Speaker 1: I had never seen anything written about party crews, especially
Speaker 1: in the Eli Weekly. I mean, most media, especially at
Speaker 1: the time, was very white centric and not really covering
Speaker 1: Latino communities. So here was the story that was really
Speaker 1: about these young women of color, these Latinas, and then
Speaker 1: about this whole culture, this whole underground culture. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the culture that we were listening to on the radio
Speaker 1: or like watching on TV. This was like totally underground,
Speaker 1: even though it was huge. From My Heart's Michael Dura Podcast, Network,
Speaker 1: Vice and Elias Studios, this is Party Cruz, the Untold Story.
Speaker 1: I'm Janis Yamoca. In this bonus episode, I talked to
Speaker 1: writer Caribbean Fragosa. Caribbean Fragosa is a writer, editor, and
Speaker 1: co founder of the South Elmante Arts Posse, an arts
Speaker 1: collective based out of her hometown South and Monte She
Speaker 1: also co edits Boom California, a cultural journal published by
Speaker 1: the University of California Press. Most of her work is
Speaker 1: focused on Latin X women and girls whose narratives aren't
Speaker 1: always portrayed in the mainstream. I first came across her
Speaker 1: work because of a short story she wrote for Bomb
Speaker 1: Magazine in twenty fourteen. It was titled The Vicious Ladies,
Speaker 1: and it was inspired by the news coverage surrounding Emery
Speaker 1: Munos's real life party crew. The short story was eventually
Speaker 1: published in her twenty twenty one debut collection of stories
Speaker 1: titled Eat the Mouth That Beats You. Caribbean was actually
Speaker 1: never in a party crew herself, and she grew up
Speaker 1: in the nineties, a different generation than mine. But I
Speaker 1: felt very seen by her short story, and that's part
Speaker 1: of why I wanted to talk to her. The way
Speaker 1: I see it, her work captured the spirit of an
Speaker 1: all girl party crew, so I wanted to understand what
Speaker 1: drew her to write about the scene. Like me, she
Speaker 1: grew up in the Sangebreel Valley, so I also wanted
Speaker 1: to understand how her own personal experiences shaped how she
Speaker 1: writes about the coming of age experience. What was your
Speaker 1: familiarity with party crews growing up? My familiarity was always
Speaker 1: from the outsider perspective. I'm member in middle school in
Speaker 1: particular seeing flyers getting distributed around or seeing posters up.
Speaker 1: But really the flyer is something that I saw all
Speaker 1: around me, and it was just part of like the
Speaker 1: visual culture that I was swimming in and I was
Speaker 1: very interested in them, but I was too young to
Speaker 1: go back and the time, and there was no way
Speaker 1: that my parents were gonna let me go. And then
Speaker 1: as I got a little older, some of my friends
Speaker 1: were going to these backyard parties or house parties or
Speaker 1: ditch parties. And there was a little tiny part of
Speaker 1: me that did want to be like a tough girl,
Speaker 1: sort of Chola, and did want to go out to
Speaker 1: the parties and do whatever I wanted, and I did
Speaker 1: want to belong. I did want to feel like I
Speaker 1: was with my homegirls, but I wasn't going to go
Speaker 1: because I needed to get an a in whatever and
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to fall behind. And then also my
Speaker 1: mom would kill me. And you know, my mom was
Speaker 1: to stay at home mom, and she would find out.
Speaker 1: There was no way that I could ditch without her
Speaker 1: finding out. Fast forward to two thousand and seven, Caribbean
Speaker 1: was fresh out of grad school and it was around
Speaker 1: that time that she read an article in Ellie Weekly
Speaker 1: called Flying High with the Vicious Ladies by writer Christine Palisk.
Speaker 1: Reading about the crews of my generation in a published
Speaker 1: magazine made her start thinking about being a team again
Speaker 1: and about the tough girls she knew, the ones that
Speaker 1: went out to parties, and eventually she would write her
Speaker 1: own short story around the themes that interested her. To me,
Speaker 1: they represented, I guess, a freedom that I didn't have,
Speaker 1: because I knew it was very youth led and it
Speaker 1: was a space for young people to sort of do
Speaker 1: what they wanted to do, whatever that was, and dress
Speaker 1: how they wanted to dress, and just be free, and
Speaker 1: that was something that was interesting to me. I was really, really,
Speaker 1: really compelled by the idea of creating that a party
Speaker 1: crew for only girls and women had been created, and
Speaker 1: actually the whole scene, the whole party crew, from what
Speaker 1: I saw and what I've learned over the years, was
Speaker 1: really like a business really driven by young people or
Speaker 1: like adults, but not very old adults. Was really interested
Speaker 1: in sort of the di wyeness of the party crew scene,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking a lot about how we many
Speaker 1: of us have to, especially as creatives, have to create
Speaker 1: our own paths professionally. We have to find ways to
Speaker 1: hustle and make money. Her short story, The Vicious Ladies
Speaker 1: follows a young woman who goes back home after graduating college,
Speaker 1: and she finds herself hanging out with the people from
Speaker 1: her past, the party crew she left behind. The imagery
Speaker 1: in the story was so vivid to me. Caribbean describes
Speaker 1: doing nas as a clandestine baptism and flyers in the
Speaker 1: air as multi colored snow. I also found that in
Speaker 1: some ways I related to the main character too. In
Speaker 1: the story, the main character returns to the party crew
Speaker 1: scene and doesn't feel like she belongs. When I started
Speaker 1: reaching out to old party crew friends, one of my
Speaker 1: guy friends told me, I thought you were too good
Speaker 1: for us. He said it in a jokey tone, but
Speaker 1: I knew he meant it. It felt like her story
Speaker 1: hit close to home. Caribbean tells me that the main
Speaker 1: character is also a version of her as a young person.
Speaker 1: How did you feel growing up in Yeah? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I felt very at home because that was the
Speaker 1: only home I'd always known. Everybody looked like me, talk
Speaker 1: like me, sounded like me. Like we're all like these
Speaker 1: working class Mexican Mexican American kids with immigrant parents bilingual.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, I was just like everybody else.
Speaker 1: But I was also always a misfit. I was like
Speaker 1: a nerd girl, and I was always proud of it.
Speaker 1: I was never ashamed or embarrassed about being like a
Speaker 1: nerd and loving literature, loving art. I was always interested
Speaker 1: in in culture, and I was very ambitious. I was
Speaker 1: I wanted good grades. I wanted to go to college.
Speaker 1: Like I grew up with that messaging that college is
Speaker 1: the key, education is the key, and so I made
Speaker 1: sure to really get those grades. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: the top, the best. And for those reasons, it really
Speaker 1: put me at odds in different ways with my classmates
Speaker 1: and with my peers around me, because they were looking
Speaker 1: at the world, in their place in the world differently.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? I think many people
Speaker 1: in our generation understood the message that education is the key,
Speaker 1: going to college is the way to in some ways
Speaker 1: do better or more than our parents had done or
Speaker 1: had been doing. Especially as the children of immigrants, we
Speaker 1: have this expectation and this pressure to do more to
Speaker 1: make that dangerous migration across the border worth it. And
Speaker 1: I certainly grew up with that, and I knew that,
Speaker 1: even though it was unspoken among my peers, like we
Speaker 1: all shared that expectation. We knew that we were supposed
Speaker 1: to progress quote unquote and make good on the American dream,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't clear to us how to do that.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, a lot of people that I
Speaker 1: knew didn't end up going to college. Certainly a bunch did,
Speaker 1: but not everybody, And so the working class way of
Speaker 1: living continued for a lot of my friends that became
Speaker 1: adults and raised children of their own. Hearing you say
Speaker 1: like that like unspoken. It's almost like an unspoken pressure
Speaker 1: that you have. And like my mom was always I mean,
Speaker 1: as an adult, she's always told me, like you need
Speaker 1: to be better than me, which hurts, but at the
Speaker 1: same time I kind of understand, like I know she
Speaker 1: wants or me to be, like she wants to push me.
Speaker 1: But it also fell at that time like so like
Speaker 1: impossible to like carry for me, at least being sixteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: it was just like a lot of weight. There was support,
Speaker 1: and then there was of course pressure, and then there
Speaker 1: was like the unknowingness, the not knowing really what your
Speaker 1: future was supposed to look like. Right, there's supposed to
Speaker 1: be bright, and it's supposed to be great, and you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be free of financial insecurity, But how does
Speaker 1: that work out? Specifically was never really articulated and it's
Speaker 1: something that I think many many of us and generations
Speaker 1: younger than us, have really been trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: like how do we make it? How do we survive
Speaker 1: in this world that is supposed to be ours and
Speaker 1: it's not, And it just seems to be getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder to survive, especially as people of color, and
Speaker 1: Caribbean specifically hones in on the expectations placed on women.
Speaker 1: As a young woman, I really and as a girl
Speaker 1: really at a very young age, I felt that pressure.
Speaker 1: I think that's what weighed on me the most, the
Speaker 1: gendered expectations of what it means to be a girl
Speaker 1: and what it means to grow into a woman and
Speaker 1: what that looks like. And as the child of Mexican immigrants, like,
Speaker 1: there's very specific expectations of what a girl and a
Speaker 1: woman should look like, what we should behave, like, what
Speaker 1: kinds of things we should and should not do, And
Speaker 1: so I felt those things really weigh on me a lot.
Speaker 1: I constantly found ways to push against that. So I
Speaker 1: was always and still am like a kind of tomboy.
Speaker 1: Caribbean says that adopting a tomboy identity served as a
Speaker 1: literal and figurative guardrail from society as a woman, I
Speaker 1: felt like sort of disguising my more feminine aspects under
Speaker 1: baggy clothes or dark clothes and hoodies and baggy pants
Speaker 1: like made me look maybe a little bit like a hoodlum.
Speaker 1: But also I felt protected and I was able to
Speaker 1: move around in the world a little at least a
Speaker 1: tiny bit more. See. It seemed to me it's interesting
Speaker 1: hearing your um, like how you were kind of coming
Speaker 1: to terms of understanding your own femininity, because I feel
Speaker 1: like I kind of went to complete opposite. I was like,
Speaker 1: let me be like hyper sexual, like let me show
Speaker 1: off my curves, let me show off my legs. My
Speaker 1: family's religious, so like I was fighting against that. My
Speaker 1: style of dressing was like crop tops and tiny tink
Speaker 1: tops and like, wow, it was fashion. Like I was
Speaker 1: still like I'm gonna do it because I can't do it,
Speaker 1: you know, like because they won't let me or because
Speaker 1: they think whatever. Right, It's like i'mm was like, you
Speaker 1: can't drink out of the like a beer bottle, and
Speaker 1: I was like what I remember I always used to
Speaker 1: get like these unsolicited tutorials on how to walk like
Speaker 1: a lady. From my DEAs and you're supposed to move
Speaker 1: your hips like this, and you're supposed to stand straight
Speaker 1: like that, And then on purpose, I would sort of
Speaker 1: like slouch and I would just kind of carry myself
Speaker 1: like this angry little tomboy in the world. And then
Speaker 1: I sort of kept that up throughout college to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, like as I tried to find my own
Speaker 1: version of femininity, like what is being a girl and
Speaker 1: what is it being a woman feel like? And what
Speaker 1: feels right to me. We'll be right back. Look more
Speaker 1: from Caribbean Ferragosa. Welcome back. I'm speaking to writer and
Speaker 1: artists Caribbean Fragosa. As a writer, Caribbean tells me that
Speaker 1: when it comes to telling Latin stories, she feels it's
Speaker 1: important to be constantly challenging the norm and inviting in
Speaker 1: new ideas and voices. I just wanted to know what
Speaker 1: is a typical Chicano story. Well, I think the Chicano
Speaker 1: stories are often about family and about community. And I
Speaker 1: know I write about family and I write about community.
Speaker 1: But there's certain like tropes that I find interesting and
Speaker 1: then also maybe in need of of rethinking. And I
Speaker 1: know that for example, like the Aulita character is one
Speaker 1: in particular that has struck me, like there's always an
Speaker 1: auelita that is like sweet and making tortillas for you
Speaker 1: and this and that. But for me, I love my grandma.
Speaker 1: But my grandma did not fit that sort of stereo
Speaker 1: type of the aguelita. Like my Mayaguelitas were never that.
Speaker 1: They were very strong and angry and um express their
Speaker 1: affection and these really strange, sort of aggressive ways for
Speaker 1: me and um, like my grandmother when she when she
Speaker 1: wanted to express affection to me, she would say, and
Speaker 1: I knew that was an expression of love. Like I
Speaker 1: knew that was aggressive, but I knew that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my grandma loves me. Because she holding space for women
Speaker 1: to be themselves in any way that feels natural, whether
Speaker 1: their grandmother's, teens or writers is important to Caribbean. Drawing
Speaker 1: inspiration from party crews, she established an online culture and
Speaker 1: literary zine for writers. Why did you name your magazine
Speaker 1: the Vicious Ladies? Well, I named it the Vicious Ladies
Speaker 1: because I had published this story, The Vicious Ladies, which
Speaker 1: was directly inspired by the actual Vicious Ladies, and I
Speaker 1: felt like over the years I had built like an ethos,
Speaker 1: like a real commitment to not just telling the stories
Speaker 1: of women and girls and writing about artists that are
Speaker 1: women and girls and in fiction also, but through the
Speaker 1: publication and Vicious Ladies, which is a sort of online
Speaker 1: magazine of cultural criticism, really trying to create safe space.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about how I could do it, maybe
Speaker 1: not as an actual like party crew, which is not
Speaker 1: my thing, but maybe through my thing, which is writing,
Speaker 1: especially for younger and emerging writers to enter and start
Speaker 1: producing their own bylines. But then I'm also interested in
Speaker 1: intellectual and creative safety, and by that I mean creating
Speaker 1: or having a space in which people of color can
Speaker 1: develop their own sort of decolonized way of speaking of
Speaker 1: viewing the world, developing a voice as a writer, as
Speaker 1: an intellectual that is unique to us, that can be
Speaker 1: bilingual if it wants to be, that can draw on
Speaker 1: a whole set of cultural references that are not just
Speaker 1: white centric or eurocentric. I guess for me, when I
Speaker 1: think about like another safe space, think about where you
Speaker 1: can be free or feel like yourself the most. Whether
Speaker 1: it's like safe to dance like no one's watching, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of just like be free with your body
Speaker 1: and like move and like no one's judging, right. I
Speaker 1: had this experience where I didn't create the safe space,
Speaker 1: but I sort of felt safe unexpectedly, and there was
Speaker 1: a like a like a little DJ collective or something
Speaker 1: like that, and they just threw like a party at
Speaker 1: some dive bar, like a dirty, ugly little dive bar
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood. And I had never gone into that
Speaker 1: bar before because it was just like by size, all
Speaker 1: men like and everybody's drinking like bud light or cores
Speaker 1: and like that's it and like no women ever, So
Speaker 1: I'd never gone in there. And they threw like a
Speaker 1: party there and I came and I felt good because
Speaker 1: there was a whole crew of them. And then they
Speaker 1: started playing all these songs from like the eighties, like
Speaker 1: from when I was a kid, or early nineties, like
Speaker 1: Mexican pop like Magneto and Flan and all these like
Speaker 1: things thembidice, and then I just felt like, oh, like
Speaker 1: we can just dance here, like we can just be
Speaker 1: So I felt like really healed, even though I was
Speaker 1: like a whole grown ass woman with like kids and everything,
Speaker 1: partying with these like twenty something year olds listening to
Speaker 1: music from my childhood, and I just felt like my
Speaker 1: like inner baby Caribbean was being healed beyond safe space.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is seeing the way Caribbeans work preserved a
Speaker 1: moment in time. Even though it's her interpretation, I still
Speaker 1: feel like it brought the scene a lie from me again,
Speaker 1: and it made me feel like what we experienced was
Speaker 1: important and worthy. When people make art, or write stories
Speaker 1: or even share old pictures, experiences can become more. They
Speaker 1: become a collective memory, a collective history, and that history
Speaker 1: is what helps us look back process our experiences, not
Speaker 1: just as individuals, but as people living in a society
Speaker 1: that doesn't value young women of color. I feel like
Speaker 1: Emory's story is just it still repeats itself. I feel
Speaker 1: like I read about it too often, in particular too
Speaker 1: indigenous women who are murdered or disappeared. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: like the women along the border, I'm thinking about documented women.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about women all over throughout the Americas and
Speaker 1: beyond where violence is inflicted. I mean Neonamas, the women
Speaker 1: in Mexico, particular Mexico City, that are really speaking out
Speaker 1: against violence against women. This is something that continues still today,
Speaker 1: and it's still not being addressed efficiently, and I feel
Speaker 1: like we need to keep pressing on with that. And
Speaker 1: I still want to encourage myself and other women to
Speaker 1: keep pushing to keep being rebellious no matter where you're at,
Speaker 1: whether you're a married mom with kids, whether you're like
Speaker 1: a young person graduating from college, whether you're a teenager.
Speaker 1: I think we all have to be in dialogue with
Speaker 1: each other across generations. We can all learn from each other.
Speaker 1: Like unfortunately, there's still violence, and we still have to
Speaker 1: shape the world in a way that is going to
Speaker 1: protect us and allow us to grow and change the
Speaker 1: world in ways that are good for us. Why is
Speaker 1: it important for us to look back? What do you
Speaker 1: think it is that pulls us back to our youth,
Speaker 1: even if we don't think we want to like revisit
Speaker 1: that time. Well, I think there's a lot from our
Speaker 1: youth and from the places that we grew up that
Speaker 1: needs to be examined, and nobody else is gonna examine
Speaker 1: it and think of it in the careful terms that
Speaker 1: it requires as much as we do. And there's a
Speaker 1: whole generation or a couple generations now that are turning
Speaker 1: back to their community to learn about what is valuable,
Speaker 1: what is useful? What do we keep? But then a
Speaker 1: question that I always return to is not just what
Speaker 1: do we keep and what do we value, but also
Speaker 1: what has to be thrown out and what does not
Speaker 1: serve our communities? And so for one like homophobism or
Speaker 1: like machismo, those are things that do not serve us.
Speaker 1: So I think that it is valuable to sort of
Speaker 1: re examine our youths and re examine the places that
Speaker 1: we grew up in and figure out how we can
Speaker 1: build productively for our communities and for our future generations.
Speaker 1: My last question is what kind of party crew would
Speaker 1: you have joined if you could? I think my party
Speaker 1: crew would have been more like new wave like, sort
Speaker 1: of gothy, maybe punk, kind of mix um with a
Speaker 1: lot of Cumbias in there somehow I'm not sure how,
Speaker 1: and uh a lover of Mexican pops of Mexican pop
Speaker 1: in there. You have to give yourself a name on
Speaker 1: the spot. What would your crew name be? Oh, my god,
Speaker 1: last Jamaicas. I don't know, Las Jamaicas. Thank you so much, Caribbean,
Speaker 1: this is great. Thank you. That was writer and artist
Speaker 1: Caribbean Ferragosa. This episode was written reported and hosted by
Speaker 1: me Jennie Jamoca. It was produced by Marina Penga, Victoria
Speaker 1: Lejandro and Sofia Pelissa Carr. It was edited by Antonia
Speaker 1: Sehido and Any Abilis, fact checking by Nidia Bautista. Sound
Speaker 1: design and original music composition by Kyle Murdoch. Our supervising
Speaker 1: producer is Janet Lee, Art by Julie Ruiz and Victoria Kyon.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer from Vice Audio is Kate Osborne. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers from Elias Studios are Antonia Siedl and leog
Speaker 1: Our Vice president of Podcasts from Elias Studios is Shane
Speaker 1: and Naomi Krocmo Party Crews. The Untold Story is a
Speaker 1: production of Elias Studios and Vice Audio in partnership with
Speaker 1: Ihearts Michael Tura podcast Network. For more podcasts, listen to
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. Special thanks to the UCLA Department of
Speaker 1: Communication Archive for access to their news collection. And Hey,
Speaker 1: were you and a party crew? Send us your party
Speaker 1: flyers or photos. I'd love to see them, even a
Speaker 1: voice message about your memories. Anything. You can send us
Speaker 1: a message or a picture at party cruise app at
Speaker 1: Elias Studios dot com. Support for this podcast is made
Speaker 1: possible by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that quality
Speaker 1: journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This
Speaker 1: program is made possible in part by the Corporation for
Speaker 1: Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.