Carrera, Savannah

  Hi! My name is Savannah Carrera and I prefer to be addressed with the pronouns she/her. I transferred to UCLA as a junior from Los Angeles Pierce Community College and I am nearing the completion of a degree in English and Spanish. After completing my bachelor’s degree at UCLA, I want to attend law school in northern California and eventually work towards immigration policy reform. My parents immigrated to the United States from Puebla, Mexico about thirty years ago therefore I identify as Chicanx and am always interested in learning about how this ethnic identity grew stronger during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s

and through the artistic expression of Chicanx artists and writers.     After reading the beginning of Carmen Ramos’s ¡Printing the Revolution! it’s interesting to see how graphics can penetrate society, spark change, and vigorously impact the lives of people. The graphic art referenced in the book created by Chicanx artists from the 1960s to the present demonstrate the power art has to strengthen the ties within an ethnic community and inspire pride within a historically marginalized identity. One print, ¡Cesen Deportación!, made by Rupert Garcia, caught my attention because it was created in 1973, then reworked in 2011 to address Barack Obama’a high number of deportations, and is especially relevant today within the current political climate constructed by the Trump administration. The piece transcends its time and perhaps is even more relevant today to remind American individuals of a broken immigration system that persists. My favorite piece from this portion of the reading is Ester Hernandez’s Libertad because I believe that Chicanx culture and family life is very male-oriented therefore this print is experimental and refreshing because the sculptor is female and she is transforming the the Statue of Liberty from a conventional American symbol into a symbol of resistance.