Zárate, Celsa

Hello everyone, I am Celsa Monique Zárate and I'm a first year transfer student from the on the Central Coast's San Luis Obispo area. Both my parents are from Jalisco, México. My maternal grandfather came from Jalisco, México to work in various areas of California as a bracero in the 1950s (Bracero Program 1942-1964). He later immigrated my grandmother, my mother and her six siblings to settle in Oceano, California  in the late 1960s. My mother grew up being one of a few Mexican families living in the area at the time and she recalls experiencing racial micro-aggressions in elementary and high school. Of all my aunts and uncles from my mother's side of the family only one uncle was allowed to finish high school and go on to college while the rest, including my mother were obligated to leave school in order to work to sustain the family (only after my grandfather was convinced by a high school counselor's visit stressing my uncle's potential). With that being said, I am the first in my immediate, nuclear family to go to college.

I was born in San Luis Obispo in 1991 and I just transferred to UCLA majoring in Sociology and double minoring in Chican@ Studies and Labor and Workplace studies. When it comes to art I really enjoy all forms but some of my favorite genres are music, poetry, film, murals, sculptures and installations. It wasn't until high school that I began to be exposed to the history of the Mexican American experience and Chican@ struggle in the U.S. After this exposure and some self-reflecting I began identifying myself as a Chicana. Once I entered community college I started feeling proud to be addressed by my first name-- Celsa, the C  is pronounced like an S--instead of my mainstream middle name, Monique.

"There's No Place like Aztlán: Embodied Aesthetics in Chicana Art"

In her essay, Alicia Gaspar de Alba includes a discussion about the mythological place of Aztlán and its symbolism as a destination of political empowerment and consciousness for Chicana/os. She makes a connection to the tale The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy's journey back to Kansas, although a physical trek, ultimately turned out to be a self-discovery of the power she had all along in realizing Kansas was in her heart the whole time and that Emerald City with all its grandour could not match up to her homeland. De Alba seeks to make the point that Aztlán is really a journey of consciousness that the Chicana/o must make. My question for De Alba is about this precise awareness that for me took being exposed to by my Spanish professor in high school. If it had not been for these experiences I wonder how I would identify myself. During her discussion about Aztlán aesthetics she uses the term historical amnesia. I don't know whether all Mexican American families experience this, but my family didn't really discuss with us much about our Mexican history growing up, much less the Chicana/o struggle since my siblings and I were the first generation born here, yet I know that the public education system has historically failed at such counter-storytelling that would foster the reversal of such amnesia. So for De Alba, what does she think are some ways that Aztlán aesthetics and awareness can continue to empower and actually reach more and more Chicana/os living in the US today?

"Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore's Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo"

In chapter three of her book titled Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master's House: Cultural Politics and The CARA Exhibit, Alicia Gaspar de Alba offers a complex, multi-angled analysis of the CARA: Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 Exhibit of the 1990s. She is concerned with the little emphasis and prouncement of Chicana art and artists whose work tells of Third World feminism and Chicana lesbian Malinchismo. The Selection Committee aimed to portray works that represented the era of El Movimiento and De Alba exposes the missing gaps that leave out the voices of Chicana feministas and lesbianas who are subject to hegemonic intersectionality. My question for De Alba with respect to this essay is if she believes the failure to represent these artists and their art was willful since El Movimiento was indeed a sexist, Chicano male-centered movement or if she feel as though they were overlooked due to patriarchal hegemony in the 1990s? At this point have there been improvements and increased legitimization of Chicana art and artists? Are there current issues today that are of her concern?