By Greg Hardesty, contributing writer
Since he was a child, Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr. has been writing.
It was a creative outlet throughout a challenging upbringing.
Eddy and his two sisters, Gaby and Patty, all children of immigrant parents, grew up on welfare and in subsidized housing.
Their Cuban father was mentally disabled, and their Mexican mother stayed home to take care of him when she wasn’t cleaning houses or hotel rooms.
But challenges didn’t stifle the creative juices in Alverez, who in addition to writing also considered acting before he discovered his sweet spot in academia.
Now, the associate professor in CSUF’s Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies is celebrating a first.
Based on his research into queer Latinx communities in Los Angeles (Eddy grew up in the San Fernando Valley), his exhibition continues its run (Aug. 24 through Jan. 28, 2024) at the Museum of Social Justice in downtown Los Angeles.
“Finding Sequins in the Rubble: Archives of Jotería Memories in Los Angeles” is the museum’s first LGBTQ-focused exhibition. It also marks Alvarez’s first time curating a public history project. And he had some help from students in two of his classes.
“It’s been very scary because I have so much love for my communities, and it’s been lots of work,” says Alvarez, a member of the queer Latinx community of L.A., “but it’s also been so much fun and a very memorable experience.”
Reclaimed empowerment
Write your words
to leave a legacy, a history, a herstory, a queerstory,
so that your words may create paths to follow,
Recipes for self-love, self-healing, survival.
The above is from Alvarez’s poem, “Write Your Words,” and he views the exhibition as a form of poetry.
“It’s a love letter to jotería communities in L.A. and everywhere,” says Alvarez, referring to the word derived from the derogatory terms Joto and Jota that historically have been used to describe people of Mexican descent who do not fit…
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