These images were my way of opening up, I have so much trouble explaining all of the things I feel. So many times there are just no words. There was a moment, actually much longer than a moment, that I found myself trying to fall out of love. It seemed so easy to be in it, but once it settled I seemed to be unable to escape it. I had kept writings, and journals and I poured everything out into them, the story was simple I loved someone and they didn't love me back. Yet, there was something, whatever that something was it always seemed to end up in me crying, or us yelling, but there was laughing and cooking, and learning, and friendship. So I accepted the mean words, the disappointments, the constant rejection.  Tray, the model in the photo, stood in for the boy that I met that gave me a chance to open up to feel so hurt, to really remember what feeling vulnerable meant. It is such a weird thing to explain your work to the person it is all about, he read some of the journals, edited some of the photos, I never knew what he thought about it all, every time I asked he never said. And it is all too late for that now. These are some of the images from my series 909 & Heartbreak, the story about me and a boy and how I was one of many and he was only one of 2. 

Coconut | Pocha | White-washed. 
Whatever the title the words I have heard my entire life, that I wasn't Mexican enough. It is always a projection of their own insecurities, or at least that is what people say. I think there is truth to that, but I have certainly internalized all of the things that I am not. I am not a woman that speaks Spanish fluently, that grew up knowing what princess house, that ate traditional Mexican food, my Mexican food is the Chicano mix that to me is the best food in the world. There are so many things I am not, and it simply is what it is. I am a Pocha and I am the product of 13th & MT. Vernon. And this night that my family and I produce together is all of the things that we like and all of the things that we want Chicanx identity to be. Being a Pocha means belonging everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.