Episode 5: Finding Her Voice

Blanca Elias Chavarria, a high school senior, shares her experiences as an English learner and her love for creative writing. The podcast also features the music of the Lua Project, representing the growing Latino community in the Appalachian Mountains. Blanca's mother escaped the violence and femicide in Mexico to provide a better life for her children in the United States. Blanca plans to study cybersecurity in college, inspired by her early interest in coding. She also shares the remarkable story of her parents' journey and how they met in the Roanoke Valley. We have no weapons, we only have pots and pans, no tenemos poder, we only have pots and pans, beat the pots, bang the pans, esta es nuestra revolución. Welcome to the Pots, Pans and Gritos podcast, a voice for the English learner. I'm your host, Nolan Shigley. In this week's episode, I speak with a shy, quiet young lady who takes an enormous step out of her comfort zone and situates herself behind a microphone. As Blanca Elias Chavarria enters her final month of high school, she looks back and shares memories of an English learning childhood. She also explains how a timid student who loves learning can find a voice in bilingualism and creative writing. Along the way, traditional sounds of Appalachia and Mexico diffuse as we explore the music of the Lua Project from Charlottesville, Virginia. Their unique blend is a symbolic representation of the growing Latino community here in our ancient mountains. I recently came across one of the most beautiful descriptions I've ever read of a musical artist. It simply stated, the Lua Project is a cultural pollinator. With members celebrating Appalachian, Scots-Irish, Mexican, and Jewish roots, one can certainly understand this metaphor. As always, our mission is to create an archive of meaningful accounts while sharing artists with similar experiences and cultural backgrounds. And now, here are their stories. In 2003, Amnesty International released an in-depth report describing the horrific femicide occurring in the northern Mexican cities of Juarez and Chihuahua. At the time of the report, nearly 400 women had been found dead in the past decade. Many were severely abused and sexually assaulted. At least 70 of the women were unidentified. Almost all of the identified were from poverty-stricken areas of these rapidly growing cities. Very little was being done by law enforcement. These abductions and murders continued after the report, but finally gained attention from efforts within Mexico and through international pressure. This was the environment that Blanca's mother escaped to safely raise her children in the United States. I'd like to start our conversation with another 80s reference. Last week, it was Nickelodeon. This week, I want to tell you a quick story about a young lady who had a TV show, and her name was Punky Brewster. And I remember, and everyone my age, which is old, remembers Punky Brewster for her clothing. When I first saw you, and when I see you every day in school, I think, Punky Brewster. Because from shoe to hair, you are like this conglomeration of crazy, mismatching, colorful clothing, and I love it. And I think, oh my gosh, this girl, she must have just this enormous personality. But as I've gotten to know you, Blanca, I realize you're actually a pretty shy person. And so why is a person as quiet as you, as shy as you at times, why the colorful clothing? Well, mostly since I don't talk very much, I express myself in different ways. One of them is my clothing. I have a lot of hoodies, as you can tell, with different colors. Today is a little bit of tie-dye, pink, blue, and some other colors that I don't really recognize. Yeah, so tie-dye is basically my favorite pattern, so I love anything tie-dye. How did you get into tie-dye? We did this project in school, and we got to tie-dye multiple t-shirts, and I chose purple and blue for my tie-dye. And it just turned out, and it was like an epiphanal moment where you're like, I need to wear this quite often in my life. I was like, this is a masterpiece. You are a humble young lady. And then the shoes. I don't know that I've ever seen you in a different pair of shoes, and so your shoes are as creative as your tie-dye shirts. Any comments about the shoes? My style of shoes comes from my brother. He's like, hey, I got these new shoes. And I was like, oh, those are so cool. And so since I interact with him a lot, he's my oldest brother out of the three. Nice. His likes, I also like. So his favorite color is dark colors, and so are mine. But I got more into light colors recently. And these shoes, he actually gave them to me. And so you share the same genetics, but then you also share the same clothing styles. So does this creativity come through in your writing? Because you recently told me that you also do creative writing. Yes, I do like to write. I like to make short stories. I've been planning to make bigger stories, but haven't gotten the time. You're a little busy, and we'll talk about that here in just a bit. Blanca, can you introduce yourself? Oh, yes. Hi, I'm Blanca. I'm a student from Salem High School. I'm also a senior, and this is my last year. This isn't just your last year. This is like your last month. Yes. That's crazy. Shocking. Crazy pants. Literally, you have 28 days of school left as a senior. It's gone by so fast. It has gone by really quickly. What are your plans? On May 31st, you graduate at, like, 2 p.m., and then you officially become an adult. And then what the heck do you do after that? I've been thinking. Well, I know I'm going to college, to Virginia Western specifically. Fantastic. For two years to get my associates and then probably transfer to another school. Outstanding. Do you know what you would like to study? Yes, cybersecurity. Cybersecurity. Are you a video game person? Yes, I am. Drop some names. What are names of favorite video games? I know some of these may be lame, but Minecraft is on the top tier list. I'm not judging you. Another game is Roblox because it has multiple games in one. So that's really nice. Back to cybersecurity. Oh, by the way, if you're asking, my favorite Tetris and Tecmo Bowl. I love those games. Do you really know what Tecmo Bowl is? I know what Tetris is. Okay. Tetris is great. I could see you because it's very analytical, and you're a very analytical person. So why cybersecurity? Well, in elementary school, they had this small club, which was robotics. And I found a very high interest in coding. We used block coding for elementary since it was easy. And I got into the liking of it until I got to middle school. And there was another club called Girls Who Code. And I dived into most of the coding, and I fell in love with coding. Can you explain to our listeners and explain to this old guy that's sitting across from you, what is coding? So coding is basically making segments for the computer so it can go through its system and find different programs from different places. Basically, like, writing or telling it how to do something, how to tell the computer to do something. You were already doing this, like, in elementary school? Yes. And I did it for a robot we made out of Legos. Your brain works so much different than mine. And that's a good thing. That's a very good thing. You told me the other day we could make, or Hollywood could make, a movie about the life of your parents. So describe the script of the film that would entail the lives of your parents. So my mom's story, it's very wild. Like, if you were to meet her right now, you would be like, no, this can't be her story. There's no way. She was born in this small town. In which country? In Chihuahua, Mexico. And it was a small town nearby. And it was her and my five other aunts. And my grandma and my grandpa. And they were poor. They didn't have anything to eat, barely any clothes. When she was around 12 or 13, she kicked my grandma out. She was like, we need food. We need, you know, we can't keep living like this. Everyone was under the same roof? Yes. Really? My grandpa, he was actually in America. And so he wouldn't send money to them. They don't know why. And he never told them why. So it was basically my grandma and her daughters. My grandma was looking around and decided to find a job. And that's what they sustained themselves for a while. And so my mom was able to move to another city near the border. And she found some jobs and brought my two other aunts. And she brought them over. And they started working. And that's when my grandma and my other aunts decided to join them as well. Long story short, they had a lot of, like, shocking events. My mom met my brother's dad. And she had three children, which are my three brothers. And he left her for another woman. And so she was a single mom with my three brothers. And she would work two shifts. And she would rarely have any time. But she was like, they are not going to suffer how I suffer. They're going to have food, clothes, everything they need. She decided to come here because one night she was stopping to get on the last train. It was, like, around 12 in the night. So she went to get the train to go to the factory she worked at. And she saw this, these lights, and she thought it was the bus. Until she started getting, like, this sense of fear. And that's when she decided to start running. And she ran back to the house where my grandma lived and my three brothers. And it turns out it was a van. And she's like, that van was probably going to kidnap me. And during that time period that happened, there was a lot of cases where women would go missing. And they would find them dead, like, after a week or so. And there was, like, a bunch of them, and, like, they would find 20 at once. God, that's horrible. Yeah, and she's like, imagine if I didn't run. They would have taken me away, and what would have happened to my sons? And that's when she decided to come to America and be able to bring my brothers. But she met my dad here. Here in the Roanoke Valley, right? Yes, in the Roanoke Valley. And it's shocking how they met because they did not know each other beforehand. They met in Roanoke at a party, actually. And my dad, he lived in Harrisonburg, and my mom lived in Roanoke. And they decided to go to this party, and that's when they met each other. And my dad fell in love with my mom immediately. At first, my mom was like, I'm not interested. Until she saw the dedication he had towards her, and that's when she fell in love. And they both worked together to bring my three brothers over to America. And that's when also my grandma and other three aunts decided to come here as well. Blanca, whenever I'm asked what my superpower would be, my answer always is, I would love to be able to speak every language in the world. What would be your superpower? Being able to have technokinesis. Oh, very cool, very cool. So, I say that because the other day you described being bilingual as your superpower, and you realized you had this superpower at a very young age. So let's talk about your early EL life, your first and second grade you were describing the other day. How did you know you were proficient? Well, I realized I was proficient after I got called down from my fourth grade class. It was a science class, and the teacher was like, you are needed in the office. I was like, oh no, what did I do? I could never imagine you misbehaving, by the way. I went to the office, and I saw our principal and this family that just moved to Virginia, and he asked me if I could translate for them. I was kind of shocked. It was like, me translate? I did manage to help the parents be able to know what they needed and how to enroll their child into the school. I'm sure it felt very empowering. Did it not? Yes. But did it feel a little awkward as you were helping a principal? Yes, it kind of did, because you see these higher people. The principal is of high ranking, and you have this fourth grader helping the principal translate for this family. For a fourth grader, you're like, how am I doing this? Then it didn't stop there. Of course, you do this for your parents as well at your young age, but then tell me what happened one day at a car sales place? It was car insurance. Oh, yeah. My mom came to fix some things. They put her name wrong on the insurance, and we went in, and it was this woman talking to one of ... What's the word? Like a client or a sales rep, maybe? Yes, a sales rep. The sales rep, he didn't know what she was asking, and so he asked me if I could help translate. I was like, yeah, I can. I helped translate for the lady and told the guy what she was trying to say. At the end, he's like, for helping me, here, have this as a reward. He gave me $20. How old were you? I was possibly in fifth or sixth grade. Here I was just learning how to ride a bike, thinking that was amazing. You've already got a superpower. I said first or second grade earlier because you told me your first language was Spanish, correct? Yes. Yeah, but you were born in the United States. Yes. Would you consider yourself Chicana then? Yeah. Mexican-American? Yeah, Mexican-American. As you went into high school, how did you continue celebrating your Mexican culture? We mostly get together as a family, mostly every year. We just have this time to know what's going on, getting to know each other again. If there's a hardship, we are always united. For example, one of my brothers, he got really sick, and my whole family, even with our differences, we all got together and supporting one another and also supporting my brother. So like with so many of my Latino students, you're saying family is maybe the most important part of your culture? Yes. Do you celebrate holidays? Obviously, you speak Spanish in the household. Yes. Are there any holidays, other cultural characteristics like food or clothing that you practice or celebrate in the household? We don't celebrate any holidays, but we do cook a lot. My dad, he was a cook for a restaurant, and he makes these amazing carnitas that I love so much, and also these salsas. He makes some mango salsa, pineapple salsa. Salsa is totally my jam. Yes, and he's really good at it. Dr. Banuelos and I last week, I had to stop him because he just kept talking about food, and I was like, oh my gosh. It's going to make me hungry. No, it definitely was. You revealed to me the other day that you are a writer. Yes, I am. What type of writing? Creative writing. I like writing fantasy stories or dystopian stories. Dystopian stories. Yes. You better expand on that one. I fell in love with dystopian-themed books. Like 1984, Animal Farm. My favorite one was actually Unwind. It's a 2007 dystopian book. I loved it so much, especially now since it's like, oh, some of these stuff are actually happening. It's shocking. My English teacher in 10th grade, he assigned us this book, and at first I was like, oh, I'm not going to like it. I don't like this type of book. Until I finished reading it, I was like, I want to read the whole series. What was the series called? It's called the Unwind series. The Unwind series. Do you have an author for us? The author is Neil Shesterman. Neil Shesterman. So we'll put a link to that under your bio on our website. So when did you realize that you also had a talent for writing and a passion for it? It was this one assignment my 6th grade teacher made me do. Look at how all your passions came about from assignments from your teachers. Just throwing that out there. Yeah, it's very shocking what assignments can do. It is. She told us to write this small story, and I did. She told me, she sent me a sign. She was like, this is the best story I've ever read from a 6th grader. I was like, really? I was super excited, and I just decided to start writing small stories. Until I finally went to the library, and I found this book series called Wings of Fire. That whole series made me want to write more fantasy, be more open to different ideas. At first I was writing small, short stories. One of them was about a cat and his adventures. It was just a page long. Does your home culture ever come out in your stories? Sometimes. I sometimes add a character that speaks Spanish or has that culture. Very cool. Being Mexican or some place from Latin America, I always include my culture in my writing sometimes. I love it. You use it as a way to connect to your culture. Yes. Do you ever have a setting that takes place in Mexico? Not now, but I've been planning on possibly writing a story in Mexico. What about bilingual writing? Is this in English? Do you write in Spanish? For my Latin characters, they usually speak sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in English. I relate to those characters because I speak Spanish and English. I usually make them the quiet type. I put my personality into that character. Blanca, based on the experiences of your mother and other women in Mexico at that time, and your experiences as a young Mexican American female, do you think your writing or do you hope that your writing will evolve into a voice for young Latinas? I do hope that my writing will evolve to that point to where people can read it and find some sort of shelter, some sort of voice, and be able to connect to my writing. I do hope that one day it will happen. Blanca, have you ever visited your parents' homeland? I have not, but I've been planning to. When would you like to do this? Probably after college and after I get a stable job, probably be able to go. Would you like to visit with your parents? I would love to, but for certain legal reasons I probably won't be able to. So I'd probably go with my grandma and my aunts. What would you like to see? What would you like to experience? Where would you like to go within Mexico? The first thing I would try or I would love to do is the food. I would love to try the food. My mom told me that the Mexican food here isn't the authentic Mexican food. I was like, I'm going to test that theory. Test the theory. How Americanized is our palate here in the United States, right? Yes. What would you like to experience other than the food? Possibly the music. Would you like to visit where your parents were from? Yes, I would like to visit just to like see, you know, what they went through or like their childhood. Follow their story? Yes. That was Blanca Elias Chavarria, future author of Latinx literature or maybe dystopian novels and series. We'll have to wait and read. Although I've never had the opportunity to work with her in the classroom, I've been fortunate enough to get to know Blanca through a higher learning after school program and our multicultural club here at Salem High. Thank you, Blanca, for sharing your voice on our program. Thank you, Lua Project, for allowing us to celebrate both our Appalachian and Hispanic cultures with your music. You can find their beautifully engaging website linked within this week's episode description. And thank you, listeners, for joining us again on Pots, Pans and Gritos. But most importantly, thank you for being an ally to English learners everywhere. POTS AND GRITOS