My First Quinceneara

After dropping not-so-subtle hints all year, I've finally gotten an invitation to a quinceneara that I can attend tomorrow morning and I CAN'T WAIT. I spent all night finding the perfect gift for Marisol...and bought a second one for Rocio, feeling guilty that I wasn't able to attend hers when she invited me because of a speech tournament I had to host all day long.

As I wrote them letters inside their cards, I couldn't help envying them this rite of passage. There was always something like that for the boys in my church-- when they were twelve, we gathered around them to bless them with the first level of the priesthood, and again when they were sixteen for the second level, and a third time when they were eighteen for the third. While that never involved a big party, Eagle scout courts of honor and missionary farewells do. I didn't really ever have a sense of becoming an adult until I went away to college and even then, I'd say I was never made to feel it was anything to celebrate in my culture. Not that these girls will find much more appreciation of academic endeavor from their families as a general rule. In fact, I'm a little worried it will all feel a little too much like a pre-wedding because as I looked at Joana's TOME of pictures from her quinceneara, I couldn't help feeling anxiety that it romanticizes the big church production experience at a time in their lives when they're too young to be thinking about that. I was happy to get the anticipated shrieks of horror when I told them Juliet was not yet fourteen when her dad was trying to marry her off to Paris and when she married Romeo, but I hope they'd react the same way if I suggested 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20...etc., etc. :)

Ironically enough, I introduced the students to Sandra Cisneros' novel, House on Mango Street, today after having them read an article about bad Latina stereotypes by Judith Ortiz Cofer for homework last night. The boys rolled their eyes a bit at our feminist rants until I told them about something I heard this morning on NPR about a new exhibit of Chicano art at the LA County Museum of Art. An artist was telling how his career as a conceptual artist began. He was on a date with another Mexican-American woman thirty-six years ago when he became outraged to find that there was not a single piece of Chicano art in the middle of a city with such a large population of Chicanos. When he demanded an explanation from the curator, he was told Chicanos don't make art because they're in gangs, so he came back that night with some friends and a can of red spray paint. In the spirit of Marcel Duchamp, the three new artists signed the front of the building (you can read the interview here). Then we read this vignette from the novel until the bell rang:

"Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.

"But we aren't afraid. We know the guy with the crooked eye is Davy the Baby's brother, and the tall one next to him in the straw brim, that's Rosa's Eddie V., and the big one that looks like a dumb grown man, he's Fat Boy, though he's not fat anymore nor a boy.

"All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes."

The next project is a book of our own vignettes. The honors kids are going to design journal entries tied to the thematic focus of selected vignettes and the possible personal experiences of their classmates. Then all of the students will write in the journals I got them at the beginning of the year for a few weeks while we read the novel. At the end, each student will choose three vignettes to be included in a book that I'll get bound, my wallet willing. I asked the girls to promise me to write down their memories of their quincenearas while their memories are still fresh...