King of Cuba by Cristina Garcia

I'm sharing this post from our friends at National Hispanic News.  For more videos, news and information about U.S. Hispanics, visit them at: NationalHispanicNews.com

Will Arizona Censors Be Shocked by ‘King of Cuba’?

 By Robert Friedman, Hispanic Link News Service

By Robert Friedman, Hispanic Link News Service

    “The only ones who should be censored are the censors,” says Cristina García, commenting on an Arizona school district’s banning last week of  “Dreaming in Cuban,” her 1992 novel that was a finalist for the National Book Award.

    García is answering a question from the audience at a book festival on the National Mall in Washington. She then proceeds to read “for the benefit of the book banners,” one of the racier parts of her new novel, “King of Cuba.”

   While the censors presumably have not yet had a chance to be shocked out of their knickers by “King of Cuba,” they did react, according to the Associated Press, to the complaints of two parents from the Sierra Vista, Arizona, school district over a sexually explicit scene from “Dreaming in Cuban,” The critically praised novel explores the ties among three generations of women during the Cuban Revolution.

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Hispanic Heritage Awards:Eva Longoria, Diego Luna and José Andrés

I'm sharing this post from our friends at National Hispanic News.  For more videos, news and information about U.S. Hispanics, visit them at: NationalHispanicNews.com

Cafecito: Eva Longoria, Diego Luna and José Andrés at Hispanic Heritage Awards

By Feliciano Garcia, NBC News

On this special episode of Cafecito, we are joined by actor/producer/activist Eva Longoria, actor/director/producer Diego Luna and master chef José Andrés. 

They were each honored at the 26th annual Hispanic Heritage Awards at the Kennedy Center on September 5 in Washington D.C. Eva Longoria, who received the Community Service Award, discusses her roots and motivation to help Latinas earn their education through the Eva Longoria Foundation. Diego Luna, who received the Inspira Award for inspiring youth, talks about directing the upcoming biopic “Chavez” and why it’s important to connect with young people through work at his production company Canana Films. Design Award recipient and creative and visionary chef José Andrés discusses his passion for cooking and his work bringing food to impoverished areas around the globe through his charity, World Central Kitchen. 

View the video here

Obamacare Explained: A Guide for Californians

An excellent guide that explains the health law that effects you, your family or your small business, here in California.  (This guide is also available in Spanish.)  Translation by BEAM Translation & Media Corporation.

Popo's Testimony

Children as medical interpreters – devastating on every level. Pouelinna Po vividly explains how painful and difficult it is to be put in an adult role in a medical setting.

Popo’s Testimony

Language Access and Affordable Care Act Town Hall June 7, 2013

Organized by Interpreting for California (http://www.interpretingforcalifornia.org/)

Hi, my name is Pouelinna Po, I’m 17 years old and I live in Long Beach. I’m a youth organizer at Khmer Girls in Action (www.kgalb.org).

By the time I was 7 or 8, I was already translating for my Dad

My story is about my Dad, Vuthy Po. He was a refugee from Cambodia. He could barely speak or understand English. By the time I was about seven or eight I was already translating for my Dad. I would always be the one to go with him when he went to the doctors, picked up medicine, or bought food. I never questioned why I had to do this, but after a while I realized that the places he went never understood him, and would just look at him confused when he spoke. Because a lot of the places he would go never had people who understood or spoke Khmer, I would have to go up to workers and translate for them what my Dad’s needs were or any questions he had.  I knew that my Dad depended on me to translate to get anything done, but as I grew up and my Dad’s health got worse this became more and more difficult to do.

These health conditions could have been managed

My Dad struggled with multiple health problems. He was diagnosed with diabetes, and also suffered from lung problems that made it hard for him to breath. Even though these health conditions could have been managed, he was never able to get the health care he needed. My Dad didn’t have a lot of money for medicine and medical bills so he avoided going to the doctor and could only afford cheap medicines as opposed to the ones he needed.

My Dad didn’t have health insurance, and I was scared that if he didn’t get health care he might die from his sickness, especially when I saw him get worse and worse every day.

It was hard to … carry the responsibility of caretaking

Out of my entire family, my Dad only wanted me to know that he was sick. At first I felt kind of special that he only wanted me to know, but as I watched him get sicker and sicker it was hard to keep this secret from my family, and carry the responsibility of caretaking for him. My Dad always took care of me, and now he depended on me to take care of him.

I didn’t want to say anything wrong

I would have to call him to remind him to take whatever cheap medicines he thought would help him, and when his doctor appointments were. I had to go to the doctors with my Dad to translate for him. But I was not fluent in talking or understanding Khmer so it was hard for me because I didn’t want to say anything wrong, or some things I couldn’t even translate. When the doctors would talk to me, I couldn’t event understand what they were saying or how to translate it to my Dad. I knew how important it was to be at the doctor’s appointment, but I dreaded going because every time I thought I was going to say something wrong or make a mistake that would negatively affect my Dad’s health.

I felt like I had so much pressure on me and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I would cry in my room so my family didn’t see me, and would write about what I was feeling. Most days I couldn’t sleep and would lie awake thinking about my Dad and his health. It was tough to try to focus on school and I started to failing my classes. Sometimes my Dad would call me during class and tell me that he was dizzy or wasn’t feeling good, and I felt so terrible that I couldn’t be there to help him. I started to miss school, stopped doing my homework, and was always exhausted.

It was hurtful to see him … I became depressed

It is not easy to watch your own father get sick, and no longer be able to take care of himself. It was hurtful to see him go through so much pain and misery, and I became depressed. Even though I didn’t want to think about the possibility of losing my Dad, the thoughts were constantly running through my head. And I couldn’t turn to, or lean on my family for support because they had no idea what was happening. 

On March 27, 2011, around 8:30 pm, I got a phone call from my step sister saying my Dad was rushed to Memorial Hospital. As soon as I heard that I felt like my world was tumbling down. I couldn’t think about anything else but to get there and see what was going on. I slept at the hospital for the first night he was there, and looking at him suffer was so horrifying and hurtful.  He was on life support, he couldn’t breadth on his own, open his eyes and his fingers didn’t even move.

A few days after being in the hospital the doctor called the whole family into a meeting and told us what they discovered. Her first words were “I am sorry to say…” As soon as I heard these first words I broke down and cried. They pronounced my Dad brain dead on March 30, 2011. After hearing that there was nothing the doctors or I could do anymore, they pulled the plug.

This tragedy has impacted me and my family in so many ways. My family hasn’t been the same, and I haven’t been the same.  Nothing matters quite as much anymore. We no longer have someone to call Dad.

I never want another youth to go through what I went through

Losing my Dad, has been a devastating experience and I can’t help but blame myself.  I wonder if I knew Khmer better or if I spoke up to get help, that my Dad would still be alive.

But, I know the reality is that it’s not my fault.

Me and my Dad should have had access to translation.

In my community I know that there are a lot of people who need translation, and that many times youth have to do it. I never want another youth to go through what I went through or have to feel what I’ve felt. 

Hard Economic Times and Immigrants

My husband, Héctor Ericksen, who is involved in the Lemon Grove Oral History Project, and I recently attended a screening of “The Lemon Grove Incident” (Paul Espinosa, 1985; EspinosaProductions.com) at San Diego’s Centro Cultural de la Raza. 

The Lemon Grove incident refers to the first legal challenge to school segregation, argued and won in 1931. For a full narrative, see: lemongrovehistoryproject.info

The Lemon Grove PTA, school board and Chamber of Commerce decided to build a substandard “Americanization” school. They attempted to send the town’s Mexican and Mexican American children to it, so they could be taught at their purported low academic and linguistic achievement levels, without holding the white children back. 

Times were hard in the 1930s. This was the time of the Mexican Repatriation, which forcibly sent up to a million people to Mexico, whether they had been born in the United States or not. A great treatment of this era can be found in “Decade of Betrayal: The Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s” (2006) by Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez.

Times are hard now, too, and the issue of immigrants is at the forefront of our ugly political discourse. 

Mexican immigrants are the focus, again because they are easy to spot and the closest to us, beyond simple geography. Now the concept is “self-deportation,” a term coined in the mid 1990s by satirist Lalo Alcaraz (pocho.com) in reaction to California’s infamous Proposition 187. The term is not being used satirically today.

Here in the U.S. racism surges in direct relation to the difficulty of the economy. Maybe this reaction has an evolutionary basis. For example, hunter-gatherer tribes would have to visually identify those who threatened their well-being. They likely selected mates based on similarity of physical traits, thus perpetuating the insular mentality of the tribe.

Contemporary human beings continue to self-select for similar traits, whether it is for a mate or for co-workers. 

It’s funny how we haven’t completely evolved out of our vestigial structures, either. We still have, and have to deal with, our appendix, wisdom teeth and coccyx, which were useful to hunter-gatherers, but not to us. 

Perhaps useless vestigial structures of racism lie deep within us, too, and rupture when irritated.

Next time you’re faced with bigotry, ask the person how their tailbone is doing.

Review of ¡Rob! pilot, CBS sitcom

If you’re going to use stereotypes, at least get the stereotype right. 

Linguistically speaking, the accents in this awful sitcom were all wrong. The Mexican-American characters, Papi (Fernando), Cheech Marin’s character, claims to have migrated from Mexico, but he sure sounds American – specifically Chicano, from East L.A. Diana María Riva’s character, Mami (Rosa) has somewhat of an accent, so maybe she came over as a teenager. Her “m’ija”, however, comes out more as “mi hija”, which is not how Mexicans refer to their daughters. Maggie, (Claudia Bassols, from Spain), their U.S. born daughter, is supposed to be a “smart book translator”. Being fully bilingual in Spanish and English would be a testament to her parents’ tenacity, but in the U.S. educational system any foreign accent would have been erased from her English by the first grade. 

As the show opens, she’s at her new husband’s house, no discernible accent at all in English. After the first commercial break, she’s at her parents’ house, speaking in full-on soft consonants and open vowels, as if being there makes her tongue revert a couple of generations. Her grandmother, Abuelita, played by Lupe Ontiveros, does not speak any English, and therefore is mute during most of the show.

Cheech Marin gets the most laughs, but his presence and demeanor seem forced. Why would actors of the stature of Cheech Marin and Lupe Ontiveros stoop to the low level of sexual jokes and sloppy writing in this show? 

Maribeth and Cheech Marín at the "Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge,"

Smithsonian Institution, July 2002

The most offensive scene has Rob in Abuelita’s room, straightening the image of her deceased husband, causing the church candles to attack his genitals. During the ensuing confusion, he tackles the grandmother in his boxer shorts, ending up with her in a sexually suggestive position. Not content to “show, not tell,” he has to repeat (and repeat) that his genitals were burnt by the falling candles. Later he doesn’t serve his in-laws any food at his house, and gives a big gringo speech to make it all better. And Schneider’s maternal grandmother was Filipina?

As for the crazy uncle stereotype, who in the world was Eugenio Derbez playing? Is he supposed to be gay? A drug addict? Is he monocultural white America’s worst dream? “I’m your best friend.” “Lend me $7200.” “I’m staying here f-o-r-e-v-e-r.” Really?  Who is this guy and what is he smoking? Maybe Cheech knows.

A clue to the dismal writing comes from the writers and producers of the show, some of SNL fame. Didn’t Rob Schneider run the script by his Mexican-American wife? He and Lewis Morton co-wrote it, and were executive producers along with Eric and Kim Tannenbaum. Adam Sandler and John Schneider produced. Short-guy jokes and sexual humor just don’t translate. Those kind of guys usually stay single, and don’t marry into tight-knit Mexican American families. What was she thinking? 

LEMON GROVE LIBRARY HONORS MEXICAN AMERICAN PIONEERS

LEMON GROVE, Calif. - On October 12, The Lemon Grove Library honored the Mexican American pioneers from the Lemon Grove desegregation incident of 1931.

“It began when the Lemon Grove school board attempted to build segregated schools for children of Hispanic origin,” said John Valdez, professor of Chicano Studies at Palomar College.  “The working class members of the Mexican-American community didn’t stand for it. They began a boycott of the school and then filed suit against the school board.”

The case, which would become the nation’s first successful desegregation court case in the nation, is called the Roberto Alvarez vs. Board of Trustees of Lemon Grove School District.

“The Lemon Grove incident era changed United States history and the lives of millions,” said Branch Manager Amparo Madera.  “The library is the perfect place to honor the pioneers and activists who fought for civil rights and equality as the public library represents the freedom to learn.”

Lemon Grove Councilmember Howard Cook and Library Director José Aponte presented special recognition awards to the Lemon Grove residents who were pioneers and activists for equality during the Lemon Grove incident.

(Slideshow photos by Cristina Lynn Ericksen)

The celebration included music by classical guitar and solo performer José Rodriguez and the conclusion of Héctor Ericksen-Mendoza’s Hispanic Heritage Month photography exhibit.

Read more about the Lemon Grove incident of 1931 at www.lemongrovehistoryproject.info and view the photos from the exhibit at http://hectorericksen.photoshelter.com

(Photo by Cristina Lynn Ericksen)