For the Brown Girls
Need a mood booster? A private rah-rah? A bright Brown voice that says being Brown is a good thing? Then read on for the Booster Deck story.
My Background
My Kindergarten self
1970
I'm a 2nd-gen Mexican American, no sabo kid. My paternal grandparents immigrated to the U.S. 100+ years ago from Aguascalientes, Mexico, and my maternal ancestry has roots in the area of the Southwest when it was still part of Mexico.
I, however, grew up in a predominately Mexican community in Southern California. Mine was the typical Catholic household: family-focused with frequent family gatherings, a traditional patriarchal upbringing, a multitude of siblings tripping over one another, parochial school, and mass every Sunday.
Additionally, we kids grew up very much aware of the lone Irish immigrant ancestor in our family tree, which, I know, subconsciously undermined our rich ethnic roots. It took me a lifetime to unpack what that meant to me, how I related to my family, and how white adjacency influenced my life choices.
Why the Booster Deck Exists
While the Booster Deck imagery features our younger selves, they hold messages meant for the woman we are now. Maybe as a girl she didn't have these words to guide her. Perhaps she couldn't hear them inside a chaotic or unsafe home. Possibly she was unseen and overlooked and had to figure things out on her own. Likely, she just absorbed the ugly words. Your woman self can now give her what she needed then: words of tenderness, support, and reassurance, especially if she is still influenced by past hurts.
I created the Booster Deck for other Mex-American women to change painful childhood conditioning, outdated narratives, and for those who grew up with the underlying belief that being Brown wasn't good. Living traditional values isn't necessarily the best path for our well-being. It's okay to deviate from it, to live and advocate for ourselves, to explore our options, to be proud of who we are in whichever way that is to us personally. It means choosing loyalty to self first.
I see you, Brown Girl. I am one of you. And we are not invisible.
