Question of the week: Recognized

It’s only happened once.

The last night I was in New York, I met up with several friends from my program to watch a UCLA game in the bar of the Sheraton. UCLA had a comfy lead through the half, so the group decided to turn in for the night — several were jetlagged and/or had early presentations the next morning. I walked back to the Hilton, a block away, with P and the guys to pick up my coat.

As P and I walked out of the Hilton to our hotel 5 blocks away, she bumped into some friends and fellow conference attendees. I’d met one of the guys, my tocayo in fact, at a few of the receptions earlier in the week. P talked to him for a few minutes and caught up. It seems like the world of Latino educational researchers is quite small. El tocayo was with a young woman. He introduced her to P. He didn’t introduce me, but she talked to me herself.

“You’re Cindy, right?” she asked quite sure of herself.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“From Lotería Chicana? I read your blog,” she confessed.

“Oh cool.”

She proceeded to explain that she was also attending the conference and was a graduate student at another California university.

Soon after, P and I walked back to our hotel a few blocks east.

Since then (and before then), no one has ever admitted to recognizing me from my blog while out in public.

It’s kinda weird, but cool.

La Pregunta: Have you ever been recognized from your blog (or other online community) while in public*? If so, what was it like? And if you saw me out on the street or on the bus or in Trader Joe’s, would you say hi**?

*I know there are blog meet-ups and other reunions of online communities (e.g., flickr mixrs), but I don’t include that in my definition of “public.”

**I’d be nice. I don’t bite.

Preguntas

Question of the week: Has anyone ever told you…

“Here, read this. It’s what I was talking about at the conference in Austin,” I said as I handed the latest copy of Puro Pedo Magazine to my cousin, Vero.

“Oh, I’ve seen this online, when you send it out on MySpace,” she said and then started flipping through the magazine. I’d caught her in a rare moment when she didn’t have the baby in her hands.

I pointed out some things to her as she read. “I wrote that article. And I’m in that picture, see.”

She nodded.

“Who is this?” Vero asked. She was on the page with Rio’s Valentine’s Day cards. “Is that your dad?”

“No,” I giggled. “That’s César Chávez, the guy who started the farm workers union.”

“Oh. Wow. Your dad looks like him,” she mused.

“Yeah, he gets that a lot,” I said.

La Pregunta: Is there a famous person you’re often told you resemble?

Familia, Preguntas

Question of the week: Immigrant parents and sympathy

My mom’s an excellent story teller. She may embellish a bit (sound familiar?), but she has a way of drawing you in, making you laugh and making you beg for more tales of her “little life.”

I thought of one of those stories last week while having $1 beers with Sean. We shared stories of immigrant parents and their peculiar way of dealing with childhood injuries. It just didn’t match up with what the sitcoms depicted.

***

Luz (my mom, far left in the photo) was 11 or 12 at the time*. The family was living in Lincoln Heights at the time. For the most part, Luz was a good kid, but she was mischievous. She also liked apricots. One afternoon, Luz was walking around the neighborhood with a friend when she noticed ripe apricots hanging from a neighbor’s tree. She asked her friend to keep an eye out for cops while she climbed up the chain link fence to be able to reach the tree. As she was about to grab an apricot, Luz’s friend called out, “hurry up, someone’s coming!” Luz lost her footing and slipped. As she slipped the point part of the fence scratched against her thigh leaving a large, bloody gash. Obviously, she was hurt.

Luz went home and found her older sister, Socorro (quite the fitting name, since it means “help”; standing, second to the left in the photo). She desperately needed Socorro’s help to clean and bandage the cut, and hide it from Mamá Toni. If Mamá Toni found out, she’d be angry that Luz had (a) gone out with a friend when she was supposed to be at home doing chores and (b) tried to steal fruit from a neighbor’s tree. The painful gash on her leg was the least of her worries.

Luckily, Socorro was studying to be a nurse and came through. She cleaned up Luz’s cut and bandaged her up.

Mamá Toni never found out.

***

Sean and I agreed that in a sitcom, the white middle class kids would never be scared to go to a parent after an injury. Sure, Bobby Brady would learn a lesson, but he didn’t have to fear nalgadas (a spanking). Sean and I wondered if our experiences were similar because we were the children of immigrants.

That got us to this week’s question.

La Pregunta: Are immigrant parent’s less sympathetic (or harsher) than US born parents?

*I’ve heard the story a dozen times, but I’m sure I have some of the core details wrong. Sorry, mom! I know for sure apricots and a fence were involved.

Preguntas

Question of the week: Regional differences

I’ve been in Texas since Saturday evening. I stayed with my aunt in Keller (near Dallas) for the first few days. Today, I arrived in Austin for a conference and to meet up with some friends. The last stop on the tour will be Houston.

Being in Texas is a little weird. There are so many trees, there are flight delays due to weather, and my cousin’s (white) friends call him Gee-zus. Yes, that’s right. They don’t even want to pronounce Jesús in Spanish. Finally, I wonder, are there compact parking spaces at shopping centers?

I know these are little differences. I know someone who is not from California would find the place a little weird and different. And I wonder, would they find Chicanos in LA different?

La Pregunta: Do Chican@s differ by region? And if so, how?

Blog/tech, Preguntas

Question of the week: In a sentence or two

It’s happened twice in the last two weeks.

The first time I was asked to describe my blog was at the Latina/o blogger gathering in East LA. The second gathering, set up by Eastside Scene, was pretty well attended. Everyone got a chance to discuss how he/she got started in blogging and their focus. When my turn came along, I explained that I’d been blogging for about 6 years. I didn’t even know I was blogging when I started. Since then, my initial diary-like writings have evolved as I realized people were actually reading. That was the easy part. It was more difficult to describe what I write about.

Yesterday, my friend Jake, editor of Puro Pedo Magazine, asked me to describe my blog in a sentence. It was tough. Jake called it “digital chisme,” but I think it’s more than that even if chisme’s been a current focus. I came up with something last night, but today it looks rather pretentious and the description is still unclear.

La Pregunta: How would you describe your blog in a sentence or two? How would you describe my blog?

[Note: Yes, I know I’ve been lagging on the QOTW posts. I’ve been a little distracted. I have a few ideas for the next few weeks, so don’t fear my lovely readers.]