Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Ramona Zapata, In Memoriam
At the moment, my room reeks of old photographs. I was sorting through them yesterday looking for some pictures of my family. There is a whole box full of photographs that need sorting and putting away. They are from my grandmother’s house, when I packed her stuff up last year, I said I would get to them, and to sorting and filing all her papers, but here it is over a year later and haven’t done much more than trip over the boxes all this time.
Years ago, when I was going through some boxes in my grandparent’s house, I found a beautiful dress that belonged to my mother, maybe it was to go to a school dance, or her prom dress. I don’t remember what it looked like now, not even the color, and since I didn’t come across it when I packed up the house last year, I’m assuming it’s no longer around. A confection of satin and tulle is all I remember about it, like a Barbie doll dress I coveted when I was a child. It was so tiny around the waist, I couldn’t have worn it when I was ten, much less by my teens when I found the dress. I doubt Scarlett O’Hara’s waist was that small. My mother was around five feet tall, if memory serves. She had a model’s figure, and exotic looks. In this post-Selena era, she would have qualified as a beauty.
But those were different times. My mother’s skin color was naturally pinkish-brown, darker after she was out in the sun. Back in those days when racism was as pronounced as it was commonplace, the color of people’s skin marked them out for racial insults, kept them out of jobs, killed them. My mother and her parents never told me what they went through, but it had to have been far uglier than what I have dealt with in my life, which hasn’t been pleasant.
Even names were damning. I remember my grandmother telling me that my father had urged my mother to tell people her name was French. Not surprising, then, that my parents selected a generic Katherine for their daughter’s name. It wasn’t just my parents who went that route. I went to a school full of little black and brown girls named Mary and Debbie and Becky. That was America then.
Some years ago, I was at the library and I ran into someone I had gone to elementary school with; I called her by her name, and she corrected me. The teachers at our school had pronounced her name, Hirendira, as HERE - en - DEER - ah. That’s how we all knew her. A grown woman now, she could politely insist, with a smile, it’s ee - REN - dee - rah.
A friend of mine, Rose, who lives in Texas, vividly remembers that the teachers at her school washed her mouth out with soap when she spoke Spanish. She speaks it now, though not fluently, as she works for a large corporation in their human resources department. On weekends and holidays the family gets together on their ranch; my friend Rose is a beautiful woman with lovely daughters. Rose drinks Padron tequila and sings Mariachi songs in a strong and stunning voice.
My children’s father is American, of Mexican descent, like myself. I reverted back to Mexican names when I had my children; like they say in Mexico,tienen el nopal en la frente, they have the cactus on their foreheads: Be proud. Not that anybody owns anything when it comes to names, if people want to name their baby Britney or Paris or Monique, that’s their choice.
I think now of those people who organized, who marched, who were beaten, who died, so that we could live within our skin, no matter the color, peacefully and equally, claim or reclaim our racial identity, celebrate our culture or choose to ignore it. Not just the famous leaders, Parks, King, Chavez, not just the celebrities, the wealthy socialite liberals, the politicians, but the thousands of ordinary people, the maids, the farm workers, the college students, the mothers, the nuns, the lawyers, who added their bit, their drop of water to the mighty stream.
My mother was born in a different America, grew up knowing she was hated because she was Mexican, believing she was ugly because of her dark skin. We buried my mother around this time early in December ten or so years ago; I grieved, then and now, that she was never able to live up to her full potential, so much of it due to hatred, and learned self-hatred. I have lived, thank God, long enough to know that she was beautiful.
Rest In Peace, Ramona Caudillo Zapata
Here's something you might be interested in.
Previous article
Gonzo Report: Downtown thrift shop offers three bands in one show
Come nightfall, Humble Heart hosts The Beat
Ramona Zapata, In Memoriam
At the moment, my room reeks of old photographs. I was sorting through them yesterday looking for some pictures of my family. There is a whole box full of photographs that need sorting and putting away. They are from my grandmother’s house, when I packed her stuff up last year, I said I would get to them, and to sorting and filing all her papers, but here it is over a year later and haven’t done much more than trip over the boxes all this time.
Years ago, when I was going through some boxes in my grandparent’s house, I found a beautiful dress that belonged to my mother, maybe it was to go to a school dance, or her prom dress. I don’t remember what it looked like now, not even the color, and since I didn’t come across it when I packed up the house last year, I’m assuming it’s no longer around. A confection of satin and tulle is all I remember about it, like a Barbie doll dress I coveted when I was a child. It was so tiny around the waist, I couldn’t have worn it when I was ten, much less by my teens when I found the dress. I doubt Scarlett O’Hara’s waist was that small. My mother was around five feet tall, if memory serves. She had a model’s figure, and exotic looks. In this post-Selena era, she would have qualified as a beauty.
But those were different times. My mother’s skin color was naturally pinkish-brown, darker after she was out in the sun. Back in those days when racism was as pronounced as it was commonplace, the color of people’s skin marked them out for racial insults, kept them out of jobs, killed them. My mother and her parents never told me what they went through, but it had to have been far uglier than what I have dealt with in my life, which hasn’t been pleasant.
Even names were damning. I remember my grandmother telling me that my father had urged my mother to tell people her name was French. Not surprising, then, that my parents selected a generic Katherine for their daughter’s name. It wasn’t just my parents who went that route. I went to a school full of little black and brown girls named Mary and Debbie and Becky. That was America then.
Some years ago, I was at the library and I ran into someone I had gone to elementary school with; I called her by her name, and she corrected me. The teachers at our school had pronounced her name, Hirendira, as HERE - en - DEER - ah. That’s how we all knew her. A grown woman now, she could politely insist, with a smile, it’s ee - REN - dee - rah.
A friend of mine, Rose, who lives in Texas, vividly remembers that the teachers at her school washed her mouth out with soap when she spoke Spanish. She speaks it now, though not fluently, as she works for a large corporation in their human resources department. On weekends and holidays the family gets together on their ranch; my friend Rose is a beautiful woman with lovely daughters. Rose drinks Padron tequila and sings Mariachi songs in a strong and stunning voice.
My children’s father is American, of Mexican descent, like myself. I reverted back to Mexican names when I had my children; like they say in Mexico,tienen el nopal en la frente, they have the cactus on their foreheads: Be proud. Not that anybody owns anything when it comes to names, if people want to name their baby Britney or Paris or Monique, that’s their choice.
I think now of those people who organized, who marched, who were beaten, who died, so that we could live within our skin, no matter the color, peacefully and equally, claim or reclaim our racial identity, celebrate our culture or choose to ignore it. Not just the famous leaders, Parks, King, Chavez, not just the celebrities, the wealthy socialite liberals, the politicians, but the thousands of ordinary people, the maids, the farm workers, the college students, the mothers, the nuns, the lawyers, who added their bit, their drop of water to the mighty stream.
My mother was born in a different America, grew up knowing she was hated because she was Mexican, believing she was ugly because of her dark skin. We buried my mother around this time early in December ten or so years ago; I grieved, then and now, that she was never able to live up to her full potential, so much of it due to hatred, and learned self-hatred. I have lived, thank God, long enough to know that she was beautiful.
Rest In Peace, Ramona Caudillo Zapata
Sponsored