The Acknowledgments Page

I find myself writing in here again today. A good friend is in town. Someone I grew up with, from our community. We lost touch somewhere in middle school years but reconnected through temple activities in high school. We ended up traveling together at one point to an unspecified location in the third world, where she was getting her degree in social work. So here I am, again, repeating and rediscovering Los Angeles through my personal tour.

And I come here, because I steal away from those geographical travelings, to some internal border crossings.

I might have reminisced last week to the educational systems and processes, because I started writing my thesis acknowledgments. It is to remind me of where I came from and to project where I am going with my writing. Last week, it was not so much to celebratorily claim that access to graduate school is simple, but rather to demystify the process a little. Applying to a program the day before, is a way to recognize that those who "made it" are just as haphazardly unconfident, confused, perplexed and inundated with the university. And to keep it real -- it is a place that could be full of twists and turns, but applying to a place that will support you is very important to your health as a student.

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In my acknowledgments, I spanned from roots in high school mentors to college co-organizers to friends in my program to my current advisors. It felt good to thank them this early on, in writing.

This is how we do it... on a Tuesday night

[I began writing this last Tuesday... ]

My sister's in town. I've been "showing" her around. All the places of tourism that I perhaps would not necessarily label as the subversive version of Los Angeles. Yet, as a graduate student in finals, I found that I planned some okay places: Diddy Reese, In-N-Out, a consciousness raising art performance for the undergrad, the Venice canals/ Venice beach. I also trekked to those otherwise, not so fun, but somehow always visited places: the Chinese Mann's theater, Santa Monica Third Street Promenade, the Grove. And yet, places that could otherwise be digested as the Disneyland of Los Angeles, I tried to "historicize" with subversive comments... another post... another tour...

And so, why am I writing, right now? Because, as graduate student in finals, this is how we do it on a Tuesday night. I am writing for an assignment, stuck in my writing process. [enter self-reflexive moment].

It was the day the before the applications were due: I rushed to the post office and paid the extra "next-day" fed ex fee. [Skip a few.] When I got in, I didn't know what my project was, other than, a grand comment on women of color feminisms. [Skip a few]. Higher education really is out to get the P/W/Q of color, I believe. Intellectual paradigms constructed around colonization in the enlightenment period really did organize the university system! Thoughts, projects, theories then, were and are constantly terminated because of the origins of specific academic disciplines!

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renovating, remodeling, (recolonizing)

while i did not grow up here in southern california, and i oftentimes make home out of its people of color spaces, ethnic towns, and resources, i struggle to know its history the way someone does who lived their past 10 years in echo park, pilipino town, or koreatown.

when i moved here, phantoms of possible displacement and gentrification were already mocking me. gray buildings with neon rice bowls stare back at me on wilshire and vermont. i can't know what existed before there.

starting my part time work, this is part of the process. we went to one building, out in "the field" and we came across a phantom. it was an already remodeled space. the story comes out that this was a place where management had paid former residents a sum of undisclosed money (seemingly a lot, but still researching how ill-legal) to move out, so they could renovate. whereas the original guess was 10-12 families we once knew there, now there were about 5 families.

we went to another street. and its starting to come alive. i've heard about echo park. and we've been talking about koreatown now. (wealthier) people who commute want to live closer to work, and so these places have become their prime new location and playground. oftentimes, then, the (poorer) communities who have been living there for 10 to 15 years are being pushed out with silly evictions, false charges or unfixed, soon to be unhabitable buildings that landlords hope to condemn, to rebuild.

today, on this one unnamed street, i saw it. one, two, three, four buildings being remodeled. i wonder what are the stories there. if its like other cases, other clients, at other community based organizations, then, i'm sure it wasn't pretty.