Who are the people in your neighborhood
hi
i’m marisela martinez cola don’t be
afraid of the r
it’s basically the d sound so ma
di sela i grew up
in battle creek michigan the serial
capital of the world where you will find
kellogg’s headquarters my mother
is from reynosa mexico and my father
is from donna texas i have 11 aunts and
uncles
and 47 first cousins at last count
and this is just on my mom’s side i
haven’t even tried counting on my puppy
side yet i’d be exhausted
i’m the oldest of three girls and the
first in my family to attend college
i married my best friend and we have a
son who lights up our life
every day finally i am a very
proud chicana
from michigan so i’m a michikana
now almost all of my family both sides
moved to battle creek
to this day i believe that we were
singularly responsible for the rise of
the latino population that year
aside from my family i didn’t really
have examples of latinidad
outside of my home that was until i
discovered
a remarkable tv show
sesame street i loved
sesame street grover was my favorite
which is probably why i love the color
blue
but what i loved the most about it was
the diversity of sesame street
not just the blue and green and yellow
residents but
gordon luis maria bob
and mr hooper it was the first time i
saw someone that
looked like my family on tv
i i mean i had a theo luis and maitia’s
name my aunt’s name was maria i mean
come on wow you can imagine that this
blew my little five-year-old mind
i didn’t realize how much that tv show
influenced me
until about a year later not a year
later until i got to college
yeah that’d be like six years old so
let’s fast forward to 1993
at the university of michigan it was the
first time i had a group of chicano
friends who were just like
me i was part of a multicultural club in
my residence hall
it was a very amazing and validating
time in my life
then it came time to select a major i
went to this thing
called a course catalog that listed
every course taught at the university of
michigan
i had no clue how to pick a major so i
just
circled all the classes i wanted to take
and the most circles were in psychology
and african american african studies
leave it to me the overachiever of the
family
to uh pick two not just one major
later on my friends and i were kind of
sitting around chilling
and talking about our majors when i told
them that i
that one of my majors was
african-american african studies
my more militant friends were like what
why aren’t you majoring in latino
studies why would you choose
african-american studies
you’re a latina you’re a chicana
when i told my family they said
what do you think you’re black
and this wasn’t about being anti-black
for my friends it was a matter of
demonstrating pride in my cultural
identity
and learning all the things that my k-12
education kept for me
my family thought it was a rejection of
my mexican heritage
a rejection of them and their struggle
to get to the u.s
but that wasn’t the case at all
so when i struggled to try to explain it
to them
believe it or not that old sesame street
song
popped into my head who are the people
in your neighborhood
and so i explained look i know my house
i know my culture i know it inside
and out i’ve lived in my house for 18
years
i love my house i love tamales at
christmas having rice at beans at almost
every meal
listening to the corridos hearing
stories about pancho villa
speaking spanglish i love my house
but now i want to get to know my
neighbors
so i majored in african-american
american studies and i got to know some
beautiful
amazing neighbors my classes and
incredible professors filled my heart
and mind
and spirit with black history
black art activism
and literature i received messages of
pain and brilliance and and excellence
against all
odds so i thought to myself if this is
what i discover
when i meet my black neighbors so to
speak what will i find when i meet
my other latino asian american and
native american indigenous
neighbors so i dedicated my professional
career
to multicultural affairs and began
populating my neighborhood
in my mind and heart with black latinx
asian american and indigenous art
history and literature as i learned
i saw connections beautiful
inspiring heart-wrenching connections
for example when i read the
autobiography of malcolm x
i was completely inspired
but learning about malcolm x helped me
to connect him to one of my chicano
heroes
rodolfo corki gonzalez he was called the
fists of the chicano movement
and that led me to learn about yuri
koshiyama
an amazing japanese-american activist
who actually worked alongside malcolm x
and was there with him at the time of
his death
and later i learned about mary brave
bird
a writer and a member of the american
indian movement
they all taught me to love protect
and fight for my neighborhood
reading i too am america by
by poet langston hughes made me hungry
to
read audre lorde a self-described black
lesbian mother warrior poet
and after that i learned about gloria
anzaldua whose book borderlands
made me feel seen and then there was
janice mir katani
an american japanese american poet who
taught me
that i am loved and worthy
and joy harjo a native american poet who
inspired me
to remember my history their words
helped me find my words
so finally this deep connection this
deep desire for connections
influenced my research and teaching as a
professor
now i know you can’t put an equal sign
between all of these
experiences you don’t want to do that
but there are enough similarities that
you can put the mathematical simile line
between them so i research
school desegregation most people know
about
brown versus board of education the
famous case that ended the legal
practice of separate but equal but i
studied law
and i knew there had to be cases
involving
mexican-american indigenous and
asian-american plaintiffs
sure enough after some research i found
that in 1947
seven years before brown there was
mendesby westminster
a case involving mexican-american
families fighting
for educational equality 30 years before
brown
there was alice piper in piper v big
pine
she and her family filed a lawsuit to
allow the
native american paiute children to
attend one of the local white schools
in big pine california finally
almost 70 years before brown in 1885
there was tate versus hurley a case for
a chinese-american family argued that
not allowing their daughter mimi tate to
attend the white school closest to her
home was unjust
immoral and racially prejudicial
these four brave school girls linda
brown
silvia mendes alice piper and mimi tape
gave me the privilege of sharing my
beautiful neighborhood
with others in my forthcoming book
and my students and i are working on an
interactive digital map
for social studies teachers i love the
idea of
young black latinx asian american
indigenous children clicking on this map
and seeing themselves as history makers
and hopefully i’d like to be able to
eventually have
a children’s book okay dr
mc that’s what my students call me so
what’s your point
so i’m here to ask you who are the
people
in your neighborhood here in utah it’s
very easy to say
i grew up in an all-white neighborhood i
went
to a really white school i attended a
predominantly white
church i hear this a lot from my
students
and to them i say your physical
neighborhood may not be diverse
but the neighborhood in your mind and
heart is ever growing
get to know your neighborhood and this
means
filling your life with books and
movies and art and
music and documentaries all of these
things that represent all of the
phenomenal neighbors
that you have yet to meet it’s all there
especially in this digital age y’all uh
y’all can be able to figure something
out right
first though you gotta start small right
so
if you like classical music
just google african-american composers
and the first thing that pops up is
nine black composers who change the
course of classical music
if you love reading science fiction
google latino science fiction writers
and
there you’ll see a link to five books by
latino authors that will satisfy
any sci-fi junkie they’re there i
promise you i googled them
right before this talk look there’s no
reason
to say i never knew there’s no reason to
say i never had the opportunity
even here in utah there is such
beautiful diversity here too
your neighbors are there y’all and they
are fascinating
i got to know my neighbors and i learned
that true unity comes when you are as
transformed
by your neighbors experiences as they
are
by yours thank you