My full name is Rosa Lisbeth Navarrete and I am a Writer/Filmmaker who loves to dance and perform. After high school I was accepted into a selective non-profit film school called Inner-City Filmmakers; a film school which is absolutely free for low income students in the LAUSD district and beyond. Check out the site and application if you have an overly active kid in your house who likes to film everything and dress up as Quentin Tarantino for Halloween. With ICF's help, guidance, and the support from the colleagues I gained while going to school there I worked for wonderful companies like Disney, ColorForce, Inc. with DreamWorks Studios, Univision Network, and Mun2. I also worked on various short film projects like co-writer for The Day Before Dark and make-up artist for a YMI Spec Commercial directed by Ruben Sandoval.
Currently I am a freelance Videographer and Video Editor here in the Bay. In my spare time I am working on my novel, and dancing with The Defiance Project. Currently I am in a production called The Life Machine with Faultline Theater in San Francisco. It's been great fun.
For personal growth I am doing a work exchange with Integrated Movement Studies and working on my certification in Laban Movement Analysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals. The journey has been challenging, but Peggy Hackney, Janice Meaden, Cadence Whittier, Lisa Wymore, and Colleen Culley have been really great as instructors.
Okay enough formalities!
Why am I doing this project? Well, for many reasons really. One of which has to do with the fact that I lived with Robyn for a semester while she was doing her last year at Cal. Being in her cottage was like a retreat for women writers, dancer--artists really! We would be home in the evening and we would sit and chat about anything under the sun. Our favorite touchy discussion was race, which involved immigration, documentaries, and political topics. Our favorite artsy discussion was dance. She was doing work for Joe Goode's choreography class and I was performing in From the Field to the Table organized by Urban Bush Women and the Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies Department at Cal. We were a sisterhood under one roof, a movement that held us close to similar ideals and likes. We were different but the same. Which takes me to the second reason why I am doing this project.
I was born in Peru and raised in California. I was raised with Disney princesses, Sesame Street, and Nickelodeon. Growing up in a predominantly Latino community, I never really asked questions like: (1) Why are there so many liquor stores in my neighborhood and not in nicer areas? (2) Why is my seventh grade Algebra teacher making my class do third grade addition problems? (3) Why do I feel an urgency to lose my accent and speak more "American"? * These are really political questions that came to me later in my life. But as a young little Peruvian girl trying to make her parents proud, I didn't really ask heavy questions like this. I worried most about grades and obeying authority. In fact, I feared authority, so I figured as long as I was a good student they would stay out of my way.
I was never really made aware of the differences in my school district, my neighborhood, my parent's jobs, or anything like that until I returned to Perú at the age of twelve. Upon my return, I realized how comfortable it was to be around family in Perú, and how separated we were from our culture, our lifestyle, and our family in the States. Not to mention that the economic and social differences in my education and district was becoming more apparent. As an experiment, I rejected the magnet program and went to "regular" high school when I attended Grover Cleveland High School in Reseda. It was there that I met some students who were aware of their disadvantaged education. Some who voiced themselves, and stood up for themselves when these topics would quite literally fly over my head. I don't know if I was so worried about just getting good grades that I had become complacent to what was clearly all around me, or if I had become so deadened to the idea of this is where you belong that i just accepted it. The difference between magnet and "regular" students was astronomical in terms of attentiveness and exploration. My class was made to continue a normal routines, while the magnet students went on field trips and received better school equipment. I'm sure you might be thinking, what does that matter? Well, I can speak for myself when I say that a splintered chair versus the sleek metal one says a lot. It says, you are worthy of comfort and you are not.
I remember shortly after returning from Perú being tested for language proficiency. I remember the woman looked at me with you poor thing kind of eyes, and she talked to me real slow. I quickly explained to her that I had left the states for two years but that most of my education came from California, and that I was an avid reader. The test was not difficult. Another thing I noticed was how incomprehensible our textbooks were compared to the ones in Perú. I was doing calculus work in Perú while attending Jr. High because they introduced complicated topics with different levels. Versus the American system which teaches one topic at a time--making it seem like the Algebra and Calculus worlds are unrelated. It's like take this, now put it aside, we're doing this now. No wonder nobody remembers formulas! I struggled a lot, especially in math for this reason. Which is probably why I began to lean towards humanities during my Senior year in high school.
Well, why the heck did I just ranted about my early education? It comes down to this. Knowledge is power, and Awareness is his older sister. I realized that most of the reason I never questioned things in my young life is because I was made to fear things: fear authority, fear that you are an immigrant, fear bad grades/the education system, fear you're throwing away this opportunity! What I should have been thinking is CHALLENGE and QUESTION the things that you know deep down feel wrong. Do not become complacent, and most importantly do not silence yourself. I am doing this Untitled Identity Project as a challenge to myself, to confront the things I ignored growing up, and to express these realities with art that is constructive, creative, and ethical. Education is a treasure I hold dear because it's the one thing nobody can take away from me. I am the first generation in my family to attend a university, and the first to graduate. Just this summer I took a picture with my grandfather holding my diploma. He was visiting from Perú, reunited with my mother after twenty-five years, twenty-five years of struggle and finding ways to help family from afar. His life and her life are part of me too. Now I am using the things I have learned as a young Latina in California, as an English Major, Creative Writing and Dance Performance Minor from UC Berkeley, as a filmmaker artists, and as a collaborator to create work that will share these stories and hopefully open minds. I worry often about countless other Latina immigrant girls who come to this country too young to understand the complexities of their presence in this great land of opportunity.
Rosa's Blog: http://rosalnavarrete.blogspot.com
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