Melinda Palacio
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| Melinda Palacio and Michele Serros |
Over the weekend, I read a book I couldn’t put down. While it’s an academic book and not everyone’s cup of tea, the subject was about Michele Serros’s work: Welcome to Oxnard: Race, Place, and Chicana Adolescence in Michele Serros’s Writings. The critical book by Cristina Herrera, a professor at Portland State University who is also from Oxnard provides a scholarly analysis of Michele Serros’s books. While I find the study impressive and important for academia, Michele was such as trickster that I can only imagine her being super tickled by all the scholarly research done by Herrera and the sources she cites in her book. While her publishers list Serros’s books as novels, her first two are hybrid collections that contain poems, stories, and non-fiction.
Michele was a friend and our paths crossed in curious ways. She was only four years older than I am but made a name for herself in her twenties. She wrote for the George Lopez show, toured as a poet in Lollapalooza, contributed to NPR and numerous magazines, and wrote poetry and novels, set in her hometown of Oxnard. Her books include Chicana Falsa and Other Stories of Death, Identity, and Oxnard (1993), How To Become a Chicana Role Model (2000), Honey Blonde Chica (2006), and !Scandalosa! (2007).
It’s hard to believe that she was the first author I met at a bookstore in East L.A. in the late 90’s, that we became friends, and that she died of cancer at age 48. My mom’s friends, Mary and Eddie Ortega had taken me to the bookstore where they were excited to meet the young author. We were enchanted by this witty girl who was a writer and a jokester. I often think of the funny texts she would send me or the silly names she would call me like Travelocity because she saw that I traveled far and wide to read my work.
Almost a decade after our initial meeting, we both presented our books at the Latino Book Festival. We had fun talking shop and we kept in touch. But it wasn’t until 2012 that we became friends. We spent a weekend together being feted by the Santa Barbara Women’s Literary Festival. I had just won the Kulupi Press Sense of Place Award that published my first poetry chapbook, Folsom Lockdown, poems about visiting my father in Folsom prison. She had four books to present. At pre-festival dinner, Michele kept picking the chicken out of my chicken pot pie. She had ordered the vegetarian platter and her meal consisted of a place of uncooked vegetables. I thought it was adorable and funny that she felt comfortable enough to eat off my plate. Her husband ran a vegan Mexican restaurant in Berkeley and I think Michele was a secret meat eater, or just hungry for more than the cold vegetables on her plate.
That weekend she also introduced me to her writing group, WoWW (Women Who Write). Michele workshopped a piece she was writing for Marie Claire Magazine about the Hollywood Bowl. I didn’t bring anything to workshop, but WoWW welcomed me to return and to this day, I have made a special connection with them. The group was formed over 20 years ago and includes writers Amada Perez, Florencia Ramirez, Toni Guy, Lori Anaya, and Dani Brown, who hosted on the day I attended with Michele.
A few years later with a novel and a full-length poetry book under my belt, Michele surprised me by attending my reading at Moe’s Books in Berkeley. She was still showing up for fellow writers and modeling how to be a Chicana role mode. That was the last time I saw her. Cancer took her too soon.
Cristina’s Herrera’s book is an unusual academic book in that the author discusses her feelings about having grown up in Oxnard. She bemoans not having had a role mode like Michele Serros to show her that it was okay being different and how to roll with the punches when kids would tell her that she is not Mexican enough. Michele (with one l as she offend pronounced her name), was proud of her hometown. I know she would be super proud of her fellow WoWW who continue to put Oxnard on the map in their writing, especially Mona Alvarado Frazier, whom Cristina mentions in the last chapter of the book, citing the tribute Monica (Mona) Frazier wrote in La Bloga. Mona’s award-winning novels are also putting Oxnard on the map in her fiction. If you haven’t already, check out A Bridge Home and The Garden of Second Chances.
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| Mona Alvarado Frazier and Michele Serros |
*a version of this post was also published in the Santa Barbara Independent
This week’s poem comes from Mona Alvarado Frazier
Remembering Michele
My friend died two days ago.
Cancer.
I knew she had it for several months.
Pinche cancer.
I really thought she'd survive.
Damn it.
She married the love of her life,
a short three years ago.
He was by her side when she left this world.
My heart holds a special spot for Michele Serros,
or as she liked to hear, "Mrs. Antonio Magaña."
A confusion of feelings surround death.
Why? Why her? Why didn't prayers work?
I see her smile, lively eyes, texts at odd hours,
her words expressing identity, small towns,
and individuality
a literary landmark
stories like my life and unlike my life
resonate with scenes only she could paint
Why?
She found love, at a vegan restaurant,
with a Berkeley chicano, a mexican, from her home town,
from her own high school, the same alma mater, so long ago
ecstatic with love, a new family
sharing her life.
That's the way she was, loving, giving, living
daring to say the unsaid,
with wit and unique style,
inspired to write by Judy Blume.
A Medium Brown girl,
A Taco Belle,
Mucha Michele,
who wrote outside of 'barrios, borders, and bodegas,'
defining herself and the question of identity
to a mess of other men and women
boys and girls
high schoolers to old schoolers
on what is mexicano, chicano, americano.
A writer of handwritten notes,
handcrafted cards of
glitter and glue,
inspired,
memorable,
unique,
like her.
