During difficult times, we crave light. Enter The Sun Was Trying to Tell Me Something, a compendium of student writing from 15 years of 826LA’s work in high schools. Our newest book serves as a timely reminder that young people from under-resourced communities also come from traditions of resilience and creativity.
The anthology features excerpts from our annual flagship publication, the Young Authors’ Book Project, and our partnership publication with the Roosevelt High School Ethnic Studies program. It also includes introductory essays by Donald Bakeer, Dolores Huerta, Phil Jackson, Antonio Villaraigosa, Alice Waters, and more.
What is the sun trying to tell us? We think it’s encouraging us to listen. Below are just a few highlights that reflect the depth and breadth of students’ experiences. We admire the vivid words they use to describe the world around them, and the world they are building.
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By William A.
Lennox Library, I read on the metallic plaque outside the building. The little garden up front gave me a great sense of comfort. Once I entered, I was overcome with warmth, and I never wanted to leave the library’s cozy embrace. It was like waking up on a cold, rainy day and not wanting to leave the cocoon of your bed, made warm by a full night’s rest. The people inside transmitted their contagious desire to grab a book and devour every single page of it. They were all sitting on couches, focused on their selections. It was as if everyone was on the same page, like members of an orchestra playing one of Chopin’s best symphonies, everyone flipping their sheet music to the next part of the song. A silent orchestra.
It had been two years since my last major journey, when I’d taken an airplane all across Mexico to move to the United States. The language barrier greatly impacted my efforts in school, but I took the challenge head-on. At this American high school, I discovered the power of books. Before that, my older brother, Oscar, was the only person from my family to have a strong connection with books. He had visited these fascinating dimensions decades before I had. He used books to venture into some distant land, becoming one of Harry’s closest friends at Hogwarts.
I recently traveled back to Mexico to visit my family for the holidays. Oscar is married now. Over our first dinner together, I told him about the books I’d encountered, and how I at one point felt disappointed that he hadn’t shared their magic with me but now understood that I had to make the discovery for myself. A smirk crawled across his face, as if to say I was finally ready, ready to join an ancient secret club to which he had long belonged, and finally he would welcome his younger brother in as well. Of course, there was no actual club initiation. But we continued to discuss some of the books that we read, and it felt amazing. I pictured myself as one of those small leaves on the tree in front of Lennox Library, holding on tight to that moment and never wanting to let go.
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By Olga D.
My brothers won their soccer game 8–0, so we had a great reason to celebrate! We knew what we had to do, so we got into the truck and went back home. We started looking around the kitchen and making a list of what we needed to make the ceviche. If we missed an ingredient, we knew it wouldn’t taste good. We needed to get tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cilantro, avocado, lemons, and camarones (shrimp). When my dad came home, he asked what he could do to help, so I gave him the list. We knew that we had picked the right person to get the ingredients because Tecomán, Colima, Mexico, where my dad is from, is all about the seafood. Since he was a kid, he helped my grandma make it. This is a family tradition from my dad’s family. His mom made it with her mom, my dad made it with his mom, and now our family is making it with my dad.
[We went to] a little store that my friend owns with her family called Lupita’s Market. This place has everything in order; there is a small place for fruit, milk, meat, and everything you might need. The store smells okay, but when you get close to the meat, it smells like a weird mixed smell that you can’t even describe because of all the different kinds of meat that are there. My sister and I hate the smell of meat that hasn’t been cooked. It’s still a fresh cut, but when it’s cooked, it smells different: it smells good. The store was loud. You could hear people talking to friends and Mexican music playing. While I was watching everything, I tasted the fresh mint of my gum and saw my dad go around the store. I laughed at him for getting things we never even needed; he’s a crazy shopper.
We took the bags inside so that we could get started on the ceviche.My mom got the vegetables so she could cut them. I got the camarones to peel so that my sister could cut them into small pieces. My brothers did the lemons [and] we put the camarones in the lemon juice so they could cook fresh and cold. It takes around fifteen to twenty minutes to cook. After that, we put the vegetables together with them. We put them in the freezer so that they could cool faster and we could eat them sooner. It tastes like the first food you have ever tasted. They taste like something out of this world and make your mouth water. That’s what mine had been doing since six in the morning, and it was now around four in the afternoon. It’s great to do this for three reasons: we worked as a family to make it, we all helped each other, and we were all going to eat it together.
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Anthony L.
Mendez v. Westminster is something I should be really grateful for, and I am. The case made a huge impact on making school segregation illegal. This case changed how schools work, and thanks to this, I am able to choose the school I want to go to. But I wouldn’t say it completely got rid of segregation. If you actually look close enough and think about it, you’ll see what I mean. There is not much diversity in schools. Even neighborhoods are segregated.
Remember this: “Separate is never equal.” Los Angeles is such a big city full of diversity. Different people everywhere, but sadly we are all segregated. Some neighborhoods will be better than the others and some schools will be better than the others. Little Tokyo is a Japanese community, Koreatown is a Korean community. The neighborhood I live in, Boyle Heights, is mainly a Latino community. It’s a Spanish-speaking community, and the only time you use English is when you go to school. There are a whole lot of Mexican businesses everywhere: Mexican restaurants, bakeries, markets, and craft stores that sell special Mexican tools to make food. There are even public events that celebrate Mexican heritage, for example when they celebrate Cinco de Mayo in Mariachi Plaza. I have also been to a white neighborhood, Sherman Oaks. It was nice. It was clean, and there wasn’t graffiti on every corner.
The neighborhood I’m growing up in is pretty messed up. There’s tagging everywhere, and gangsters act as if they own the streets. Our schools are decent: AC in the classrooms, somewhat clean, twenty-first century technology like computers or projectors, stuff like that, but they have their flaws too. Restrooms are mostly never usable because they are dirty, there is never toilet paper, and no hand soap to wash your hands. Some classes are filled with too many students, so there are not enough books or desks for everyone. Even at school lunch they talk about being healthy, yet they give away some nasty food. There is some really dry meat with hard breadsticks that could probably break your head open.
I have been to a school in a mostly white neighborhood, and it was huge. They had better meals like fried chicken with mashed potatoes, and their restrooms were actually usable. Their restrooms were always open, and there was always hand soap and toilet paper. There were even teachers driving around in golf carts.
I think ninety-five percent of students in my school have parents from Latin America. It’s as if we’re put into our own group. Brown people live on one side of the city, black people on the other side, and white people on the other.
Our economy is what creates inequalities. This is what separates us the most. Look at the Dreamers. They are young kids who want to strive to get a higher education, but they can’t because they’re undocumented. You’re not able to obtain jobs if you don’t have a work permit. This can lead to dropouts. What’s the point of going to school if you can’t legally get a job when you graduate? People have to get creative on how they make their money. Some sell food in the streets like hot dogs and tacos. Some sell flowers or oranges at the freeway entrance or exit.
My parents have been here since the 1990s. When they first arrived, my mom was expecting a baby, my older brother. My dad only had the knowledge of a high school student and didn’t know any English. He was basically forced to get a job in construction because he had to make money some way to be able to raise my brother since they had no one to depend on. It wasn’t easy for him to find a job. This definitely held my parents back and made them get stuck with minimum wage jobs. English is the key to obtaining jobs in the United States. Where and when are they going to learn it if they are always working?
They don’t make much, so I understand why they encourage me to do my best in school, so I won’t have the same experiences they had
Growing up in Boyle Heights made me feel safe and comfortable because we were all Latinos and shared common things, like language and heritage. If I had kids I would want them to grow up with different people so they could meet people who are different, and therefore they would get out of their comfort zone. It’s good to meet new people and learn new things such as cultures and languages.
Every neighborhood in Los Angeles is like stepping into a new country. They are all unique with their own cultures and different languages. Boyle Heights is like a miniature version of Mexico. Little Tokyo is like a whole different place. Across the LA River from Boyle Heights there are buildings like those you see in Japanese movies with pointy roofs and colorful walls. They have temples instead of churches. They speak Japanese, and their restaurants are different from where I come from. Why go to Japan when I could just go across the bridge? This is what I like about Los Angeles—that every neighborhood is unique.
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by Bryanna B.
“To live and die in LA, it’s the place to be. You’ve got to be there to know it. Where everybody wanna see”
— Tupac Shakur “To Live & Die in LA”
In August of 1996, my mom, her mother, father, two brothers, and two sisters (my mom being the oldest), moved from 39th and Harvard to 70th street off of Florence and Normandie, which is coincidentally where the LA riots started. Little did they know that they were going to be connected to this block for their entire lives. The day after they moved, my mom and her family saw that all of the boys in the neighborhood were playing football. My mom, her younger sister Jaqueline, and two brothers, Daniel and Charles, decided to join their dad and play against these complete strangers. The game was 4 vs 4, with their dads as the quarterbacks. Since they were used to playing with each other, and they were all boys, they thought they were going to be the ones to take home the win. How could two girls and two younger boys possibly beat them in a game of football? Ironically, they ended up losing to my mom and her family, which made them feel absolutely stupid.
My mom’s childhood life in Los Angeles was different from mine. Not only did they not have the advanced technology that we have now, but they were also so connected with their community. I would have never considered going outside to play football let alone converse with the kids on my street when I first moved. These days, kids my age don’t go out and do things like they did when my mom was younger.
“Every day, me and my brothers and sisters would play basketball outside with all of the kids in the neighborhood until it reached about 9 pm,” she told me. “Sometimes, we would all ride our bikes to Tom’s, the local burger joint and buy fries which were only 75 cents, now they’re about $2.50.”
Now it’s not really safe to play around in the streets until 9 pm when it’s pitch black outside with nothing but the gas station across the street’s bright sign to light up the neighborhood. I never really spoke to the kids in any of the many neighborhoods I’ve lived in. My mom and her siblings, on the other hand, were best friends with all of the kids their age in their neighborhood. In fact, my uncle and auntie both ended up falling in love with two people who they grew up with on that exact street.
After conducting this interview, I realized that if I were able to choose what time period to live in, I would probably pick the ‘90s. Although this was a time of struggle, what time period isn’t, right? I definitely will be thinking about connections to my mom and my childhood in Los Angeles a lot more after conducting this interview and I think it will open my eyes to the things I should try to do to change how I live my life. That way it won’t be as different and I will enjoy my LA childhood as much as she did.
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