Pilsen is a great neighborhood in Chicago. I love going there. It is a Mexican/Chicano Community with stores, churches, restaurants that remind me of Mexico. Even street signs are in Spanish (as well as English). I have never felt unsafe or even hurried in Pilsen. I would love to raise my (future) children in such a community.
There is a new doll out by “American Girl“, Marisol , who is from Pilsen. I used to get the American Girl Catalogue and dream of owning all the dolls and all the books that went with the dolls. Of course when I got the catalogue I don’t think they had any non-white characters. My favorite was Kristen a Swedish immigrant to Minnesota in 1854. I never liked dolls but these dolls went with books and I was more in love with the books. The dolls just brought the books to life.
As American Girl gives us Marisol they also did a great job in stereotyping Pilsen as a dangerous place. A place that her family would like to get away from so that they can go to the safe suburbs.
Chicanas are PISSED. Don’t piss of Chicanas because they will get loud.
InjustSpring has one of the best articles about it as she notes her happy childhood in Pilsen and her struggle to go back.
Sensory Overload eloquently questions the stereotyping of Mexicans by American Girl Dolls.
La Malinchista takes note on her 2.4.05 entry, and offers a different perspective on the obtuseness.
Tortilla Sandwich takes note of the hoopla offering AP articles and gives an update that Marisol is going to have to move even further out into the suburbs because of threats in the first suburb—for real.
You know, I wonder if I would feel more connected to this issue, and Marisol, if she was from East LA and not from Pilsen. I’d be one of those loud and mad Chicanas, definitely.
It’s the old narrative; the old crap Huntington played on us. America will always deem the unassimiliated as a threat. We will forever be treated as the Other in those crazy blue eyes…We are just to foreign for’em. Qué lástima no?
Cindy, I have to agree with you, I don’t know much about Pilsen, ‘cept for what I read about in the papers, I guess I would feel offended too if they wrote about my town.