chicano

Searching for My Mom, and the History of La Puente’s ‘Little Watts’

Greenberry, Where She Taught for Decades, Helped Forge Today’s Multi-Racial San Gabriel Valley

I lost my mom to COVID in February 2021. She died alone, after spending 10 excruciating days in the hospital. A year after her death, a white envelope with no return address arrived in my Pomona College mailbox. Inside was a photo of my mom from the early 1970s.

In the photo, she is standing between two corridors of Sparks Middle School’s brick campus in La Puente, where she taught until she retired in 2008. She smiles gently, with her arms by her side. Her hair is long and straight, and …

by Gilda L. Ochoa |

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Who Is the Real Monster in Frankenstein?

Mary Shelley’s Novel and Its Many Adaptations Challenge Us to Explore Bias and Belonging

by Daniel A. Olivas |

In 2022, I found myself reaching back to my childhood’s favorite monster for literary inspiration.

That year’s midterm elections had brought with them another round of angry MAGA candidates promoting the …

How Two Chicana Nerds Wrote Their Way Back to Oxnard

Michele Serros and I Did Everything We Could to Escape Our SoCal Hometown—Only to Find It Lived Within Us

by Cristina Herrera |

Growing up as a Chicana nerd, I never thought I’d write a book about myself, much less about Oxnard, where I grew up. This humble city on the Southern California …

In San Antonio, Remembering More Than the Alamo

Innovators Are Using Digital Tools to Tell Stories of the City’s Black and Latinx History

by William Deverell, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi |

In San Antonio, Texas, one memorial—the church-turned-fort-turned-shrine of the Alamo—dominates the landscape. At the Alamo, the artifacts, images, and captions on display tell a unified story: That martyrs died there …

A High Flying Artist Never Forgot the People Working the Land

Among José Montoya’s Abundant Creative Output Are Thousands of Sketches Documenting Chicano Life

When Richard Montoya started organizing an exhibition of his father’s art, he was astonished at the sheer number of sketches he found. He and his co-curator, Selene Preciado, eventually chose …

A Piece of Home in a Lost Mural

by Daniel Hernandez |

Last summer I went on a bit of fact-finding mission to little National City, just across the municipal border from San Diego’s south side. Every summer and school break when …


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