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Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, my wife speaks five languages: Russian, English, French, Italian and, out of self-defense, Spanish. I watched her learn Spanish in three months.
Whether it's from the biggest, most powerful city, or from the dinkiest little podunk town, there is a certain attachment and connection, and yes, pride about where you came from.
Don't ever insult a Chicano about being a Chicano because then all the other Chicanos will be on you with a vengeance. They will even fight each to be first in line to support you.
It is surprising how many professional athletes, along with their families and friends, are gaga over movie and music stars, and the reverse is true with entertainers and sports stars.
As much as I loved Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Junior Gilliam, and Don Newcombe, I loved watching Willie Mays play more than all of them combined, even if he played for the 'bad guys!'
You can always tell when something is good, because the studio senses it has something good, and you can see them pour more and more resources into it. The promotion gets bigger and bigger.
It always trips me out that America, the most powerful and magnificent nation in the history of the world, whose might was built by immigrants from all over the world, only speaks one language.
So what's really behind the 'English Only' Movement? Fear. Fear of being taken over and one day they will have to learn something different. Heaven forbid they would have to learn something new.
I liked Jackie Robinson because he was cool to watch, not because he was black. Every time you turned around, he was hitting a triple or making a great play in the field or, best of all, stealing home.
Being a third-generation Mexican-American and speaking English exclusively, I heard Spanish spoken by my relatives all my life, especially when they didn't want me to understand what they were talking about.
Being a Chicano in Hollywood, my experience is that you're not given credit for any sophistication... You're just kind of some guy that just crossed the border, you know, on the back of a truck and that's it.
In the end, the great leveler in any sport is performance on the field or on the court. Kids don't care what language players speak or if they eat tacos, rice, or sauerkraut. They don't care if they're white, black, or brown.
To me, you have to declare yourself a Chicano in order to be a Chicano. That makes a Chicano a Mexican-American with a defiant political attitude that centers on his or her right to self-definition. I'm a Chicano because I say I am.
By the time I discovered Chicano painters in the mid-'80s, I recognized that these guys were really world-class painters, but they weren't getting any attention, which was good in one sense in that I could get their work for cheaper!
What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional, intellectual experience, that's a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.
I was part of the draft resistance movement in L.A. where we did demonstrations at the draft centre and burned our cards and made a lot of trouble on campus. I had a student classification and they said that anybody who'd taken part in these demonstrations would be reclassified and drafted. And that's when I went to Canada.