Cherríe Moraga con Eloter@ Luis

On Oct 16, 2008 I met the renown Cherríe Moraga @ the University of Urbana-Champaign. It was an honor to be invited personally by the Latina/o Studies Dept. to attend a private writing workshop led by this legend and prophet. All I can say is that her presence and manner of being matches the impact of her words. She is what she writes. Her written works resonate through her voice and out here eyes. She is truly inspiring and motivating.

Lessons Learned from Cherríe Moraga
(a rough translation)

Luis: How do I write past all the introductions and beginnings to stories that seem to endlessly invade my writing. I have many story to tell. But, it seems like every time I start to write all the stories want to be told at the same time.

Cherríe: Don't be afraid to start new stories. Save the beginnings. Trust and know, you will finish them all. You have no other choice. Ask your self at the beginning of each re-write or attempt, "What I really meant to say was..." Nothing shifts in the world until the details are told. Take a risk. Tell the stories que valen la pena. If you're not uneasy or on the edge of something you're not writing well. Keep every story grounded in the body.






Gracias a Aide por los fotos, y a todos mis compañer@s en Champaign-Urbana: Miranda, Profe Rodriguez, Abel, Alicia, Judith, Johanna, todos. Gracias a Cherríe Moraga y a la facultad de Latin@ Estudies.

- Jose Luis Benavides

YCA Immigration Workshop Questions

What is Immigration?

Leaving one land, community, or neighborhood for another, whether it be forcefully or willingly.

Why do immigrants leave their home countries?

Political shit, persecution, job "opportunities".

What is your relationship to immigration?

My parents, grandparents, brother, uncles and aunts are immigrants and I am a product of them. And I've seen them grow with me. I have a simple connection, but a collected connection.

When have you ever had to hide who you are? Why did you hide?

I hid for a while in high school. Reading and caring about shit wasn't cool so I couldn't let people know about it. I felt like my first year or so at Columbia I was just lying to myself, in terms of writing about any place I knew was familiar to me. I was writing stories about Paul and John and Amy (not that there is anything wrong with writing stories about them) but what i hadn't done yet was write stories about Claribel, and Cheli, and Pepe. A lot of it was fear that people wouldn't understand or care for it, I'm glad I was wrong.

Have you ever ben forced to move? What did it feel like?

When i moved from the North side of Chicago to the South Side, it was terrible. All of my friends and the whole world that I knew and had lived around for all of my fifteen years of life was in danger, all of a sudden, of being wiped out by a nuclear blast of raised rent in our measely little one bedroom apartment.

Describe a place where an immigrant is welcome.

Sometimes its in obvious places, like certain neighborhoods, other times its worrisome places: places in which no other person would want the job that they will have for a long time.

What daily borders do you cross? What do these borders look, taste, smell, sound like?

My first year at Columbia was a huge border crossing. I'd never met a young white people. My age. Some places are cleaner than others, some quieter, some louder and warmer like the restaurant i work in. Some are in words and music and in the shape of people I never thought i would meet or become friends with.

Immigrant Storytelling Workshop

L@s Eloter@s led Immigrant Story telling workshop, OCT 12, 2008
Young Chicago Authors / 1180 N. Milwaukee Ave, 2nd FL / Chicago, IL

Critical Response Sheet
Q&A:

What is immigration?
A crossing. A freedom only birds seem to have.

Why do immigrants leave their countries?
Why does anyone move? Because they want something else, because they are being evicted, because they have to...

What is your relationship to immigration?
Immigration and I have a familial relationship. My father came here with his mothers and six brothers from Mexico, when he was three. But besides that, almost everyone in this country is an immigrant. Whether they were forced to come here (Atlantic Slave Trade) or they chose to come. We are all related.

When have you ever had to hide who you are? Why did you have to hide?
When I was working the back kitchen of an Italian restaurant, where only Latinos worked. The cooks would yell orders at me in Spanish. I would understand enough most of the time to get by but I was ashamed to acknowledge when I didn't understand. I wash ashamed at how American I had become.

Have you ever been forced to move? What did it feel like?
I used to live with my family in Wicker park when it was a completely Latino neighborhood. I remember when over a thousand gang member took over the streets of our neighborhood to show their strength. My father planted trees on the streets and had me go out everyday and clean off the sidewalks and throw out the syringes and other things that found their way into the dirt around the trees. he wanted to make the community better for everyone. but then people started seeing our neighborhood as another way to make money and we eventually had to move because the rent got too high. My father, inadvertently, was helping the gentrification process along.

Describe a place where an immigrant is welcome
In my neighborhood where fruit trucks line the parks. Where old men and children play soccer and suck on mangoes. Or in Che's ma's apartment, above the church, where Elvira stayed safe from the police for so long.

What daily borders do you cross? What do these borders look, taste, smell, and sound like?
I cross a border anytime I leave my house. Crossing is what I always want to do. From crossing the street to the imaginary borders that separate neighborhoods. I cross cultural boundaries by choosing to know and learn more, not only about my culture, but about other's. I wonder who makes these borders that we have to cross?


WRITING PRODUCED DURING WORKSHOP: First Drafts

The Crossing Part 1
He was old enough to walk but still want to be held, when they left. He doesn't remember much about the crossing, just the smell.

The Boy and The Chicken
He was born on a farm in a small town in Mexico. He remembers running after chickens, getting scratched and letting them go. His father showed him how to kill a chicken with his hands when he was three. He twisted the neck, just like his papa told him to, in between his soft, brown boy hands. But maybe he hesitated at the last minute, or he just didn't have the strength, or he caught the last look that chicken gave and fumbled. Whatever the reason it only half worked. The neck didn't snap off like it was supposed to. Instead, it just kinda fell over like a dead, wilted flower, still wet. He dropped the chicken and it ran like mad all over the coop. It's head flailing and smacking it's feet. His father grabbed the poor chicken, and snapped it's nerveless, drooping neck off in a quick flick of his wrist. he turned to his wide eyed boy, clinging to his mama's orange and pink flowered skirt, and said "Now, that's how you kill a chicken"

The First Spider
When I was a little girl, my father used to tell me stories. My favorites were the one's about the spider. He said when he first came with his mother and brothers to America, the land of the great, it didn't seem to much different from the farm. There was still that dust that got in your eyes, the cactus and the sun. Except this time they didn't have a house. he says they lived in a shack on the ground for weeks before mom found a way to contact their relatives in Chicago to send money. Dad always tried to teach me a lesson with his stories. I think this one was about mastering your fear. The story goes that him and his brothers were sleeping on the dirt in their sleeping bags when one night he woke up and saw a spider the size of his fist looking up at him from his chest. It was then he decided that it wasn't the way he was supposed to die. He told the spider that he could stay for as long as he like as long as he didn't hurt him and then closed his eyes and went back to sleep.