Tag: Stories

storytelling, Women's History Month

Celebrating Women’s History in Your Own Family

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Top: Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jovita Idar, Maya Angelou
Middle: Gerda Lerner, Gloria Steinem, Winona La Duke, Lillian Hellman
Bottom: Betty Soskin, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, Marjory Stoneman Douglas ​

This month, you’ll read several magazine covers, blogs, and social media posts highlighting WHM. The purpose is to increase awareness and recognize the achievements of women in all areas of life.

But Women’s History Month isn’t just about famous women.

We can all play a role in celebrating women’s history by making it personal.

What might we discover from the stories of our own mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers?

What did they experience or participate in? What stories do they have to tell?

My mother loves to tell stories. Just a couple of questions can lead her to talk about her experiences during WWII or her mother’s story of fleeing the Mexican Revolution. Yesterday she told me about standing up to a hiring foreman who wouldn’t comply with union rules. She was afraid to do so, but losing out on a job was more frightening than speaking up.

Imagine what your great-grandmother, grandmother, older aunts, or friends can share.

By learning about their lives and the challenges they faced, we can better understand our lives and the opportunities we have today.

We can share these stories with our children, helping them understand their own family history and their ancestors’ legacy. By recognizing the strength and accomplishments of women in our own families and other backgrounds, we can help build higher self-esteem among girls and greater respect among boys and men.

Sometime this month, sit down and share your own stories, your mother’s stories, or her mother’s stories. Their stories can reveal a wealth of information about the experiences of women throughout history.

By exploring these stories, we can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges women have faced, their sacrifices, and their progress. Plus, this is an opportunity to pull out photo albums and those boxes of pics in the closet or attic and tell the story behind the picture.

Let your family hear about their adversities, their values, and the triumphs of women who are important to them every day, not just one month out of the year. 

Each time a girl opens a book and reads womanless history, she learns she is worth less.

Myra Pollack Sadker

Tell me a story in the comments.

Latino culture

The A to Z Challenge: Y and Z

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Enough (in Spanish, YA), photo by Rux Centea for unsplash.com

Last day of the A to Z Challenge: Today is Y and Z: YAY!

That’s a Y but we’re concentrating on Spanish words for this challenge.

Y is for “Ya” which means Enough, or Already, or “Enough already.”

When a Spanish speaking parent didn’t want to hear their kids continuing to ask/beg/argue for something, they’d say

“Ya!” or” Ya pues.” 

Z is the last letter in Spanish too. The letter is pronounced “Zeta.”

Z is for Zanahoria: Carrots.

The Spanish “z” is pronounced differently in Spain than in Latin America. In Spain, it is pronounced like the “th” in the English word “think.” In Latin America, it’s pronounced like the letter “s.”

This is a word I frequently mispronounce as Zanoria, which I chalk up to my lazy tongue.

My favorite way to eat zanahorias? Roasted street carrots from Lazy Dog Restaurant.

Roasted Street Carrots from Lazy Dog Restaurant.

 

This recipe is a twist on Mexican street corn using organic rainbow heirloom carrots, garlic, queso blanco, cilantro lime crema, and Tajin. Tastes as delicious as they look.

In June I’ll travel to Spain and need to remember to use the “th” sound for zanahoria’s and not the “s,” or I may be served something else on my plate other than carrots.

Thank you for visiting and sharing. photo by hanny naibaho, unsplashcom

 

Taking on the challenge, and finishing, has resulted in little stories that I’d forgotten and reminded me that I need to learn more “proper” Spanish.

I’ve enjoyed visiting different countries and hearing stories through the A to Z challenge: France, Mexico, India, Germany and several states in the USA.

Thank you to everyone who connected with me here. I’ve followed a few blogs and look forward to reading your stories.

Gracias!