Narrators' Lived Experiences
To assign categories and designations prior to reading or hearing the narrator's words, does a great disservice to the narrator and their lived experiences. The goal is to present the narrator’s lived experiences in the most accurate way possible without projecting on or ‘speaking’ over them. Guiding ideas and themes are instead offered to the viewer to think over.
Some of these themes include combating stereotypes, acceptance, celebration and family. The statements selected from the interviews were chosen in that they shared themes of certain struggles, beliefs, and experiences.
"And I started out on a mission to – to really prove that person and a lot of other people wrong. That I can mix community that I can be an artist, I can become an A – an A-list artist, and my name will be known, and that’s where I’m at now. And it took me a couple years but I’m there. And whether I get nominated for a Grammy or not or I get an award or not, um, it’s a beautiful experience being involved with the Grammy chapter. Um, having shared the studio and the stage with Latin artist and producers in the R&B and Latin world and it’s a humbling experience because they welcomed me with open arms but yet on the local level it was kinda like we don’t know who you are, etc."
"Community wise definitely I want to do something. I want to help those kids who are going through the same thing as me. I want to give them the hand. I want to say 'hey, you got to come up with a plan because the same thing I went through …' I want to... I guess some type of peer mentoring for the students some type of after school program, something. I feel like we need to reach those kids at least. Like the same person who tried to reach to me because countless times … he tried to talk, high school college, do it this is why and I feel like their way to reach to me while others would just pass through and I want to do the same but I don’t want anyone to be like whatever, I want to reach everybody so that is how I would try to give back to the community"
"You know I am learning as an adult now that – that there’s certain parts of my childhood that I’ve chosen to forget and by doing so a lot of stuff just gets forgotten and buried there. And I think that as a result of who I’ve become today it – it almost erases the type of upbringing that I had. I was not supposed to succeed. I was not supposed to, uh, be a community leader. I was not supposed to lead other people, influence other people in doing certain things, and I can’t attribute that to some fantastic childhood or upbringing."
"I can say that, yes. And a lot of people that I surround myself with now that are Latino leaders they were born in their given countries. So, I wasn’t born in Puerto Rico so – I don’t celebrate and brag about myself being Puerto Rican, I call myself a “New York-rican” because it’s – it’s a different upbringing totally. And I always worked hard at getting rid of my Brooklyn accent. That was one of m goals. I wanted to speak well. I wanted to not be labeled as, you know, this person with this thick accent who has – wants to be –"
"My roles? I feel like my role right now is to just be a student, um, here at Millersville which is my community now. Just to be a student, be working part time, um you know, through Society on Latino Affairs I try to give back as much as I can to Lancaster."
"Yeah. It’s – it’s – it’s frustrating because I’m here in college trying to prove the stereotype is wrong, that Latinos aren’t educated and they don’t care about education by getting my degree and trying to be successful, so why are you here trying to prove the stereotype is right. It’s frustrating."
"I mentioned before that whole immigration struggles and things like that, that I want more for just people in general who aren’t immigrants to the US to know about and then something that I want – I wish that – I don’t know if it can be conveyed through the mural itself or the project, just like that whole thing about Latinos just playing out the stereotypes, like, they should realize that they are better than that. Like why do they have to put themselves down and play out those stereotypes, they don’t have to."
"You know like kids, like minorities, music because I remember the age of however old I was in fourth grade. I was in Carter MacRae elementary school in the city here and I remember having this like desire to pick up the violin and play it and that was the first year I had ever touched a violin and I was in fourth grade and I just had this love. I immediately just fell in love with it but I never had like the support from my parent to play and at that age it is so important that your parents take you to lessons and make sure that you have an instrument and make sure you practice it. Just the support that you know a fourth grader needs. The structure and I didn't have that so I kind of just left that and let it go to nothing or better said that just kind of went to nothing, you know I can’t really just take too much of the credit for it or the blame for it at that age. So um years go on and I actually picked up the violin in the elementary school I mean middle school. Seventh grade, I believe and we played in a little orchestra that was Hamd middle school and um our teacher Mrs. Regitz, I believe her name was. She taught our little orchestra but everyone was bad [laughs]. It was just kind of playing these folk songs you know. We played Good King Wenceslas, I remember that and that is just like really easy, you know? So that wasn’t challenging it was just kind of you know. And I remember writing every note in. Now as I study music as a young adult and I am like 'That is the worst thing you could ever tell your kids to do' to write all the notes in. That is still a handicap, that is such a handicap and so I look back in retrospect and I am like ok, there are things that could have been adjusted to make a better transition to me but um yeah, I don’t know."
Yeah, I really liked that school it was great. I was really the only Hispanic in my classroom. There were some. There was this other girl, her name was O.T … Sierra and she was like Puerto Rican and white, I don’t know German. So me and her got along like 'ayyyy ' but um it was a lot of fun going there but I stopped playing because they didn’t have an orchestra, they just had jazz. They just had a band."
"Marti: Well, I guess going back to Mexico, my mother had to sell everything and so we came with one little tiny suitcase for the three of us and so I kind of felt at a loss because I had no dolls, no toys, no pictures, nothing to tie me back to my roots, my home. When I arrived at Chicago, my father had a nice apartment and he had a little wonderful warm coat for me and little brown shoes and he had cold cream for my mother in the apartment with all that so it just kind of … his thoughtfulness really made our welcome very nice. My mother’s sister and her husband was Jewish, were the ones that filled out all the papers for us to come to Chicago as residents, as official legal residents.
Interviewer: Oh so you came as an official resident?
Marti: Right, right and in the fifties, you had to prove that you had a job in the United States.
Interviewer: ok
Marti: You have to prove that you had a home and without those documents it would have been very difficult. So my dad had a job and he was living with my aunt and her husband and when we came, he got his own apartment for us.
Interviewer: Ok and did you feel welcomed like in the Chicago community? You felt like you were welcomed?
Marti: I was welcomed into my family with my aunt and her husband. My cousin and I were really really close. He is a year younger than I am. So, I was welcomed by my dad but really at age nine that was my world, that was my community. When they put me in school, I was so fortunate to have all the children welcome me. I think I was a horse of a different color. I was the first Latin student, first Mexican student going to that school."
"I just want to be able to break down the barriers not only within our organization but also to just I want to be able to have people not call us a Latino club anymore you know like we are more than that so hopefully some of these programs and ideas we can get that done"
"The whole thing with what do I feel when I think of Mexico and honestly it's not really a symbol but it is more of a … like I the first thing that pops up in my head when people say Mexico is my family so like a huge picture of my family that is the first thing that I … yeah because like honestly like I could have said the flag, I could have said the you know the country flag or something like that but honestly like the fact that my family is so diverse in itself, that we don’t look like a lot of us don’t even look like a stereotype, I feel like is the whole embodiment of our culture that you know is the mixture of it you know just the differences and the fact that everyone is at a whole different point in their life. The generations you know... "
“To accomplish a lot of the things I had, I had to not physically fight but fight. I am a fighter like that, you know what I mean? To be successful in life you have to struggle. You have to struggle to get it, fight”
"Earliest childhood memories. Hmmm. You know it is funny when I, when you think about um, its something I remind myself as a dad now, when you kind of close your eyes and you remember these snapshots of what you remember. It is always those memories where the collective family was together. I remember a Christmas celebration, the new year celebrations, I remember dancing and really spending just quality time as a family and so I think what I remember the most is the times that um regardless, we use to have te families throw parties together where it was just you know twenty – thirty family members would show up to the house and there would be nothing. I mean we used to now have to cook for twenty or thirty people or you would go shopping and buy drinks for everyone for that many folks. There were times where folks would just show up and they would turn into a party with music or a block party out in the neighborhood and there was no food, or we just cooked whatever was in the fridge and made the best time of it and those are the days that I kind of remember. It was unplanned celebrations of life."
"Yeah, absolutely. I think that I am the person that I am because of the hard work ethic and trying to see the challenge and foresee the challenge and overcome it. I think that’s so important for – especially for, you know, immigrating over here having nothing to the point where, I think, we’ve been pretty successful. It’s not always been an easy trip, but um I remember I was telling a few people in elementary school I would go home crying every day. I hated it – absolutely hated it because I felt so different."
I mean, in terms of role models I unfortunately haven’t seen a Latina, you know, go in to the same major that I have or anything like that. So it’s not – I don’t think it’s just one person per say, I think it’s more so the ideas of, you know, Latinas prospering, especially as a Latina. You know, I think gender has a lot to do with it, especially within Mexican society. Um, and I think that as a US Latina we struggle between going back and forth."