Barrio Quotes
I was not really of the barrio, but the barrio was an important part of my life. Spanish was my first language; English was the language of my reading world. This was the world I lived in-an idealistic world, and unreal world that filled my senses with hopes, with joy and identification...
Estela Portillo-Trambley
The policy of affirmative action, however, was never able to distinguish someone like me (a graduate student of English, ambitious for a college teaching career) from a slightly educated Mexican-American who lived in a barrio and worked as a menial laborer, never expecting a future improved. Worse, affirmative action made me the beneficiary of his conditions.
Richard Rodriguez
Growing up in the Pico/Union barrio of downtown Los Angeles in the 1970's was to be born into abject poverty and violence. And even that fed into telling stories and finding ways of surviving. I can see now that I was always a playwright, I just didn't know or have the language for it then.
Luis Alfaro
Momen, as we childhood friends called him, had the combative fury of very few athletes. I recall very well the day that his older brothers took him to play in the kids' league at the Barrio San Antón School. He couldn't have been older than ten and was probably younger. Some of us were much older. For example there was his brother Matino, whose catches at first base were the sensation of the barrio. And Lorenzo, another brother, who gripped the bat cross-handed and whose line drives shook the zinc roof of the schoolhouse. And Andres, who threw underhand style. They were the Clemente brothers: Matino, Lorenzo, Andres, and Momen. All you had to do was look at Momen to know that he had been born to play baseball.
Roberto Clemente
