Self Identification in Zoot Suits

Spring semester of my Junior year in high school I participated in a college course, Humanities 113. In this class we discussed a wide variety of academic films and studied plays. Luis Valdez's play 'Zoot Suit' connected with me at a level of lost self identification that I never realized I faced as a first generation Mexican-American. The play centers around the sailor riots and the court case of the Sleepy Lagoon. Zoot Suit also approaches the topic of segregation between races in this time period but also separation of generations.

As the eldest of my family I grew up in a fiercely embraced Mexican home. With that said I faced, to a certain degree, that separation because of language barriers and cultural differences. I was the kid who was sent to school with a Mexican lunch that all the kids stared at yet could not comment on for they could not understand me, nor I them. Later on I understood them and I bought school lunch like everyone else but then it was my family who could not understand me. As I got older I adopted my own cultural preferences from both of my countries. Yet I am still separated and, at times, do not understand either my friends or my family.

 I am different from my parents, of whom I'll never be Mexican enough for, and for my American friends, who I'll always be a bit too Mexican for. To this day I carry an American accent when I speak Spanish and a Mexican accent that slips out when I attempt to trick my once native Spanish tongue.

Zoot Suits exposed the reason as to this separation I've always felt but never understood. Chicano's have no home. We are border children.  I guess that's the definition of a Chicano though, to be too American for Mexico and too Mexican for America. We are the masters of assimilation. Yet we can never fully assimilate to any one country. We are both yet neither.

The topic of crime is a large part of the play Zoot Suit. It, crime, is also a large part of my life. It is well known that my father and varies family members are well acquainted with the haunting cells of prison of which they never tire of. Yet it has to be said that not all in cells are guilty. Zoot Suit taught me that. You must question the system for a blind believer shall end up strapped to that electric chair so many have been strapped to too. It is easy to lock away a majority of the minority.

Zoot Suit also taught me something powerful, "unidos en la lucha no nos moveran...". That roughly translates to 'united in the fight they cannot move us'. Although the discrimination of our skin to this day may land us with more ease into a cell, and although we are border children with no home country, united our ancestors have fought inequalities against Chicanos together. That is what Zoot Suits is all about, uniting together.