Abgin, Samina

            Hi class, my name is Samina Abgin and I am a senior this year at UCLA. I am a gender studies major looking forward to applying to speech therapy school once I graduate. This is the second Chicano course I am taking during my time at UCLA, and the first one I took was pretty interesting and I realized it was a subject I wanted to learn more about. The topics of these two Chicano classes are different: that one was about Dia De Los Muertos, and this one is about art and Chicana/Chicano artists.  I am looking forward to continuing my education in Chicano studies.

            I did not grow up with any knowledge about Virgin de Guadalupe, and actually the first day of class was the first time I had ever even heard about it. I had seen her picture before but never really knew much about it. In my religion and culture, I was raised believing that there is only one god, which we couldn’t see. It was whatever we wanted him to be but something we could never see. In our religious books, god for us was a ball of fire. We call our god Hashem and we were taught that he is in the sky. Since I am not educated enough yet in Virgin de Guadalupe and the full Chicano/Chicana culture, I am not able to be able to compare how we see our god, and how Chicanos view Virgin de Guadalupe, but very eager to learn more!