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I’m officially declaring my love of Holly Valentine from Hyper Crush. I’m bummed that I missed their show last night in San Francisco. This video illustrates the difficulty of being a Latina hipster. No matter how much of an ironic hipster you are, being bilingual and code-switching is still a novelty that will get you mocked. You can see the look of inner-turmoil on Holly’s face as Preston and Donny clown her, it’s burning with angst and conflict.
Seriously though, I love Hyper Crush. I can’t front either, I mess with Mariela all the time when she speaks Spanish on the phone (especially with her mom). She and Holly both can code-switch like seasoned pros; I am merely a humble pocho.
Hyper Crush are also leading the charge in reclaiming the animated gif. Someone on their team has amazing gif making skills, the second one will give you a seizure:
Peace,
Rio
Graphic Art, Tortillas, Comics, and Troublemaking 
I can feel her pain…you always do that to me when I’m talking to my mom on the phone. Why do you feel compelled to embarrasses me when I speak in my Nicoya accent.
Pues, porque you sound like a different person on the phone and it’s both fascinating and hilarious. One minute you’re Mariela Thumas MSW and the next you’re Mariela la del barrio. It’s actually hella cute when you code-switch from English to abrasive Central American. ¡Te amo!
You’re just jealous cause you’re a Pocho! I love you.
the Chicanos are secretly and not so secretly jealous of our Centralamericaness. It’s okay. I’m jealous that they have a word to describe their hybrid identity without having use a word like Centralamericaness.
For the record, as a Chicano I am also jealous of Central Americans being able to instinctively fry any food and have it taste delicious. I mean, any Chicano can make rice and beans, but mastering fried rice and beans is a gift only belonging Central Americans.
Maya, is there such a thing as a Post-Central American? Chicanos get all the juicy identity politics first.
I don’t think we’re at a place where our identity and experience in the US has a “post” yet. We’re still carving out Central Americans in the US post civil war/peace accord politics. I mean we got our first Central American Studies at CSUN a few years ago and there are classes being taught in some universities. I wrote a poem about 10 years ago already that got some play and got written about called Central American-American which was really all about how we don’t have a better term to describe our “point five” and second generation experience. It’s weird because now that term is being used to describe us and there’s a certain poetic irony in that. Well I’m off to have just this type of discussion with some college students so I’m sure they’ll tell me how they see things. I’ll let you know what they say cause they are the real experts.
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