Chicana on the Edge

You can’t cure families: you can only prevent them.

I’m Regina Rodríguez-Martin and this is the blog of a Mexican American woman who just entered the elder phase of life (starts at age 60).

In 2004 the word was that blogs were over, but a friend had a blog and I wanted one, too. I started Chicana on the Edge on June 17, 2004 and have kept it going ever since (my friend’s blog ended years ago).

The “edge” refers to being in the margin of the margin of culture and society. For instance, as a Chicana I’m on the outside of mainstream American culture, but I’m on the margin of Mexican American culture as well.

“Chicana” is a word that applies to an American woman of Mexican descent. During the politically turbulent 1960s Mexican Americans began using the term Chicano/a to reflect political activism and pride in our culture. I use it because I grew up with it and like its defiance.

To paraphrase Steve Martin in The Jerk: I was born a small white child. Actually, I was born in the 1960s to Mexican American parents who raised me in a very white part of Northern California. My parents were born in the U.S and my dad’s parents were born in the U.S. but his grandparents and my mother’s parents came from Mexico.

In the 1970s and 80s I grew up in a white city with white friends, went to white schools and dated white boys. I sound like a white woman when I talk. (As “Regina Rodriguez” I went to Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek, CA.)

Later I went to the University of California, Berkeley, then Cornell and got degrees in English literature. Cornell is where I first faced obvious racism, which made it the first place I really felt like a Mexican. I’ve become steadily more Mexican ever since.

At the age of 27 I moved to Chicago to seek my fortune (still seeking) and every year since I’ve become more aware of racism in all its degrees. 

My favorite color is pink, I couldn’t live without peanut butter and my favorite season is winter. Chicago’s gray, protracted winters are a main reason I moved here in 1993 and I’ve always known it was the perfect decision for me. I don’t want to live anywhere else and I don’t want to die anywhere else.