MIC

Paramount, CA – La Familia

Grand Rapids, MI – Hispanic Festival Bajo El Sol: Las historias que nos conectan

JUAN PABLO ANGEL MARCOS MiC Columnist

In the final week of August, I once again was able to step under the historic street lights of Mexico City and wake up in my Abuela’s house. During that week, my skin generously soaked in the sun that spilled over the sky and onto the mountains and homes of Jiutepec and Mexico City. That final week, those seven days, those 168 hours, was the time that I was looking forward to the most from the moment I learned I was going to be able to visit family in Mexico again. I would say to myself,

“When will I come back?”

“There’s so much more to learn.”

I don’t think I’ll get tired of telling myself these things in between trips to and from Mexico.

I would be able to return after completing my summer internship, and this second trip to Mexico was full of family time and exploration — way more than the first time I visited. When my primo picked me up from the airport, he immediately took me through the slippery streets of Mexico City on a drizzling night to have some of his favorite street tacos. And let me tell you, those tacos did not disappoint.

Stretched out on the tight sidewalk with an awning and an umbrella, the taco vendors had their music bumping from the speaker, muffling the conversations taking place from behind the greased grill. On the tight sidewalk stood a group of friends talking while they ate their tacos al pastor, and a couple shared a hug while they paid for their meal.

Once I got my first plate of Suadero tacos and added cilantro, cebolla y limon, I eyed the two salsas sitting gently next to each other on the grill. Before reaching over and grabbing them, Pikin warned me that the salsa verde was very spicy, thinking that that would stop me from trying. It didn’t, and man do I tell you: these were the most delicious tacos I’ve ever had. The soft crispy handmade tortilla was the perfect home for the meat, cilantro and cebolla to rest. And the mix of the limon and salsa verde created a sour kick that left my tongue calling for a drink.

This memory of the tacos I ate with my primo on my first night in Mexico City is something that I have brought with me back to the states. Pikin was kind enough to drive at one in the morning to show us his favorite taco spot, and he even bought some cervezas to drink at his apartment. Now that I’m back in Ann Arbor, I think about this night a lot, and how there are still no restaurants here that bring me that immense amount of joy.

I found myself holding on tightly to memories like these once I returned to the states from Mexico and was thrown right back into the adult responsibilities of being a college senior. I wish that my trip could have lasted a little longer, but the pending semester ate away at this thing we call time. Despite being hungry for more Mexican adventures, I needed to return home. And once I got back to my hometown of Wyoming, Mich. on an early, early Saturday morning, I only had three hours to sleep and another three hours to pack my things before my inevitable move back to Ann Arbor. After a quick rest, my mom, sister and I packed the truck with suitcases and boxes and off we went.

During the two hour drive from Wyoming to Ann Arbor, I shared the stories of my time in Mexico with my Mom, and she also shared some of her own stories about what it was like growing up there.

Some stories I will keep for myself, and some stories will be told another day.

Not all stories need to be shared; they are personal pieces of ourselves and we have full autonomy to share as much as we like with the world. But listening to them does bring me joy and, in a sense, revives me.

Whenever I feel stuck in a rut, I think back to the wonderful memories that lurk in my brain and fill me with life. I’m reminded of Mexico and all the people that I know who are connected to it, like my friends and family.

As I have said before: Mexico is the reason that I am breathing. I truly believe that.

There’s so much history that I have yet to unearth from within myself; through writing, I’m weaving loosened threads together and tightening my soul. I am proud to call myself a Mexican artist and a Mexican writer.

Hispanic Heritage Month is soon coming to a close and I want to celebrate the beautiful voices of my friends who are Mexican. It’s a chance for them to be involved in the writing process because as a writer, I can offer a collaborative experience where I can give a voice to someone who wants it. I’m not the only Mexican voice on campus; while there are a few of us on this campus, there are millions of us worldwide outside this predominantly white institution bubble we call Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan.

Thank you Aliyah, Angel and Lesley for your time and energy.

This is what they had to say…

I met with Angel late in the morning on the Diag. I had sent him a Google Calendar invite for our meeting at 11:30 a.m. and as I was finishing up some homework in the Fishbowl, Angel texted me at 11:14 a.m. telling me that he was already at our meeting place. I shut off my computer and ran out of Haven Hall to meet Angel, but I would soon retreat back to Haven Hall to avoid the incoming drizzle — I didn’t want Angel to get wet! I turned on my voice memo app as students began to fill the hallways and had my full attention to Angel.

To people who don’t know him well, Angel is a senior at Michigan and is in the Ross School of Business and hails from a very special place in Southwest Detroit, also known as Mexicantown. Some of the earliest Mexican families settled down in downtown Detroit in the 1920s. When I asked Angel what it was like growing up in Southwest Detroit, he quickly broke into a smile.

“It was a lot of fun growing up in Southwest Detroit! It’s a very immigrant-based community in which chances are your nextdoor neighbor is first-gen or also Latino. … There’s so much color on the walls, on the street and there’s such a vibrant history. It has an energy to it. It was a lot of fun strolling up and down the streets with your friends, maybe with five bucks in your pocket trying to see how it’ll work. And being a Latino there, it’s kind of home, I don’t know if I can say this but – we’re like the white people there! It’s nice being around fellow Latinos and to know that your neighbors would offer to feed you, everything … and I haven’t had coffee yet so excuse me if my words are slurring!”

Even if Angel was slurring his words due to the lack of coffee, I didn’t notice because I understood him. Growing up, he was always comfortable growing up in Southwest Detroit due to the strong ties with the Latino community. This was something I noticed when I lived in Detroit two summers ago. When I explored Southwest Detroit, the sugary panaderías filled the streets along with murals, Latin imagery and colors. I also asked Angel if he could share one of his favorite memories growing up in Southwest Detroit. “Bro, Quinceañeras! When we were all at that age of 13 to whatever, man it was so much fun. Me and my friends would sneak into random Quinceañeras in the neighborhood. There are these two venues in Detroit that everyone went to. Every week there would be a Quinceañera there and my friends and I would always sneak in. We would go to just dance and have fun and just to be surrounded by friends. There’s great music, great food and there was always amazing company overall and maybe this is irresponsible for me to say but I would always tell my mom that I would have a ride back but I never did! Always knowing that the fun is going to end and [that] you got to turn on that responsibility switch was a rush.” As Angel told me this memory, I was laughing and smiling the whole time. I could just picture the venue and imagine the kids running around while family members drank and danced through the night.

I spoke with Aliyah in the basement of East Quad after I attended my second ever ACLU meeting on a chilly Monday evening. I tried to find the quietest spot in the freshmen-infested building and as soon as I did, I opened up my laptop and began recording our Zoom meeting. Aliyah is from Grand Rapids, Mich., and she’s studying graphic design at Grand Valley State University. Aliyah has been a friend of mine since high school and I wanted to talk to her for this piece because she is so far away, and I find myself thinking about my friends back home constantly throughout the school year.

Aliyah calls Grand Rapids her home because it’s where she grew up, but she made sure to say that home is wherever she feels most comfortable, and that’s usually with her family.

“I guess home could be anywhere. Because the way I look at it, you wanna feel safe. You wanna feel secure. And you wanna feel loved, so if I feel all those things around people who aren’t my family, then that’s like a second home. I feel those things around my immediate family, and that’s like that’s my main home.”

Newaygo, MI – Tubing on the Muskegon River

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Coloring outside the lines

HUDA SHULAIBA MiC Columnist

In 1983, poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde wrote, “Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian … There is no hierarchy of oppression. I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group.”

Lorde’s commentary reveals an oft-ignored truth in the LGBTQ+ community: being a Queer person of Color comes with the inability to be just Queer or just a person of Color and with the responsibility to always be a person of Color within Queer spaces and vice versa. Neither aspect of personhood is allowed the ample space to develop on its own, within its own terms. Queer people of Color, particularly those who have additional marginalized identities (whether that be socioeconomic status, ability, etc.), experience inferior treatment from multiple angles as well as face unique forms of marginalization at the intersection of their identities. These overlapping societal pressures and expectations undermine autonomy and the path to selfdiscovery. Though nothing is in a vacuum and everything is subjected to outside influences, it seems as though the selfdevelopment of Queer people of Color is particularly impacted by the intersecting aspects of their identity leading to a stunted or — at the very least — inorganic path to personhood.

Queerness comes with a set of extremely established traditions, at least in the eyes of western society. Arguably the most universally well-known tradition is the practice of “coming out.” Put plainly, coming out is when someone makes the decision to explicitly share their Queer identity. Framed as an inevitable rite of passage, coming out is depicted as the pinnacle of Queer self-acceptance. To “stay in the closet” signals some kind of oppression, due to a lack of safety, community or just general discomfort. Coming out is not framed as something you can do, but something you will do the second you feel safe and comfortable enough. There are two states of Queer being: “out” and “in the closet.” This dichotomy is flawed in its own right. There are many degrees of being “out,” whether that’s being ‘out’ to certain people in specific environments or simply living a discreet life, particularly for those who naturally prefer privacy over vocality. There are nuances when it comes to living “outside the closet,” but for the sake of this piece the focus will be on this oversimplified (and sensationalized) blackand-white dichotomy.

The public importance placed upon coming out is rooted in the fact that, historically, visibility was crucial in the struggle for equal rights and recognition. Refinery29’s Sadhbh O’Sullivan writes, “In order to fight for liberation, gay people would own their identity with pride by publicly owning their gay identity. The more gay people came out, so the thinking went, the more normalized gayness would become.” As societal attitudes towards non-heteronormativity have progressed, the concept of coming out has unfortunately not kept pace. Within current sociocultural contexts, the perceived necessity of coming out remains rooted in western heteronormativity. For one, it rests on the assumption that everyone is cisgender and heterosexual unless they say otherwise. No one is ever expected to come out as straight. As a practice, the pressured anticipation of an inevitable “coming out” announcement removes agency from the actual person committing the act of coming out and places all the power in the expectant hands of society. It isn’t a question of if someone will decide to come out but when they will, even in cases in which coming out holds no benefits for them. Additionally, coming out creates a set of implications that further limit a formerly “closeted” person’s ability to influence how they’re perceived by others: 1. That the person coming out was previously lying about their identity. 2. That outside approval and/ or acknowledgment is needed to validate their identity. 3. That, before choosing to disclose their identity to others, they were deliberately hiding their “true selves.”

Musa Shadeedi sums up how the phenomenon of the presumed “coming out” is rooted in western society succinctly when he wonders “if the LGBTQI community in Iraq knows the meaning of the term ‘closet’ in the first place.” In societies with different values, perhaps where privacy is held over visibility or other deviations from the West, the “closet” does not exist because coming out is not an inevitable event. This isn’t to say that the general idea behind “coming out,” i.e., divulging information regarding one’s sexuality and/or gender, is a western concept, but rather the culture and context surrounding it is. “Coming out” versus being “in the closet” is a false dichotomy pushed as reality for everyone, especially those who participate in cultures that don’t align with the thought behind the action.

When speaking to a Queer immigrant, I found that they regarded the entire idea of “coming out” and being in “the closet” as ridiculous. For one, they thought coming out was pointless because it isn’t a one-anddone thing. “You don’t just make one big announcement and suddenly have the whole world be aware you’re a homosexual,” they said. The pressure surrounding something that is, in reality, a constant process is almost counterproductive when considering the fact that there will always be new friends, coworkers and acquaintances to come out to. In the words of Asiel Adan Sanchez, “Mainstream narratives of coming out imply a white subjectivity, one that forgets the influence of culture, family and heritage. For many Queer people of colour, coming out is a much more nuanced process than a single moment of verbal disclosure.” The current notion of coming out is simply too flat, lacking the nuance required to encompass the wide array of people it applies to. An extremely black-and-white attitude is attached to it, one that doesn’t allow for the grays (or beiges, browns, tans) in between. To put it plainly, coming-out culture is a very white American thing.

A letter to my future self

ELIYA IMTIAZ MiC Managing Editor

Sitting in a Detroit cafe, I’m currently typing away as I listen to a trio of middle-aged men jokingly bicker about their orders getting switched. “I ordered the cheese!” “No, I swear it was me!” A pause as they continue chewing.

The silence breaks: “We’re good though.” And laughter commences.

I may be wrong, but something tells me that they’ve been friends for a while, a thought that puts a smile on my face as I sip my coffee, continue to type away and wait for my dad to pick me up from the A2D2 bus.

This year is the final one of my undergraduate career, and it seems like every passing day brings me closer and closer to a reality that simultaneously excites me but also frightens me: change. As a senior still recruiting for a full-time career (pity me!!!!), there’s a lot of ambiguity about what next year will look like. I have my goals: purposeful work, the Big Apple and frequent trips back home. Translating those goals into specificity is what’s proven to be difficult, and there’s an undeniable sense of anxiety in thinking about what will last after this hurricane of change takes place — what will remain in the eye of the storm? This train of thought isn’t necessarily comforting, which brings me to you. Or me, I should say. How are we? Let’s say it’s us 10 years from now. We’re at 31, letting everyone who’ll listen know that “actually, your thirties are the new twenties!”

Did we get that J.D.? Have we started the family? Do we see Sara, Rubab, Mama and Papa almost every other day? I wonder if we’ve grown tired of New York at some point, the city that we swore up and down since age 11 was made for us; the city that we knowingly nod about when someone says, “You just give New York vibes.”

InshAllah, there are some things that I know are true, simply because we’ll work to make them so. I’ll have my space and still see the Imtiaz clan frequently. I’ll get my J.D., because we told ourselves we would. Potlucks with Inaya and Mits may look different, but I know we’ll somehow find a way to bring an item from the classic menu every time. My friend Kat wrote about perceiving time in a non-linear sense, and, as always, her words have left an impact on me long after I initially read them. Apprehension of being on the precipice of capital A adulthood is understandable, but I’m trying to think that, barring unforeseen circumstances, we can always find a sense of stasis in any future universe. In a weird way, because I can see the future in this way, I’m determined to make it happen. So in writing to us, I know that maybe things aren’t picture perfect, rose-colored glasses, but I do know that things are. I think therefore I am, a really novel thought, right? Regardless, given that reality, we can keep on keeping on.

Suddenly, the record scratches.

I know we’ll have these cycles though. I wonder if we’ll still use every word beyond the it-word. Sad, melancholic, dejected (a personal fav), despondent, going on and on until the thesaurus.com suggestions expire. The reality remains that life will probably still be difficult as it will still be beautiful. We’ll call Marie in the wee hours of the night, and trade theories as to why it is that we think so much. Hopefully by then we won’t be so embarrassed of that fact.

Still, you and I will probably scoff at “Everything happens for the best,” and immediately correct it with “Everything happens.” The only control is yourself and your faith. Currently, I’ve come to learn that life hits us with various circumstances, good and bad. We aren’t guaranteed the Good Life, but we’re guaranteed life, the basis of which we can forge our reality from. Does that mentality change throughout the years for us? I’m sure the pendulum still swings back and forth, teetering between chasing what we want and accepting our reality. Shit, you’re just 31 — we’re still figuring it out.