March 14th, 2025

It was my first large scale installation and it took place inside the very community space, Tia Chucha’s Bookstore, that was born from the same Brown brain matter that wrote the first book I ever read from front to cover while in foster care. Luis J. Rodriguez released Always Running in 1993 and used his success to create a community non-profit that brought resources back to the region that raised him. Always Running was the first book I read that used a spanglish language that felt familia-r to me——after years of feeling small in my English classes I finally felt reflected in a body of work. I did not live la vida loca (far from it), but I was growing up fast in the racially policed suburbs of Los Angeles County and I had no one telling me it was ok to be mad———this installation was a return to the same valley that took my parents and I came back with an appetite to undo all the mistakes that the generation before me had made.

Opening night for FAMILIA-R: The Vaquera/x/o Through A Mexican-American Lens focused on bringing Latina/x/o equestrian community leaders to share their knowledge of the Vaquera/x/o lifestyle with the larger community. I had the opportunity to guide a conversation with the equestrians on their daily practices, how their fight for the horse is tied to environmental justice issues, and how much they have personally learned from the horse.

The backdrop of this installation was the first time I have really built a public project around my Mexican-American identity——speaking to it directly has allowed me to speak to a much larger community. Helping me find the same excitement when I first opened up a book written by a Brown person——each conversation I had on opening night helped me feel less small.