HTLA: Being American Enough in LA

Episode 37

Leslie Berestein Rojas  00:00

[park ambi] Who does Americanness belong to? Because people are denied their Americanness. So I want for this to be an opportunity for people to claim it, [music in] share it, explore the concept of Americanness in their own way through their own lived experiences.

Brian De Los Santos  00:15

From LAist Studios, this is How to LA, the podcast that helps you better connect with this city. I'm Brian De Los Santos. It's Thanksgiving. It's a time American history, which is pretty ugly by the way, gets thrown into the spotlight. And in that, there's this question of what or who is American. Our colleagues at LAist have started a new essay series all about that. It's called Being American. And the essays are written by you, our listeners, and our readers. We started something similar during the pandemic, after the unrest following the murder of George Floyd, and after mass shootings, where racism was clearly a motive. That series was simply called Race in LA. People wrote in about how their race and often the color of their skin [music out] define their experiences living in the city. One consistent theme was that many people who weren't white or Anglo, felt like they weren't "American enough" regardless of how long they or their family lived in the US. And so the new series was born. To talk about Being American is our incredible reporter Leslie Berestein Rojas. She's the Immigrant Communities Correspondent at LAist, and she's leading this project. To kick us off, she shared her story with us. She took us where she grew up and started thinking about what being American meant to her.

Brian De Los Santos  01:36

[park ambi] So we are at Salt Lake Park here in Huntington Park. I've been here only handful times. My parents used to bring me and my family in from Mexico, like every once in a while, to just show the Latino community, right? But I'm not super familiar. Can you tell me why it's so impor- Why this park is important to you?

Leslie Berestein Rojas  01:56

[park ambi] This park is really important to me. I think when we were walking over here, I was mentioning the Rec Center. [laughs] You know, um. This was kind of a big center of my life. So I grew up in HP. Uh, my family's from Cuba. I came here when I was a kid. So this was kind of like even in context of the series, right? This was kind of like my first like, American experience, sort of, you know, was was Huntington Park. Huntington Park has been a port of entry for generations, especially for families from Latin America. So people settle here from Mexico, from Central America, from the Caribbean, like my family. People put down roots here. They send their kids to school here; I went to school here. People learn English here. I did. So for me at least, this place is American in the best possible way. And the other reason why I thought of meeting here at this park is as you see, we're by the baseball diamond here. I played softball here myself as a kid. I thought about this place because the first story in the Being American series deals with baseball. And with Maywood, which is like right down the street from here.

Brian De Los Santos  02:52

I want to share a little bit about me, obviously. I, I don't, I don't consider myself American. You know, I was born in Mexico, I still don't have my documents to prove that I'm American, quote, unquote. For you, what does it mean to be an American?

Leslie Berestein Rojas  03:03

You know, I think of myself really as an Angeleno. LA is its own kind of American. It's its own kind of thing. It's its own identity. In the end, the reason this series came about, it's a crowdsource series, right? So this is written by members of our community, and our audience, and it's a sequel of sorts to Race in LA, which ran between 2020 and 2021. In that series, Angelenos wrote these great personal stories about how our race and ethnicity affects our daily lives. So Being American grew out of that, and it continues some of these conversations that came out of Race in LA. During the year that I edited that series, there was this one thing that kept coming up. A lot of people who were children, grandchildren, descendants of immigrants, were writing about this common experience of never being perceived as "American enough." You know, that that was a really, really common theme. And even if their families had been here for generations. We conceived Race in LA back in 2019, after the terrible tragedy in El Paso, at the Walmart, where Latino shoppers were targeted by a shooter, you know, just for shopping while brown. They lost their lives being there. And we had some really hard conversations in the newsroom then, about how our lives are shaped by our perceived national origin, by our color, by our surnames, and then the pandemic happened, right? And then we saw what happened is Asian Americans right here in LA, were being singled out and targeted and painted as perpetual foreigners, as not American, as not American enough.

Brian De Los Santos  04:28

I want to go back to like your, who you are in this community of LA. Like, I love that you said, "I identify as Angelina," and that is your Americanism, right? And I want you to describe what it means to be Angeleno for you.

Leslie Berestein Rojas  04:41

LA for me is not having to fit into one neat particular box, right? LA is being able to bring what you bring to the table, bring what you bring to the community, and just fitting into the fabric, being accepted as part of it. I wrote in a story one time that, you know, children of immigrants are really two people- the person that you are that you develop into, and also the person who you would have been. And that's what I love about Los Angeles is that you don't need to fit neatly into any box, you know, and it's, it and that you're part of the fabric of Los Angeles. It's a very- for me has been a very- I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Brian De Los Santos  05:23

I want to ask you one more question about that. I think your unique perspective, because when people think LA and Latini, that in LA, it's mostly like, Mexicans or Central Americans, and but y- here you are a Cuban woman who came here with their parents, who had parents, and you have a whole different experience. Um, how's that been for you?

Leslie Berestein Rojas  05:43

A lot of us, when I was growing up, you know, were from different parts of Latin America. Um, a lot of kids were Mexican American, you know, because I'm a little bit older than you are. So you had the generation of, of parents and grandparents that had actually come from South Texas, and settled in LA. So you were some families that were already like generations in, along with the newcomers. And then, you know, kind of as- Huntington Park being a port of entry, you know, as things happen in other parts of the world, people come here. So eventually, people began coming from Central America. You know, we had a little community of people from the Caribbean here as well, you know, Cuban, Puerto Rican. But being being, you know, somebody from a part of, of Latin America who's not the dominant group in Los Angeles, that was really cool because it was like, you know, the- it was the closest thing. We spoke Spanish, you know, we all spoke Spanish. And so, you know, many of the families that we became close to, many of the friends that I became close to were Mexican American. And so I just kind of learned all about, you know, that whole world. You know, it affects how I cook, it affects where I shop, it affects how I speak, you know. Um, being from HP, colors all that.

Brian De Los Santos  06:47

And so tell me a bit more about the essays and the contributors that you've been coming across with this new series.

Leslie Berestein Rojas  06:53

We decided to call it Being American. It's broader. What it does is really kind of continue this conversation of who does Americanness belong to? Right? Who does it belong to? Because people are denied their Americanness. So I, I want for this to be an opportunity for people to claim it, share it, explore it, the concept of Americanness and who it belongs to, in their own way through their own lived experiences.

Brian De Los Santos  07:17

Let's talk about the writers. So tell me about Jose Cabrera.

Leslie Berestein Rojas  07:21

So Jose is one of the first people that I heard from when we put the call-out out to members of our community to contribute their thoughts, right? We put out a questionnaire, people fill it out. They're asked to share memories, anecdotes. And so Jose was one of the first people that I heard from, and I should mention, as an aside, this is engaged journalism. We're engaging members of our community to share their stories. And that's what really builds this series along with Race in LA. So Jose wrote in with a really interesting story about playing street baseball in Maywood. It's really close to here, very similar to HP in terms of its population, in terms of being right up against industry, right up against Vernon. And so, what he wro- he wrote this great story that reminded me almost like of The Sandlot, you know, that old movie?

Brian De Los Santos  08:04

I love it. It's one of my favorites. [laughs]

Leslie Berestein Rojas  08:06

Right, right, but, in Maywood, right? So everybody on his block, pretty much, everybody was from Latin America, and all the parents worked, you know, everybody was busy, you know, you know, Maywood and HP. It's small houses, you know, parents are working, you know, so the parents, the mom would say after school, she'd say, Okay, [mumbles Spanish] afuera, you know, go outside, go play, get out of my way. And so all the kids would be outside trying to figure out what to do. And they wound up- a lot of them were Dodger fans- this is back in the 80s, and they formed these teams, like, you know, little baseball teams, and they drew a baseball diamond in the street. And they just like, played and played and played, you know, till the sun went down. This went on for a few years. And it was beautiful, because the story really jumped out at me. I could like smell and taste, and you know, just reminded me my own childhood of just being a kid playing in the street in Southeast LA.

Jose Cabrera  08:55

[music in] Growing up there in the 1980s, it felt like a town in the Midwest, except we were all Hispanic kids, our families from Mexico, Central America, and South America. My parents were from Ecuador, but we all listened to the same music, watched the same TV, and played the same games as kids all over the country. No matter what we looked like or what language we spoke, we all felt American. Most families were working class Latinos, who had bought a piece of the American Dream back when it was within most people's financial reach. To be honest, there wasn't much to do outside. So we came up with things. We built a soapbox car once. We spent time in the yard with neighbor kids playing Monopoly, Life, Operation, and the most high stakes game of all, Perfection. But none of those things was as exciting as playing baseball in the street.

Brian De Los Santos  09:47

[park ambi] I love that. Oh my God! [music out] Makes me like- you just took me back to also the movie, but it just feels like community, right? And also, you spoke to Kylowna Moton, like tell me about her story.

Leslie Berestein Rojas  09:59

What I love about hers is that it reminds us that migration and people seeking refuge, it's not just an international phenomenon, right? It's happened right here in the US. She wrote this beautiful story for Being American about tracing her family's movement westward during the Great Migration in the early 20th century. And that's when millions of black families left the South to escape Jim Crow laws, and to find safety and opportunity in [music in] places like LA.

Kylowna Moton  10:25

It is difficult to tell a personal story that is both tidy and true. Truth is messy and requires digging into the complex layers of our lives. Or in my case lately, the complex layers of my family. For me, the thought of making a family tree was once fraught. It is difficult for African Americans to thoroughly trace their roots because the United States has such a short history of counting us as full human beings, with stories worthy of preserving. Records are scant. I was afraid that going back in time would be painful. I was even more afraid of finding nothing- blankness. But playing it safe, would not help me understand and record my family's story. So I created a profile on a genealogy site. And I started building and then asking questions, and then the past began to reveal itself in pieces.

Leslie Berestein Rojas  11:30

[park ambi] I like to think that people are experts in their own lives. [music out] And they have deep perspectives and lived experiences that they don't always get the opportunity to share with a wide audience. And so putting out the call-out to folks who want to share their story, I think it's great, because I think we all, we all learn something. I mean the Race in LA stories, not a single one was the same, right? Everybody had a different perspective. And that's what I'm hoping to accomplish here. And I do really want to explore this, this notion of you know, American. It's not, it's not a race. It's not an ethnicity. It's not a birthplace. It's not a status even. It's something bigger. It's something bigger, and it has a lot to do with your lived experience.

Brian De Los Santos  12:11

Getting me all emotional right here at the park. [laughs]

Leslie Berestein Rojas  12:14

Yeah, I'm hoping that all the unique voices and perspectives that we feature in this series really help define Americanness and who it belongs to, as it is lived here in LA, like we were talking about, right? In a city that's shaped by people who came from somewhere else, whether it's across the country or across the world, or whether that was generations ago or whether it was just last week. I really want for it to celebrate that.

Brian De Los Santos  12:38

I like that. You're always so good, Leslie. I love how you write, I love how you think, and thanks to you for being here and sharing what it is to be American with us.

Leslie Berestein Rojas  12:47

Of course, my pleasure.

Brian De Los Santos  12:48

[music in] Thank you to Leslie Berestein Rojas and essay contributors, Jose Cabrera and Kylowna Moton. You can find these essays we've been talking about on LAist.com. Look for Being American. The first essay is up now. Go check it out. That's it for us, folks. We'll be back mañana. This is How to LA and I'm Brian De Los Santos. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. [music out]