Poetry
2 min
I’m From The East Side
Vianey Aguirre-Villalobos
I'm From The East Side: By Vianey Aguirre-Villalobos
I'm from the East side
The ghetto
The hood
The bad part of the neighboor-hood,
See where that comes from?
See where I come from,
I was born and raised on the East side of Salinas
Where you see six year old babies walk alone to and from school,
Where 8 year old kids watch to make sure they don't wear the colors red and blue because those colors only bring pain...it's either gangs or cops,
Where our middle schoolers get the talk about not turning their backs on cops
You see I'm from the ghetto
The place where they will tell you, "Don't walk alone at night, it'll give you a fright."
I'm from the hood
Where falling asleep as sirens ring is normal,
I'm from the ugly, I'm from the place no one wants to be
I'm from the rough tough and mean but look closely,
I'm from the East side
Where there are pot holes on the street from tractors going to work as we sleep
Where at three in the morning wife's and abuelas are packing the pozole from last night or a sandwich if their lover wasn't acting right... and they go to work
In the fields
A few streets down from my house...
I'm from the ghetto,
Where every night you hear a Banda somewhere in the distance
And you can smell a part of our culture in the early mornings
I'm from beauty...
Where people like me, my people all come together as one, where if you hurt one of us you hurt all of us
Where our abulelitas have our gardens filled with beautiful flowers that they tend to with much love,
Look closely and learn our ghetto history
Our gangs were made to protect us and our children even if you weren't about that life
Pay attention to our ghetto,
We have children with bright minds
We have intelligent scholars that get ignored by the system just because they don't fit their systematic erratic view of what they see deem to succeed in life!
But our babies are born with ambition,
Ambition to lead,
To be what no one thought they could be,
To eradicate the structural boundaries set before them so that they fall under our society's patriarchal view of what ghetto is
But my hood is smart,
So take the time to teach and learn about our culture and our people
I am a chicana who didn't know that Spanish and Castellano are two different things,
Teach us about our past and watch our intelligence seep out of our bodies and into your notebooks,
Observe as the words that come out of our mouths become more articulate,
Since you can't understand our ghetto language we will compromise to have our voices be heard,
We have learned about your history for too long we want to learn about our own
Teach us about the Brown Barrett's and the L.A. Student Walkout's,
Teach us about our Chicano power!
Show us that we too can be like the Freedom Writers and the kids from Stand and Deliver Because the ghetto has intelligence
Street smarts and book smarts,
The hood has ambitions,
To get an education and better their family,
This hood has culture,
This ghetto has beauty,
So yeah,
I'm from the ghetto
I'm from the hood
I am from culture
I am from beauty
I am from the East Side
We Love Sharing Stories
Select a story