Magana, Ariana

Hello, 

My name is Ariana Magana, which is also my preferred name, or you can call me by my nickname Ary and my pronoun is she/her. 

Both my parents are from Mexico and although I was born here in the US, I grew up in the Mexican Culture. This just makes the course that much more exciting to take and learn about as I am unfamiliar with this perspective. 

To understand a little bit more about me, I am a first-year transfer and my major is Ecology, Evolution, and Behavioral biology. I hope to travel the world to research and understand the unknown about animal interactions amongst their environments. Although this past quarter, I learn a lot from the marine life perspective, I hope to study these interactions from a terrestrial perspective. This field requires a lot of group work, which I enjoy doing as I can be a social person after I surpass my shyness. This career choice also can involve a lot of traveling, which is one of the many things I want to achieve as I age. I especially want to travel to tropical places as there are more diverse ecosystems and where the scenery is unforgettable. 

UCLA, Royce Hall 

  As for the reading, I thought it was a great eye-opener to fully understand how Chicana artists involved themselves after formally been known as a derogatory term, to become this new concept of change, expression, and movement. Especially how Chicano artists were immersed in civil rights activism and created work to define themselves as racialized groups. This not only gave light to themselves but impacted people's lives, communities, and those who had/have no voice. 

Something else I noticed was the number of visual graphics in the article where the artwork is explained, why they were created, and what message they were trying to convey. There were some familiar artworks but some were new to me that I had no idea gave such impact. For example, Yolanda Lopez's "Free Los Siete" where it was advocating for some Latino individuals who were accused of killing a police officer in San Francisco. 

On a final note, the Chicano movement was a time where the artist used their skill, voice, and ambitious characteristics to create influential images to advocate for change and assemble people. These showed dynamic, emotional, and encouraging lettering or images to capture one's eye and attention. This attention-grabbing mechanism, got the views of many which would go viral and public. This then allowed voices to magnify and change what is needed or simply educate those around.