In The Community
Rare cardiovascular subclavian artery aneurysm. That wasn’t on my bingo card for 2022. But then again, not much of these last few years was on either mine or anyone else’s bingo cards, and yet, here we all are, just trying to deal.
In many ways, my entire life has been a series of unexpected twists and turns, some planned, some not, but they all follow the same theme: how can I turn this experience into a net positive? But it wasn’t always this way. Let me take it all the way back for a moment.
When I was 9 years old, my mother decided mothering wasn’t for her, and she left.
Little 9-year-old Lucy didn’t take it well. She rebelled, she found solace in local gangs, she blamed her dad, she blamed just about anything and anyone she could find, and she happened to grow up in an environment where kids with needs aren’t treated like kids with needs; they are treated like everyday criminals, and it doesn’t matter if you’re just a child.
Being arrested, put in handcuffs, and in the back of a police car, then transported to the juvenile detention facility where I was mug-shotted, fingerprinted, strip-searched, put in an orange jumpsuit, and locked up in a cold cinder block jail cell was just another Tuesday in my neighborhood - and that was just for ditching school.
These early traumatic years have informed my life perspective and approach ever since.
Fast forward to the moment a few months ago when my phone rang after a CT scan of my neck was done because of a mysterious neck strain.
“Hi Lucy, it’s Megan (my doctor is a physician assistant, so she chooses to go by her first name).” My mind immediately started racing. “This isn’t good news,” I said to myself, “They never call when it’s good news.”
She begins to deliver the news as best as possible so as not to inspire immediate panic. “Well, it seems you might have an aneurysm in your subclavian artery. It was at the bottom of your scan, and we’re not entirely sure, but you need to get it checked out.” My mind processes the only thing I know about aneurysms - am I bleeding out internally right now? Isn’t that what an aneurysm is??? (turns out that’s not what an aneurysm is) Am I DYING???
Sensing my obvious confusion as to why I’m not already dead or if I might be dead at any moment, she begins to calmly explain that they don’t believe the possible aneurysm poses an immediate threat, and theoretically, we could wait and get scheduled with a vascular surgeon in a few days for follow up but aggressively “suggests” that going to an ER without delay is the better choice.
I understand immediately.
I finish up a work call, call my brother and give him my pin and passwords and instruct him to empty all my accounts should I die so as little as possible gets stuck in probate (like most Americans and especially people of color, I have no will or trusts set up - that’s obviously changing).
Facing possible death is a hell of a thing.
We all know we’re going to die eventually. We all understand that it can be at any moment. Many try to live with that in mind and embrace the carpe diem mentality. Or if you’re an elder millennial like me, YOLO, but with only the possibility in mind, it’s pretty easy to forget that we truly aren’t guaranteed another day and fall into our old ways of letting dumb shit steal far too much energy.
There are still too many details about my condition that are unknown to determine what the actual risk of sooner-than-expected death is, but rather than causing additional consternation; it instead added a certain amount of freedom from the shackles of everyday worry. While my vascular surgeons figure out the best solutions and paths forward (my condition is so rare that there are virtually no identical cases that inform an accepted and clear treatment path; leave it to me to continue to choose the path less traveled...), all we can do is cross the decision bridges when we get there.
In the meantime, rather than focusing on what could be a premature death or other less-than-desired outcomes like permanent disabilities, my focus has gone to the now. My life. My business. My loved ones.
My personality is a problem-solving one. With that same determination inspired by my experience growing up in (and still living in) a white supremacist, class-based oppressive system that almost claimed me as one of its millions of unlucky victims, I immediately turned to how I was going to keep both the media company I launched and me alive at the same time.
I’ve always been absolutely astonished at just how many Latinos live in the U.S. and how little power we wield.
There are 60 million+ Latinos in the U.S., the majority of whom are bilingual and are English-dominant, not the other way around as mainstream media would have everyone believe. And yet, name other media outlets besides the well-known Spanish-language brands we all know.
Movie studios continue to ignore us. History tellers continue to erase us. And brands everywhere continue putting “Hispanic” audiences in their minuscule multi-cultural budgets despite Latinos continuously leading consumer-spending numbers and trends.
But why would they care when no one makes them care? They still reap the rewards of Latino dollars without having to put in any additional effort at all. Why fix what’s not broken for them, right?
That’s where media brands like Luz Media, Remezcla, Hip LATINA, Futuro Media, Latina Media Co. and even white-owned mitú who just recently merged with John Leguizamo’s NGL Collective, come in. None of these brands, however, will amount to much of anything if they don’t thrive and grow into nationally recognized brands. Latinos can make that happen.
Ultimately, Luz Media decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign because 1) I just don’t have any quit in me even when I really want to, and 2) I can’t possibly imagine the pitiful state of affairs for Latine media with even less Latina-owned media, rather than more. At the end of the day, we’re really just hoping the Latino community will fight for us as hard as we fight for them.
I’m confident that years from now, when Luz Media and I are still here, we’ll look back on these tough days and be proud of all that our community was able to accomplish - together.
You can support Luz Media here and watch our story below:
The Luz Media Story Hits a Bump in the Roadyoutu.be
As a kid, one of my favorite films involved Mexicans who counted. That movie, Stand and Deliver, was inspired by the real-life story of Jaime Escalante, a Bolivian immigrant who became a celebrated calculus teacher in East Los Angeles. The film rightly brought out the fangirl in me.
Many of Escalante’s students were stubborn Chicanos and I related; I was a Chicana and I hated algebra; history was my jam. The movie also featured Latine nerds, an archetype that was familiar but that I hadn’t seen on the big screen. Lastly, Escalante reminded me of my mom, Beatriz, a Mexican immigrant who taught public school in California.
As an adult, I now recognize the movie’s pernicious flaws.
Stereotypes are central to the plot of Stand and Deliver and while its ethnic caricatures are hard to miss – the cholo who feels pressured to hide his book smarts versus the cholo who refuses to learn – I didn’t understand how one of the movie’s primary stereotypes distorted my understanding of the teaching profession until I set foot in a classroom to instruct. Films like Stand and Deliver hurt educators by representing us as engaged in a morbidly transactional profession. In exchange for sacrificing our mental and physical health, we achieve hero status.
Martyrdom underwrites our goodness.
As the coronavirus continues to take lives, the lives of teachers and school staff included, the good-educator-as-unflinching-martyr trope is being used to shame those of us who express concerns about IRL instruction. Last month, New York Times’ columnist David Brooks penned a screed that all but accused educators critical of their working conditions of laziness, stupidity, and cowardice.
Brooks seems to prefer stoic teachers ready to become ill and die and I imagine the columnist watching Stand and Deliver, nodding in approval at a scene set during a night school session. Escalante, who has taken on a second job as an English instructor, shuffles about a classroom, clutching at his chest while he leads adult students through a set of language drills. The students seem unaware of their teacher’s distress and Escalante excuses himself. Once he’s out of their sight, he loses his composure. He sweats and pants, wheezing as he struggles to make his way down a desolate flight of stairs. Crumpling to the floor, Escalante presses his face against the seemingly cold cement as he experiences a heart attack.
(I imagine Brooks leaping to his feet to give a standing ovation! “That’s the spirit!” he screams.)
Several scenes later, Escalante convalesce in a hospital bed. His teenage son tells him, “Dad, the doctor says no stress. No job-related activity for at least a month.”
Escalante quips, “I want another doctor.”
The teacher urges his family to go home, and after they leave, he produces a pamphlet and a pen. He scribbles calculus notes and gives them to a nurse who smuggles the mathematical contraband to his students.
This plot point begs a question: If a heart attack is an unacceptable reason for a teacher to rest, what constitutes a justifiable reason?
Decapitation?
Not if the instructor who’s lost her head teaches home economics: Let her thread a needle!
Too many Americans hold teachers to the grotesque standards set by films that portray us as modern saints. I once evaluated myself according to such moral benchmarks and the first week that I taught ninth grade, I held myself to them. I developed a sore throat that I hoped could be cured by ignoring it. The pain overwhelmed me and speaking became torture. A student stared at me as I struggled to remain upright.
“Ms. Gurba,” she said, “you don’t look…good.”
“I’m fine,” I coughed. I taught the rest of the day while seated.
After school, I went to a clinic where I discovered I had strep throat and while I understood that I was infectious, I also understood that if I used sick days to recuperate, it was likely that parents, fellow faculty, administrators and even students might think me selfish. It’s not only the perfect attendance of students that’s celebrated. Teachers who come to work in spite of illness are often celebrated as well. They’re lauded for their selflessness. That’s what people have been conditioned to expect of teachers. No selfhood. Just selfless vibes.
I permitted myself one day off and agonized about it the entire time that I watched Jerry Springer.
In November of last year, CNN reported on a teacher who conducted elementary school lessons from her hospital bed following surgery. I found CNN’s fetishization of her convalescence cringeworthy but the news outlet, desperate to canonize her, placed her story in a section of its website titled “the Good Stuff.” The Good Stuff offers “headlines that make you smile” and its report on Stephany Hume characterized her as “inspiring,” “the type of teacher we all wished we’d had in elementary school.” Apparently, an ideal teacher is one whose identity is defined by unrelenting sacrifice: “…when the English language arts teacher of 20 years went to the hospital for an unexpected hernia surgery, she still made sure to read to her students at Sewell Elementary from her hospital bed — gown and all.”
Teachers are never not supposed to be giving.
We are supposed to give ourselves away until nothing remains.
Celebrating cases like Hume’s sets an absurd standard for teacher behavior, one that requires saintliness. This standard exists because, like nursing, teaching is a feminized profession with moral expectations dictated by fucked up gender norms. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the education of children has been treated as an “inherently ‘feminine’ pursuit” and data shows that the profession has grown increasingly gender segregated. 77 percent of public school teachers in the United States are women, with the “the average teacher [being] a 43-year-old white woman.”
The logic of misogyny drives the urgency with which assholes like Brooks call for teachers to return to IRL instruction. Because teachers are feminized, we’re expected to be unconcerned with our own well-being and wholly consumed with the well-being of strangers’ kids. This conceptualization falls within a framework theorized by philosopher Kate Manne, one that she terms the “human being/giver distinction.” According to this distinction, women function as givers and must conform to a set of obligations that are fundamentally economic. We must offer love, attention, affection and admiration as well as caregiving labor without the expectation of any of these moral goods or services in return. Here I will stress that the allocation of these moral goods and services is synonymous with the teaching profession.
I enjoy teaching but it’s not a religious vocation.
It’s a job, one that has become increasingly difficult to perform during the pandemic, with 77 percent of teachers reporting an increased work load compared with last year. Thanking us for our labor isn’t just unnecessary: it’s condescending. We work because we must, because under racial capitalism, we have been disciplined to the wage and racial capitalism that will punish us if we dare to critique the prevailing set of economic relations. The highest expression of gratitude to educators isn’t a litany of platitudes. Most of us would prefer to work in safe environments where our health is prioritized. In order to give that to teachers, Americans will have to relinquish their fetishization of us as selfless givers.
TW// FEMICIDE/ SEXUAL ASSAULT
Have you been sleeping badly?
I have.
Some nights, it’s insomnia. I lie in bed, blinking at the darkness, trying to calm my imagination. Its current preoccupation is a terrifying place: the future. I struggle to conjure soothing images. Sheep. Lavender. Vaccines. Once I do fall asleep, my rest is fitful. I wake up during the spookiest of hours, around one or two in the morning. After shoving off my sweat-drenched sheets, I stagger to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water, and breathe. I return to bed. The challenge of falling back asleep intimidates me. My dreamscapes are no longer benign. The macabre saturates them.
My insomnia worsened during the weeks leading up to the discovery of Vanessa Guillén’s remains. On April 22, she went missing from Fort Hood. For two months, people searched central Texas for her. I wasn’t hopeful that she’d be found alive and on the evening of the day that I learned the details of her femicide, I dreamt a gothic nightmare.
A figure silhouetted against the night sky appeared before me. I knew the figure’s gender not because I could see who she was but because I could sense who she was. My imagination always feminizes Death.
A dark rebozo cloaked her. She hovered with her face turned away from mine and I longed to see this part of her. I felt that if I could see her face, and look into her eyes, I might understand what she wanted. I’d be able to read her desire. As I craned my neck to try to catch a glimpse, she turned her face further away.
I awoke from this visitation sitting upright, panting.
Why wouldn’t she let me see her face? I thought.
I left the lights off and sobbed.
I shared the content of my nightmare with family, friends, and acquaintances. One told me that my nocturnal visitor was la Santa Muerte announcing her protection. Another said that I’d been visited by la Siguanaba, a shapeshifter known to hide her face from admirers. Once la Siguanaba has inspired your curiosity, she reveals that she has no face. A fleshless skull rests on her shoulders. Privately, I wondered if the figure wasn’t Guillén herself. If my killer murdered me with a hammer, I’d want to hide my face, too. I wouldn’t want the violence to frighten people.
I wondered if my visitor was Sophia Castro Torres.
My connection to Sophia was wrought decades ago, in 1996. I’d finished my first year of university and returned home for the summer. I walked alone through a residential neighborhood on a warm afternoon when, from behind, somebody grabbed me. They held me captive on the sidewalk, lifted my skirt, and tore down my underwear. The attacker clutched me as his face invaded the territory between my legs. My public hair bristled. Once I screamed, he let go of me and ran. As he turned a corner, he looked over his shoulder and smiled. What horrified me most about him was how normal he looked. Wanting to take back what he’d stolen from me, I chased after him for half a block. He turned and entered an alley. I paused. He lingered by a dumpster, taunting me with a final smile. I understood that if I continued chasing him, only one of us would leave the alley alive. Chances were, it would be him.
I don’t remember much else about that day. My memory largely goes dark. I remember speaking to a detective. I remember a nurse telling me to “get over it.” I remember my father driving me home. Weeks later, I returned to my university campus. I was nineteen and a sophomore and I believed that the best way to deal with what had happened to me that summer was to forget about it.
Months later, in December, I learned the attacker’s name: Tommy Jesse Martinez. After sexually assaulting me, he attacked more women and girls. He remained silent when he attacked me but he spoke to other victims. One had demanded to know what Tommy wanted of her. He replied, “To destroy your pretty face.” Tommy was honest about his intentions and on the evening of November 15 he chased Sophia, a shy Mexican migrant, through a city park, terrorizing her with a pipe or bat. He raped her, bludgeoned her to death, and slashed her face. As a trophy, he stole her green card.
I haven’t seen Tommy since the day he forced his head between my legs. Police captured him but I refused to attend his trial. I didn’t want to sit in a room where I’d have to breathe the same foul air as Tommy. A jury found him guilty of capital murder and a judge sentenced Tommy to die by lethal injection. As a result of Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2019 moratorium on the death penalty, Tommy now awaits death by natural causes at San Quentin State Prison.
I never met Sophia. I’ve never seen a photograph of her. She does, however, live in my imagination. I think of her almost daily. I consider the life that she didn’t get to lead. I consider the beauty that Tommy robbed from her and us. Although I can’t describe Sophia’s face to you, I feel a peculiar intimacy with her. I don’t think I need to explain the intimacy to you. I think you understand.
Although they have more time than us, ghosts aren’t frivolous. They don’t haunt for haunting’s sake. Appetites animate them and the nocturnal visitor who appeared in my dream craves justice. She wants the scales to be properly balanced and her dignity to be restored.
She wants her face back.
Philosopher Franz Fanon wrote that violence restores self-respect. It provides a way for one to re-create herself. Feminist Mona Eltahawy echoes these sentiments when she asks, “How many men must we kill until men stop raping us?” I don’t know the answer to her question. I do, however, know this basic fact: dead men can’t rape. And that thought helps me sleep a little better at night.- Myriam Gurba On Pretendians, and Racial and Ethnic Fakes ›
- Myriam Gurba Has No Regrets When It Comes To Speaking Out ... ›
