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Aurora Guerrero

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Roy Rogers Oldenkamp

Monica Palacios

Antonio Rael

Miguel Angel Reyes

Julio Salgado

Terisa Siagatonu

Joey Terrill

Ryan Trecartin

Monica Palacios

  • Monica Palacios
  • Monica's Art
  • Contributor Rosie

Monica Palacios is a visiting lecturer at several universities, including Loyola Marymount and University of California Santa Barbara and University of California Los Angeles where she taught a class on comedy. What is really interesting about her is that she is not only a Latina performer but she is a queer Latina and she incorporates her multiple identities in her performances.
she is also proudly out as queer in her performances at those universities. Palacios has written over 14 plays, and has appeared in television shows, aside from her performance talent, she is a founding writer of comedic group Culture Clash.
In an interview by Orange County Weekly Palacios states that she was glad she was pushed by one of her art teachers at Chico State who pulled her aside and told her “if I were you, I’d find another major”. This pushed her to enroll at San Francisco state to major in Film. According to a recent interview, this is why she reasons that her work now is very “filmic.” Her audience will find that most of her work comes from her experience; she is a storyteller that talks about important topics such as culture, food and women. For the audiences who are not queer and perhaps ally’s, this gives an insight at the struggles and adventures a queer Latina experiences in a Latino family. In a Highways Performance interview, she states ”My specific focus as a writer and performer has always been to give visibility to complex LGBT Chicana/o, Latina/o characters that are absent from mainstream theater, television, and film.” Palacios has been performing and writting her own plays for over thirty years, incorporating her culture, identity and sexuality along with women's issues.

 

1st piece of Art

Palacios has many hilarious performances, this first piece is a clip titled Living in the Borderlands. In this skit she talks about what it is like to be from an immigrant Mexican family living in the United States. In my opinion I thought that the point of this skit was to show that Mexican and Mexican Americans are always living in between cultures, in between borderlands. Her performance has exaggerated stereotypes about Mexicans to show how silly they are. At the same she incorporates other real and hilarious facts of living in the borderlands such as eating a hotdog in a tortilla called a Mexican hotdog. Palacios has a magnificent way of using both Spanish and English to make her performance funnier. This piece makes fun of Lati@ families for having a “cuartito” that is a “tool shed and guest house for relatives who are on a budget or simply hiding from the law”. Many Mexican families such as my own do in fact have a “Cuartito” used to help other relatives save money in order for them to send it back to their families back in Mexico or save money to be able to move out on their own. Monica Palacios skit shows the type of cultural wealth we have as Latinos.

2nd piece of Art

Palacios next piece of art is titled Double Dyke Familia,written and performed by her on Septermber 28th, 2002 at Highways Performance. In this skit, Palacios shares what it is like to be in a family where she and one of her older sisters are lesbians. She lets the audience know that even though it seems like it is easier to have a queer sister, the reality is a lot more complicated than in seems. I think that through her comedy, we are able to congregate and laugh off the silly things and even mean things our family say and think of queer Latinas.
In making fun of how extreme the homophobia in Latino families she makes fun of the awkward first stages of a family accepting a queer child, wishing every holiday, that “they bring home men to dinner”. She also talks about the homophobia experienced within the extended Latino family, like when relatives do not encourage their daughters to say hello to her “because they think she will hypnotize them, in other words, her queerness will rub off by speaking to her as if it were an ill born disease. God forbid they would want to become a typical lesbian by becoming vegetarian. I appreciate this type of humor, it not only reminds us of our struggle, it also helps to laugh some of it off.

3rd Piece of Art

 

 

Rosie Huante is a Chicana/o Studies and Gender Studies double major. She grew up in the South Bay and her family is from Zacapu Michoacan. She is the youngest or the "baby" of nine children. She is the first woman from her family to attend a University, and is looking forward to graduating in June 2013. Her journey getting to UCLA has not been easy, she was out of school for a couple of years but since she returned she has continued non stop. Her current research interest is looking at the way the race, class, gender and sexuality influence Latina students as they navigate California community college. She is currently looking at graduate programs in the field of education, particularly programs that focus on access to higher education.