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Noted author kicks off Latino Heritage celebration
3:13 p.m., Sept. 19, 2006--“We are more than just tacos and salsa,” Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez told some 150 people in the Trabant University Center's Multipurpose Room, Thursday, Sept. 14. Valdes-Rodriguez, controversial author and journalist, was the keynote speaker at the opening event in UD's Latino Heritage celebration that continues through Nov. 3. Valdes-Rodriguez echoed the theme of UD's Latino Heritage celebration, “Crossing Boundaries.” She said, “There are identity boundaries that we all negotiate, transgress, crossover, everyone who shares Latinidad.” She said she began crossing boundaries at birth when she became the daughter of a Cuban father and Irish-American mother. More boundaries were traversed when she became a reporter for the Boston Globe, where she said she was very emphatic and outspoken at meetings and wore casual clothes to work. Because she refused to abandon characteristics that came from her roots, she said she was not taken seriously by some and made others “nervous.” Even though the newspaper was trying to diversify its staff, she said, they were put off by her Latina persona.
She left the Globe and went to work for the Los Angeles Times covering the pop music industry. Here again, she found the newspaper's reported on life in minority communities as if the communities' problems were culture-based rather than as a result of economic and class distinctions. “The real question was not being addressed--why are so many black people poor?” The newspaper was labeling things race when they were actually economic, she said.
When she resigned from the Times, Valdes-Rodriguez wrote a scathing letter that was later published. In it, she said, “I would rather wait on tables and write the way I see it, than stay here and write the way you see it.”
Valdes-Rodriguez said the publication of that letter caused her to be blacklisted, and she wasn't able to get work. She struggled while she wrote her first novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club, but when the book was done, she said she knew she had found her calling. Since then, she has written three more books, Playing with Boys, Make Him Look Good and her latest, for teens, Haters.
She is in the process of producing her first independent film based on The Dirty Girls Social Club.
Valdes-Rodriguez received her bachelor's degree in music from Berklee College of Music in Boston and a master's in journalism from Columbia University. She plays the saxophone professionally and, along with her books, has written numerous articles. Hispanic Business magazine twice named her among the 100 most influential Hispanics in the nation. And, Time magazine called her “the godmother of chica lit” and named her one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in America. Campus events celebrating Latino heritage are co-sponsored by the Center for Black Culture, Chi Upsilon Sigma, HOLA, La Raza, Lambda Pi Chi, Lambda Theta Phi, the Latin American Studies Program, Latino and Latin American Heritage Office, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Community, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and Women's Studies. For a list of events, visit [www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2007/sep/heritage091506.html]. Article by Barbara Garrison |
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