Cristela Alonso

And it was the first time that I realized I was a minority.

And it wasn't until I moved away from my Mexican little border town that I realized that

People were going to treat me the way that they thought I should be treated based on their assumptions on who I am.

Meaning that if they were unfamiliar with me, they would ask me a lot of tropey, stereotypical, offensive questions that I would have to answer because they wanted to get to know me.

They wanted to know how I was smart.

Yeah.

People thought I was lying about how poor I grew up because I spoke so well.

My mom had this rule.

My mom was a Spanish speaker, never spoke English.

She had a rule at home.

We couldn't speak English at home.

We had to speak Spanish so that she knew she could understand everything that was being said in the house.

Having said that, when I was a kid, I loved TV so much, I started imitating what I heard on TV, the voices.

The accents, everything.

That's how I learned English.

But when I was a kid, I loved shows like Murphy Brown.

I don't know why.

And I think the closest thing that I could understand is my mom used to make me translate the news to her as a little kid.

So when I was a little kid, I'm translating all of these big things, these big ideas to my mom.

So I think that when I watched Murphy Brown, I recognized some of the names from the news and it made me feel smart.