Don't wish your life away...unless you have to. I saw this posted on Facebook recently: I responded with support for this sentiment, saying that even people who constantly long for 5:00 p.m. or Friday are self-defeatingly wishing their lives away when they should...
It's a trending Twitter hashtag that some say illuminates the many ways police let white people get away with things they'd never tolerate from Black people. Some say it doubles as a way for white people to brag about the things they've gotten away with. Others say...
Maybe the U.S. is reaching a crisis point at which things will have to change. Maybe not. You'd think police forces would learn that using military grade weapons and technology contributes to escalation of emotion and racial tensions, but they don't seem to be. It...
One of the blogueras at La Bloga posted Chicana/Latina Hair: A Discussion about Identity and Your Pelo Journey and she linked my recent post on having short hair. Amelia Montes wrote a much more thorough and thoughtful post than mine, so take a look. Thanks, Amelia!
novia de Frankenstein If I wash my hair and go to bed with it wet, I kind of have Bride of Frankenstein hair in the morning. Not only does it stand up in an inverted cone shape, but I've even got the streaks of gray. A friend asked why I'd want a photo of myself like...
Uh, Google! I'm disappointed that there's no reference to Cesar Chavez' birthday on your homepage today!
I'm going to see the new movie Cesar Chavez tonight. It's about one of the great Mexican American civil rights activists. My family is very excited about this film.
A tamal on top of other tamales. At Christmas time, we Mexicans often become more focused than usual on tamales, so I'd like to share a public service announcement from Pocho.com. This is what I've been saying for years: the singular of "tamales" isn't "tamale." It's...
This is why divorce won't lead me back to my spinster name: "REGINA MARIA RODRíGUEZ:" This graphic is from Slate's article Why Aren't There More John Smiths in the U.S? Do you see that name that's sixth from the top, "Maria Rodriguez?" Two thirds of my given name is...
I recently gave a speech in my Toastmasters club that had the same title as this post. I based it on a post I published eight years ago on this blog. I reprint the text of that June 20, 2004 post here because it's an important message (the text is slightly edited and...
My parents, my father's parents and I were born in the U.S; my mother's parents and my dad's grandparents were born in Mexico. I was raised in the very homogeneous Walnut Creek, California in the 1970s and '80s when it was very Anglo and middle class. There were...
I just learned that the fence that separates Mexico from the U.S. doesn't actually run along the Mexico-U.S. border. According to a post on The Lookout, a news blog, the Rio Grande forms the natural boundary between the two countries, but because of a treaty with...
I'm excited about an NPR article called "Being bilingual may boost your brain power," but not because of what the article says about bilingual children having stronger executive control systems in their brains, making it easier for them to focus on what's relevant and...
I'm grateful for being an American. I never felt this way until I left the country for the first time in my life and finally used a passport at the age of 44. I went to Peru and Bolivia. There I saw what my life could have been if my grandparents hadn't hauled...
Last weekend I travelled to Iowa and canvassed for Barack Obama's campaign. I ended up being assigned a pretty Democratic neighborhood of elderly people. About half the people I talked to were either supporting Obama or were leaning towards Obama. Only a few said that...