Sonia Manzano
speaker
283 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 17 Sep
Sonia Manzano’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I bought sacks of corn and made a pyramid of cobs.
It was a real success.
Pinocchio and Oropendola spent a lot of time in there making a little noise, and Severiano told me before I came, he never spoke.
He was a traumatized bird.
I noticed that despite his usually undemonstrative nature, my teacher was proud of me.
Naturally, the animals didn't like all my ideas.
I once managed to get a hold of one of those fat red Buddhas and put it in my section, surrounded by a small stream so it looked like a Chinese water feature.
But after a few days, I realized that Amarillo, a pheasant who wouldn't fly and just hopped from one place to another, was afraid of the Buddha and would take long detours to avoid it.
So I removed the Buddha to my cabin where it stood facing the wall because I felt it watching me at night while I was undressing.
I don't want this to seem like a lack of respect.
If a Christ figure had made me feel that way, I'd have done the same thing.
We all have our beliefs, and that's okay by me.
Severiano was a reserved, you could even say unsociable man, and being around animals for so long had done nothing for his manners.
But he became fond of me
and after a couple of years, offered to add a bathroom to my cabin.
We completed the task together, and during those three weeks of heavy work under the hottest, healthy Juana's son, I got to know him much better than in the previous two and a half years, since he normally only spoke to ask me to buy bird seed, clean the cage, or take out rubeola, the female iguana, to administer her eyedrops.
While we were building the bathroom, he told me that he'd once been married, but had gotten divorced 13 years before and hadn't fallen in love again.
He told me he was from Zacatecas originally, but had come to Tijuana as an adolescent with the dream of crossing over the border just like everyone else.
And that dream had come true.
He'd lived in San Diego, and then Santa Monica, had been a gardener and dishwasher, and for nearly five years had driven a truck delivering fertilizer.
Showing 221–240 of 283 · page 12 of 15
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