizing nothin’. People who love themselves won’t tolerate deception; they won’t tolerate oppression…"

"I was institutionalized from age five to thirty years, first in an orphanage and then in prison. I kept running away and escaping and escaping and escaping . . . I had tried to escape so many times. When I got to prison I refused to work; I wanted to learn—I wanted an education. I was ready to give my life for an education…"

"Every Mexican family has a member that fought in the Revolution…There are stories in my family of two great uncles who fought on different sides and they would meet at my uncle’s land to share a meal and then they’d go back to the fight…The Revolution…it divided families."

"…They were cooks, they were laborers, they were fighters, they maintained supply lines. It’s interesting to me how women get involved in a conflict, and this was a terrible conflict. So I wanted to make dresses that would protect these women metaphorically."

"…art infuses TV every day. Art produces culture, and hopefully new cultural ideas get expressed in the art world. I think you can see the influence of the art world everywhere on TV."

"I’m really interested in reality TV as a format for storytelling, as a way of communicating humanity, of seeing ourselves, of seeing our scripted selves perform as ourselves. It’s simulacral, this removal of the self while performing the self in a quote-unquote real life situation…"

"…I don't think it's good to be honest in interviews, I think it's better to lie."

"I’m just an autodidact who would like to be part of the family of artists."

"Like an ape? A primate?...You said it, you said it."

"I don’t think about art while I work…I try to think about life."

"At some point in our lives, each of us realizes how really finite we are. For me this realization has been a driving force in my creativity and in my life in general. I paint with a new abandonment almost trying to deny the fact that I too will someday pass on and the only thing remaining will be the images that I leave behind."

"…I think Disney personifies some of the American ideals in art and in culture in total, because what he was trying to do and specifically with Fantasia. And it was the spirit of the thirties, I believe; it was the post-Depression period, where people were trying to think popular art, art that was consumable by the masses high art that could be put in a tin or another form, a package…"

"Theatre is more than just dialog; it’s a complete sensory experience for an audience. They see, they hear, they connect with the actors on stage…"

"…I think theatre in general is very poetic. That’s what first drew me to playwriting. Plays are like living poems: visual, emotional, narrative. Lorca said, “A play is a poem standing up.” I couldn’t agree more."

"…Our society has never experienced a dictatorship on our soil, has never seen civil liberties stripped away. So at times, it can be a challenge for American audiences to imagine how a dictatorship might begin and who would be perceived as a threat to such a regime…"

"…As a poet, I’m an Imagist—driven by and focusing on visuals…"

"I know it’s a good play if I’m afraid to show it to my grandmother."

"Being a playwright —especially in this current climate— is a privilege; I believe that as artists we have a responsibility to share narratives that we often don’t hear about or expect. When you subvert the status quo and reveal the truth in universality, you can spark change…"

"The burqa has different meanings for many women who wear it. I think as Americans we have a tendency to only associate this garment with violence, oppression, and fear without really knowing much about its history or cultural significance. It is my hope that audience members will approach this play with an open mind and an open heart to allow for an alternate perspective that is both positive and meaningful."

"I think there are elements of the playwright in every play they write – it’s hard to completely disassociate from your characters and their given circumstances when you are the person creating it all…"

"…All of my poems, to me, have always had an intonation to them, and I think that’s really part and parcel to the nature of writing poetry anyway. My poetry is different from the typical iambic pentameter. It’s not linear because it cascades and goes down the page like an escalator."

"…There is no such a thing as an old poet. People are younger and older, chronologically, because of math of calendars, but spirits are young and old simultaneously. Poetry as a professional, life-long pursuit is one that offers wisdom with age, and that’s to be respected…"

"…Poetry is not a stepping-stone to fortune and fame, or Hollywood for that matter — where, if the poet where [sic] to seek that, he or she would trade their voice for that of Hollywood, or fortune and fame, and lose their use of poetry. Poetry does not compromise itself for such mundane material."

"Poetry belongs everywhere, of course — but especially in the classroom…"

"I tend to channel my characters and their needs first—that leads to dramatic situations—and then…I start writing and barf out pages. Next, I read what I have and find a glimmer of plot in there. Then I do it all over again with the plot driving the characters. You have to write a lot and throw out a lot and have fun with it."

"If I talk about my body the way the men do, that’s not okay with the audience. I was at a comedy show where there was this cool lesbian couple in the audience, really stylish, and one of them had to leave. She was crying sitting there listening to all the jokes about Subarus and mullet haircuts. I thought: I am going to get back at them. I want a man to look at this show and realize that their junk is no more appealing than women’s junk. I want them to look at junk."

"My audience is a mix of people, very San Francisco progressive, gay straight, Latino, people of color, white folks, and women. What I’ve learned is you can’t get everybody. I don’t want to compromise who I am. I love anyone who buys a ticket to my show."

"I want to represent queerness and mujerness in the conversation. I worry that my poor Spanish may be off-putting to some cohorts. I just talk so damn slow in any language. I also want to represent slow talkers—and mimes."

"I know what they’re thinking. ‘You’re clearly queer, you’re dressed like a child, you have tattoos.’ They have this impression that a person that looks like me…I try not to be like ‘You’re fucking racist!’ or whatever, but they’re probably thinking, There’s no way you belong on the screen. And I’m so happy to shatter that forever."

"I think this is part of the female gaze…We are used to being watched, so why not watch ourselves, and why not enjoy it? Watching each other, excluding the visage of men—I can enjoy my sexuality."

"I wish that more young people, especially less affluent people of color, would realize that we’ve been making stories forever, we’ve been creating rich characters. If we can ignore the pressure to tell a story the way “they” want to hear it and just tell it the way it is, we’ll continue to grow in the industry and have greater power."

"I can only speak for myself, but as an actor i wasn’t like, “I’m going to challenge the way people see Latin people.” I was just happy to get roles. I tried to find new material in characters, but I wasn’t post-race about it or anything like that. I was just looking at it as just work. I wasn’t framing myself, so I wasn’t framing characters. Now I see the importance of playing [certain types of] characters. I’m not necessarily choosing characters that go against stereotypes, I’m choosing characters that you don’t even have time to question where they would fit in. Or what box they would fit into."

"A privileged position can help you to think that you are entitled to everything, and are above others. Reverse that and you can see how it isn’t true."

"I became the protagonist of my story and the protagonist of my life. I realized we’ve all been left out of this story. We are always the supporting characters, and we have to say no. My job is to show people that everyone belongs in the theater, everyone belongs making films, everybody has something important to teach someone else. And that’s why stories are so important."

"In the beginning I felt like I wasn’t represented on stage or on film. As Latinos, we have been told in every which way that we don’t matter, that we are invisible — especially people who are indigenous, people who value their Native American roots. We’ve been eradicated, made invisible, and that’s one way that we’ve been disempowered. So, I realized the most powerful thing you can do is to own your humanity…"

"Oral tradition is really how Chicano literature came to be. I was not exposed to the written word, but I had the greatest teacher. I always tell people that my mother was my inspiration because she was the best chismosa, and she had the best stories. And if anyone taught me about drama, it was my mother because she knew how to tell a story. And my grandfather also told stories. One of the reasons why I waned to be a writer was because I was fascinated by stories of La Llorona, supernatural stories and things like that and I love hearing chisme (gossip)…"

"I feel very ni de aquí ni de allá…I’ve carried that border, that duality with me, because I’m not a full American...They can’t deny us right now…We don’t have it all, but we’ve gotten this much. We are undeniable. We are here."

"We haven’t gotten a chance to tell those stories for Latina women. If you look at what’s in the landscape right now, it’s very stuck in its lane, and I love that we have no lanes. There’s no road. There’s nothing. We start off somewhere and it just detours, regarding the characters…"