Today is the anniversary of Claudette Colvin's arrest. On March 2, 1955, the 15-year old refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to accommodate a white woman passenger. In a blog I published two weeks ago, read it here, I noted that although Claudette had been arrested nine months before Rosa Parks, for various reasons, the leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, chose not to launch the boycott with her arrest. Instead, they waited until a person they deemed a

"Everyone please go see this show! You hear people say “Art is Resistance” . . . well this definitely fits that bill. You are taken on a journey with Irma from childhood, adolescence to adulthood. Her experiences navigating through sexism and racism pull you in because they are so relatable. Your memory is provoked regarding your own personal story about power dynamics and how they relate to your name, identity, culture, gender, ethnicity, immigration status and/or profession

In Alice Walker’s 1983 book, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, she coined the term “colorism” to define a form of discrimination: “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on the color of their skin.” Folks from African-American, Asian, Latinx communities are often reluctant to acknowledge this form of prejudice, knowing full well that it invites comments such as: why the big to-do about our discriminating against them, they disc

The poster caught my eye, so I crossed the street to take a closer look. An outsized young girl sits on top of a yellow bus that looked like a school bus, but the well-dressed grown-ups waiting to board the bus puzzled me. It was an advertising for an upcoming play called Noire. I made note of the theater and the dates. Later that day at the Alliance Française in Paris, a class exercise had each student taking turns describing persons in pictures projected on a screen, in Fre

I steeled myself before playing the audio of the distraught immigrant children separated from their parents and shipped off to detention centers. I avoid movies with cruelty and violence. It felt important to hear the children’s voices. A few seconds was all that I could bear. I pressed the space bar. It was too painful to listen. I was immediately transported to the first night our son spent with us. He was inconsolable when it was time to fall asleep. We are parents th

When we were young lawyers, a Chicana friend working as a public defender shared this story with me. She needed to interview a psychiatrist -- a potential expert witness on a case. His name was Dr. Fuchs. And unsure of the name’s pronunciation she asked around and was told it was “fee-youks (pronounced as ONE syllable).” Nervous about getting it right and wanting to make a good impression she practiced, but when she introduced herself she called him Dr. F-word. He took it in

My one-woman show, Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name? will have a 7-week run at The San Francisco Marsh Theatre, the Bay Area’s premier showcase for solo performances. Two shows per week: Thursday 8 pm and Saturday 5 pm from October 25 to December 8. I am so excited, and am already giving lots of thought to the guests I want to invite for post-show talkbacks on a variety of social justice issues, so topical in these challenging times. Many of you may have seen the obnoxiou

A newspaper headline catches my eye; allegations that the mayor of Driscoll, Texas, is under investigation for racial slurs and sexual harassment. Driscoll is a small town in the Corpus Christi, TX metropolitan area. I am spending this week in South Texas, doing interviews and research for some theater pieces. The mayor of Driscoll, Marcos Zavala, is charged with making sexually suggestive comments to female employees and openly commenting about his sexual encounters with va

Touched By Your Generous Reception A belated shout-out to The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and its staff, and the 200 folks who attended Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name? in San Antonio last month. I loved performing for a largely bilingual and bicultural audience, and this was the most enthusiastic audience I’ve ever had. And lucky me, I’ve only had wonderful audiences since I premiered my solo show 18-months ago. So touched that folks came from throughout South Texas,