Brown is the New Green

I guess Latino Heritage Month is coming up; PBS World (one of FIVE PBS channels I watch compulsively) has been running bios of singer Celia Cruz and educator/activist Antonia Pantoja, and this afternoon I watched an amazing documentary: Brown Is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream.  Dr. Arlene Davila, author of Latinos, Inc., explained how the construction of a Hispanic identity was primarily being used to market products to a very diverse group of people.  The film also insists that Latinos don’t identify primarily as Latinos; they’re more likely to identify with their or their family’s country of origin: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Honduras, Colombia, etc.  So you have this incredibly diverse group of people, and advertisers are trying to “shape” them in the same way African Americans (who are also diverse) were once shaped—as CONSUMERS.  Lopez discussed his own struggle to succeed in Hollywood, to convince studio heads that Americans really would watch a show about a family that “happened to be” Latino (less than 2% of writers in Hollywood are Latino).  He also talked about having to work that much harder because of his dark skin; “Those blond-haired, blue-eyed Latinos got it made!”  Lopez admits he used to rub lemons on his skin in an effort to become lighter, an aesthetic more valued in his own family as well as the larger US society.  Lately I’ve been noticing how my favorite local news channel has been adding more Latino reporters—but every single one of them could “pass” for white.  I get misread as a Latina all the time, and that’s b/c I look like a mixed-race woman of African descent; I could be Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, etc.  But I don’t see any Latinos who look like people of African descent delivering the local or national news.

In the 1960s, Dr. Antonia Pantoja tried to mobilize Puerto Ricans in New York City and knew they had to start thinking of themselves as people of color because that’s how the dominant whites viewed them.  Blacks and Latinos have so many common interests, yet I see the divide and at times it seems to be growing.  The Latino teenagers in the Lopez film were much more optimistic; they see their peers of all races singing Spanish songs and eating Spanish food.  But that’s not the same thing as working together politically.  Lopez himself feels his daughters no longer need to see Latino models on TV; he sees promise in the wider inclusion of Latinos in shows that are “mainstream.”  It’s the story that counts, he insists, not the color or culture of the people in the cast.  Hm.  We’ve had this same discussion in the kidlit community, of course; Elizabeth Bluemle over at Shelftalker has put together her impressive list of books that feature children of color but don’t explicitly focus on race.  I notice several editors have commented about this list and my open letter and, of course, they insist they’re open to such stories—I’m thinking I’ll test this and start sending out stories once more.  Bluemle rightly acknowledges that agents need to get with the program as well; they can’t keep insisting that writers of color are too risky if editors now insist they’re willing to buy what we write.

Watching Coraline prompted me to write “Munecas;” today I saw 9 and wonder what might now be percolating in my brain…the writing wasn’t as substantive as I might’ve liked; you don’t really get a sense of each character’s personality, nor the basis for their attachment to one another.  But if you’re able to just take all that for granted, then it’s a fun ride–impressive animation, lots of action, and the one female character is anything BUT a damsel in distress—she saves their butts on more than one occasion.  I have to say, as an avid fan of Lord of the Rings and someone who’s seen the film too many times to count, there were some distinct similarities between that narrative and 9…and once you’ve heard Frodo—oops! I mean Elijah Wood—scream for help, you’ll always expect to see Sam running to his rescue.  But I love pulling for the underdog, it was a miserable, rainy day, and sometimes a morning matinee is just the jumpstart my imagination needs.  Of course, I had to move TWICE b/c despite the theater being nearly empty, TWO couples decided they needed to sit and chat and munch and slurp RIGHT behind me…should’ve stayed in Brooklyn…