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can rather than a chicana because i believed that term was reserved for people in chicano organizations like mecha and i believed those organizations were biased against people who looked like weirdos punk empowered me in all kinds of ways it gave me the confidence to claim my chicana identity to define it in my own terms and to refuse anyone the power to exclude me i never took any chicano studies classes until i was in college my chicana identity was formed primarily from experiencing events where i felt that mexicans and or mexican americans were included and represented events like the chicano moratorium which i attended as a child the grape boycott and the walk outs at local schools in east l a these historic events all affected me and made an impression on me i was just a kid but i knew in a very simplistic way that it was people like me standing up for people like me i was attracted to the cause but i didn t feel welcome in the club so i have never been part of any chicano organization but that doesn t mean i m not a chicana i see my chicana identity as a celebration of both my mexican and american heritages as well as an honest appraisal of the sociopolitical practices of these two societies and their influence on chican society both sides of my heritage have values and traditions which are beautiful but sometimes flawed mexican and american societies are both guilty of sexism classism racism and homophobia and they both need fixing i refuse to romanticize them or choose one culture over another ethnicity is not all that forges identity my personal identity can stretch to be large and inclusive or shrink to be small focused and specific in my broader identity i am a component and an active member of the living organism that is the universe and in my smaller more refined identity i function as a chicana feminist bisexual punk rocker my personal identity is rich and multifaceted different aspects surface in different situations when i m discriminated against as a woman my feminist identity rushes to the forefront when people try to negate the place of mexicans while teaching or discussing american history the chicana side of me will raise an indignant voice and demand to be included and when anyone anywhere in the world is mistreated the punk side of me that feels empowered to shape my world is ready to stand as an ally most of the time i m just me an individual a human being only partially conscious of the ways in which people see me or the expectations they might place upon this particular configuration of atoms i see myself as limitless so the labels are strictly to facilitate specific functions for a limited amount of time when i first started performing i remember looking out into the audience usually there were lights near the front of the stage illuminating me and the other band members as my gaze moved further back into the audience the room darkened i could make out the people in the front rows clearly enough to read their faces and feel their energy but beyond that the room faded to infinite blackness and in my mind that blackness might as well have been a view of the vast reaches of the universe from my perch on the stage i felt incredibly powerful as my performance elicited dancing jumping and bursts of emotion from the concert goers we were exchanging energy refueling tapping into something much bigger than any one person i felt fully connected not just to the people in the room but to the entire universe punk rock as religious experience go ahead and laugh i know it sounds crazy connecting with others on that level made me understand my power not just as an individual but as part of a community so while it s important to know who we are it s also important to know that we are so much more than labels can convey we are conduits for ideas we are agents of change posted by alice bag at 3 04 2014 08 19 00 am 3 comments labels alice bag chicana chicanisma cultural identity identity punk saturday february 22 2014 little seeds of strength my sister in law mary passed away this week i hadn t seen her in some time since i moved out of state for several years still the news of her death made me sad and i started to reflect on my memories of her even though we didn t spend a lot of time together when i was growing up my sister in law was a positive influence on me at an early age she always spoke her mind and knew how to be assertive and self possessed on the few occasions when i was being bratty and insubordinate in her presence she would wink at me conspiratorially as if saying she understood how i felt other times she just laughed at me at herself at my father she was good at laughing at telling people what she thought and best of all she was good at standing tall and filling a room with her presence she was a strong woman who planted a little seed of strength in me at a time when i needed it most oftentimes we look to celebrities as role models but if we stop to look around we can find people who provide everyday examples of strength and integrity mary was that for me i will miss her below is a chapter from my book violence girl where i talk a little bit about her mary and her son charlie june 1967 friends and baptisms i wonder if i can find a way to blame my parents for my lack of friends after all my mom never had any friends she kept busy by meddling in her children s lives not that anyone ever complained my mom was a sweetheart who would give you the clothes off her back if she thought you needed them she liked nothing better than checking in on her kids to make sure we were doing well my father had business friends but he only saw them when he was at work and he certainly never brought anyone over to our house we were an isolated family unit my mother s meddling took a bold turn when my brother raymond married a protestant woman named mary when my mother found out that their child was not going to be baptized she conjured a successful plot to kidnap the baby and baptize him in secret of course the plot was later revealed and my brother and his wife were very upset that my mother hadn t respected their wishes my mother was unrepentant she insisted that she had to baptize the baby so that he wouldn t end up in limbo which is a place between heaven and hell where infants are trapped if they die in a state of original sin in my mother s catholic world we are all born in a state of original sin passed down to us from adam and eve s transgression in the garden of eden the catholic sacrament of baptism basically gives a clean slate to children who are too young to atone for their sins my mom s description of limbo made me imagine a place in the sky with millions of babies and toddlers crawling around on the tops of clouds never knowing true happiness i could see them standing on fat wobbly baby legs holding onto the locked pearly gates never able to enter the kingdom of heaven the thought made me sick i wasn t disgusted by the babies or the parents who didn t have them baptized i was disgusted that god wouldn t allow them into the kingdom of heaven my brother and sister in law eventually got over my mother s kidnapping and started coming around again i loved my sister in law mary because she would talk back to my dad and she could hold her own in an argument she never backed down their arguing made others uncomfortable but they seemed to enjoy their heated discussions i liked to listen to them even though neither ever changed their point of view it was fun witnessing their verbal sparring but i would later learn that engaging in passionate debates was not everyone s idea of fun my parents friends were all family my brothers and sisters were all grown up and while my mother filled her days with housework visits to the sobadora and finding ways to help her children my father read incessantly and kept to himself my mom didn t have much faith in american doctors whenever she or any of her children got sick she d subject us to the ancient cures passed down by healers and sobadores if i had a stomachache out came the yerba buena or lemon grass tea i didn t mind the minty taste of yerba buena or the subtle citrusy hint of flavor in lemon grass or the hot lemonade i had to drink if i was catching a cold but she had a large variety of other more bitter herbs to choose from sometimes she d come home with little brown bags of dried leaves that i was told would cure my ailment from them she would concoct vile tasting medicinal drinks whose chief benefit was that they would induce nausea and vomiting i used to make fun of my mother for favoring what i considered to be superstitious folk cures it didn t boost my confidence when she d pass an egg or a tomato over someone with a fever so that the foods would draw off some of the heat from the afflicted or that she d frequent a sobador a sort of massage therapist whose brusque jerking and tugging could untangle your intestines or align your body for maximum health often these cures were combined with prayer incense candles or oils i called her methods brujeria witchcraft which made her pretty angry but she suffered my ignorance i thought myself so much smarter than her it was only much later that i would come around to questioning the supremacy of western medicine and admit that maybe my mom s herbal cures and aromatherapy were helpful not all her beliefs grew on me though i had been raised as a catholic but as i said before my mother s brand of catholicism incorporated elements of mexican folk beliefs and superstition on previous trips to mexico i had seen people walking on bloody knees making their way up to the basilica de guadalupe to pay off a debt to la virgen my own aunt told me that she had promised god to make the journey from her house to the basilica on her knees when one of her kids was sick her faith impressed me but the logic of it all eluded me my mother told me stories of people she knew who had spent their childhood dressed in a saint s vestments as a sort of payment for the saint s intervention still others were known to place a statue of san martin de porres in a headstand position until the saint would find them a suitor the idea of bargaining with god or holding a saint hostage made no sense to me at all and doubt chipped away at my religious beliefs i identified more with my father than with my mom i too enjoyed reading incessantly and i was comfortable being alone most of the time at our bonnie beach house we had a proper dining table and although we rarely ate meals together when we did my dad and i just ignored each other and read our own books while eating my father read his life away he always had his paperback westerns with him in the car the bathroom at the dinner table even while watching tv he d shift back and forth between the screen and his book my mother never ate with us she was always busy warming up tortillas or doing something else in the kitchen i used to watch leave it to beaver and there was a part of me that longed to be like the cleaver family who sat around eating meals together discussing the day s events june cleaver would never kidnap a baby put a tomato on beaver s forehead if he had a fever or spend all her time in the kitchen warming tortillas i bet beaver would have turned out much differently if she had posted by alice bag at 2 22 2014 05 27 00 pm 2 comments labels alice bag catholicism family feminism role models strength violence girl tuesday december 03 2013 remembering clifton s cafeteria q you briefly mention clifton s cafeteria in your book violence girl i ve heard other interviews with you where you go into more detail about this unique place of la s restaurant history why didn t you write more about it in your memoir alice i actually thought i wrote much more about clifton s it s possible that i did in an early draft but i had to cut out some scenes that didn t advance the overall story it may have ended up as a deleted scene q why was clifton s so memorable for you as child alice it was a total sensory experience for me atmosphere is really important in a restaurant clifton s definitely had atmosphere you could tell you were getting close because you could hear the tambourines going and the preaching and singing the hallelujahs were out front preaching the word i was a little kid i thought they were there to entertain the customers going into clifton s my parents just wanted to get through them and not have to give them any money q describe the interior of clifton s for us alice it had a forest theme with lots of trees taxidermied woodland creatures bears giant boulders i think it was four floors you walked in on the ground level and there were curved staircases leading up on either side to different dining terraces each of the rooms was decorated differently my favorite room was at the very top i think it was called the red room because it had red painted walls flocked red wallpaper and red carpet i thought it was very elegant come to think of it i have used the same deep red color in my own house for years now my daughter calls it the welcome to hell look q so what did you like to eat at clifton s alice well it was kind of tricky because of the cafeteria style if you walked by and picked up the first tasty thing you saw the dishes would accumulate you wanted to take the tasty thing but if you took it too early you would load up before you got to the main courses i tried to get either mashed potatoes or the mac and cheese not both laughs although i wanted both i would usually get peas although i also liked the carrot raisin salad really good and then they had waldorf salad too that was really good and it sounded fancy cause it was from the waldorf my main course was always salisbury steak q salisbury steak isn t that just a hamburger patty with gravy alice no salisbury steak is made from wild organic salisbury free range salisbury steak it s really good you should try it sometime i think they carry it at whole foods posted by alice bag at 12 03 2013 07 05 00 pm 1 comment labels alice bag clifton s cafeteria dtla los angeles restaurants violence girl older posts home subscribe to posts atom subscribe to my diary xml r mail feed button help about me alice bag view my complete profile blog archive 2015 4 april 1 it just has to be good enough for you january 3 2014 5 december 1 july 1 may 1 march 1 february 1 2013 7 december 1 september 1 august 1 february 1 january 3 2012 16 december 1 october 2 august 3 july 2 june 2 may 2 january 4 2011 27 december 1 october 6 september 2 august 6 july 4 june 4 may 1 april 1 february 2 2010 10 november 1 august 3 may 3 february 1 january 2 2009 29 december 2 november 2 october 6 september 6 august 2 june 2 may 4 march 2 february 1 january 2 2008 36 december 2 november 3 october 2 september 4 august 7 july 1 june 6 may 5 march 1 february 4 january 1 2007 38 december 1 november 1 october 4 september 4 august 4 july 2 june 4 may 5 april 8 march 1 february 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