 As a child, Cesar Chavez lived with his family behind this house, in a storage building. La, Colonia, Oxnard, 2018. Photo by author. WARNING: Please do not do what I did. This was the most backwards way to go about writing a book! Also, this post is SUPER long!
I have been a professional writer living in my native San Diego for over a decade now. I've written for loads of online outlets, a few magazines and have even picked up a couple of awards along the way. I guess I imagined that I would one day write a book. I just never imagined it would be this book. So then, how did we get here? It was early 2018. After quite a long run, I had shuttered my beloved and very successful blog, Nacho Mama's Blog. I felt it had run it's course and I was ready for a fresh start. I had already begun my latest blogging venture, The Chingona Homesteader, in which I endeavored to try my hand at the so-called "urban homesteading" movement (despite a deep dislike for the reintroduction of that extremely problematic word, "homesteading," into the vernacular-which we can DEFINITELY discuss at a later time!). Among my many projects related to this new blog was an attempt to re-design my tiny front yard, with some professional help, into a "tiny farm," based on the gardens I remembered seeing throughout my childhood on visits to La Colonia, where both my parents were born and raised. THEN, in mid-March, I got an assignment from a cultural organization I have worked with, off and on, over the years. They are based on the east coast and had received word about a west coast event featuring Latina artists and they asked if I could possibly go and check it out. I didn't need to write anything, just give them my opinion on whether there was a real scene happening in this part of California. The assignment was right up my alley (I have a degree in Art History and a career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in my past), so I said, "Sure! Where in SoCal is it?"
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