WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.810 --> 00:00:01.470 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:01.470 --> 00:00:02.640 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:02.640 --> 00:00:05.700 align:middle line:84% I thought I'd start by reading a poem to my mother. 00:00:05.700 --> 00:00:09.300 align:middle line:84% And the story with my mother is that she was Tarahumara, 00:00:09.300 --> 00:00:13.050 align:middle line:84% a native from Chihuahua, Mexico, who actually called themselves 00:00:13.050 --> 00:00:14.640 align:middle line:90% the Rarámuri. 00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:19.470 align:middle line:84% But the thing is we were living in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 00:00:19.470 --> 00:00:22.110 align:middle line:84% and this is the basis for my new book of essays. 00:00:22.110 --> 00:00:24.510 align:middle line:84% And when she had me born, she went 00:00:24.510 --> 00:00:28.260 align:middle line:84% across the border, the international bridge to Paso. 00:00:28.260 --> 00:00:31.410 align:middle line:84% And the thing that people don't recognize 00:00:31.410 --> 00:00:33.630 align:middle line:84% is that the Tarahumara people have 00:00:33.630 --> 00:00:36.330 align:middle line:84% been in this area in that desert, Chihuahua Desert, 00:00:36.330 --> 00:00:40.620 align:middle line:84% for at least 10,000 years, but there's a border there now. 00:00:40.620 --> 00:00:41.777 align:middle line:90% There's fences. 00:00:41.777 --> 00:00:43.860 align:middle line:84% There's a whole mess of things you have to do just 00:00:43.860 --> 00:00:45.690 align:middle line:90% to get the other side. 00:00:45.690 --> 00:00:48.840 align:middle line:84% But we were going from our land to our land, 00:00:48.840 --> 00:00:51.840 align:middle line:84% and that's what people don't understand. 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:54.480 align:middle line:84% I feel very connected to my Indigenous roots 00:00:54.480 --> 00:00:56.340 align:middle line:90% and to my mother in that sense. 00:00:56.340 --> 00:00:59.100 align:middle line:84% One of the terrible things about the Tarahumara 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:00.810 align:middle line:84% is that they're very healthy when 00:01:00.810 --> 00:01:03.490 align:middle line:84% they live in the Sierra, Tarahumara where they're from. 00:01:03.490 --> 00:01:06.490 align:middle line:84% They walk for miles, they eat the three sisters, corn, 00:01:06.490 --> 00:01:08.640 align:middle line:84% squash, and beans, they don't beat their kids, 00:01:08.640 --> 00:01:10.110 align:middle line:84% they don't beat their wives, they 00:01:10.110 --> 00:01:13.170 align:middle line:84% have just beautiful culture, but as soon as they get civilized, 00:01:13.170 --> 00:01:15.490 align:middle line:90% they go into the cities. 00:01:15.490 --> 00:01:17.220 align:middle line:84% And there's a ghetto in Chihuahua city 00:01:17.220 --> 00:01:19.740 align:middle line:84% where my mom was born, called la Tarahumara. 00:01:19.740 --> 00:01:22.440 align:middle line:84% They're alcoholics, they beat their wives and kids, 00:01:22.440 --> 00:01:25.080 align:middle line:84% they've got diabetes, heart disease, 00:01:25.080 --> 00:01:26.940 align:middle line:84% they get everything-- they become civilized. 00:01:26.940 --> 00:01:29.610 align:middle line:84% So my mom, when we moved to Watts where-- first community 00:01:29.610 --> 00:01:31.440 align:middle line:90% we moved to in LA was Watts. 00:01:31.440 --> 00:01:34.380 align:middle line:84% My mom was in her 20s when she had me. 00:01:34.380 --> 00:01:37.180 align:middle line:84% She was very unhealthy, very obese. 00:01:37.180 --> 00:01:39.570 align:middle line:84% She had no teeth because they had all rotted away. 00:01:39.570 --> 00:01:42.360 align:middle line:84% She had diabetes and also thyroid problems. 00:01:42.360 --> 00:01:44.320 align:middle line:90% She was in bad shape. 00:01:44.320 --> 00:01:46.620 align:middle line:84% But one of the problems she had is in this poem, 00:01:46.620 --> 00:01:48.930 align:middle line:90% and I'll just share it with you. 00:01:48.930 --> 00:01:51.060 align:middle line:84% And Watts is important for me because even though I 00:01:51.060 --> 00:01:55.390 align:middle line:84% lived so many places in LA, it was the first community 00:01:55.390 --> 00:01:57.910 align:middle line:84% outside of Mexico that I began to understand. 00:01:57.910 --> 00:02:01.240 align:middle line:84% And I got a lot of the racial issues, 00:02:01.240 --> 00:02:05.080 align:middle line:84% the racial discriminatory issues there going to school where 00:02:05.080 --> 00:02:08.979 align:middle line:84% they were literally beat you up if you spoke Spanish, where 00:02:08.979 --> 00:02:12.880 align:middle line:84% a teacher slapped me across the face in front of a classroom, 00:02:12.880 --> 00:02:14.080 align:middle line:90% where-- 00:02:14.080 --> 00:02:17.320 align:middle line:84% you get the idea that this is not a good place to be, 00:02:17.320 --> 00:02:19.030 align:middle line:90% all Black and brown kids. 00:02:19.030 --> 00:02:26.850 align:middle line:84% Anyway, this poem is called "Heavy Blue Veins, Watts 1959." 00:02:26.850 --> 00:02:32.320 align:middle line:84% Heavy blue veins streak across my mother's legs. 00:02:32.320 --> 00:02:37.800 align:middle line:84% Some of them bunched up into dark lumps at her ankles. 00:02:37.800 --> 00:02:42.210 align:middle line:84% Mama periodically bleeds them to relieve the pain. 00:02:42.210 --> 00:02:46.350 align:middle line:84% She carefully cuts the engorged veins with a razor 00:02:46.350 --> 00:02:48.990 align:middle line:84% and drains them into a porcelain-like metal 00:02:48.990 --> 00:02:51.840 align:middle line:90% pillar called a tina. 00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:57.120 align:middle line:84% I'm small, and all I remember are dreams of blood, 00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:01.500 align:middle line:84% me drowning in a red sea, blood on sheets, on the walls, 00:03:01.500 --> 00:03:04.980 align:middle line:84% splashing against the white pail in streams out 00:03:04.980 --> 00:03:07.690 align:middle line:90% of my mother's ankle. 00:03:07.690 --> 00:03:09.840 align:middle line:90% But they aren't dreams. 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:12.480 align:middle line:90% Is mama bleeding into day? 00:03:12.480 --> 00:03:13.350 align:middle line:90% Into night? 00:03:13.350 --> 00:03:15.660 align:middle line:84% Bleeding a burst of memory, my mother, 00:03:15.660 --> 00:03:18.870 align:middle line:84% my blood by the side of the bed, me on the covers 00:03:18.870 --> 00:03:21.570 align:middle line:84% and her slicing into a black vein 00:03:21.570 --> 00:03:24.990 align:middle line:84% and filling the pale into some dark forbidding 00:03:24.990 --> 00:03:29.190 align:middle line:84% red nightmare which never stops coming, never 00:03:29.190 --> 00:03:35.500 align:middle line:84% stops pouring, this memory of mama and blood and Watts. 00:03:35.500 --> 00:03:36.000 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