n 1956, when I was two, my family arrived in Los Angeles from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. My mother had Tarahumara Native roots from the Chihuahuan Desert. I was an Indigenous child who entered school in the Black and brown working-class community of Watts in the early 1960s. As a Spanish speaker, I felt unheard and unseen. Teachers placed me in a corner playing blocks for a whole year. When I spoke Spanish, I was punished.
