What I Learned from Dr. Martinez
Lessons from an amazing interview.
I was nervous about recording this one. Not because of who I was interviewing, but because I was trying something new. I recorded this conversation on location at a little park near my graduate alma mater UCSB. I came a little early to scout out the location, found a little bench in the middle of the grass, got my two camera (two iphone) set up figure out, and waited anxiously like I was on a blind date.
When my guest came walking up, she yelled, “Welcome to my back yard!” and we had a giant hug that we never got to have the first time we met. I got up both mic’d up, hit record on all the devices, and then we had an amazing conversation. It was so good that we stayed and talked for another hour or so after I stopped recording.
In my most recent episode of the podcast, I interviewed Dr. Amy Andrea Martinez, or Dr. Dre(a) as she is in my phone. I met Dr. Martinez while traveling. We both got stranded in the Denver, CO airport while our flight back to Santa Barbara got delayed multiple times, then we got on a plane, only to pull back in due to a malfunction, then our flight got cancelled entirely. We ended up becoming fast friends and trauma bonding through the experience. We got rooms at the same hotel and vowed to meet up again once we were back in California.
You can listen to or watch the entire interview on YouTube or your favorite podcast player. In this post, I’d like to reflect on a few key takeaways from the interview.
Embodied Culture
One of our elders brought an instructor from Chicago who was very well known and respected in the Dance Azteca community, and he gave us a whole workshop on gauges.
In our conversation, Dr. Martinez talks about how she grew up in Southern California with her parents who were immigrants from Mexico. Even though she was raised in California, she was always aware of her roots, both through the stories her parents told her and from her visits to Mexico to see family throughout her childhood. Interestingly, she talks about how she came to understand her Xicana and indigenous identities more through her experience as an undergraduate at UCSB.
It reminded me a lot of my conversation with Marcia Bonato Warren about embodied culture and code switching. In a way, it seems like Dr. Martinez had a felt-sense awareness of her indigenous roots, even before having the data to back it up. In the interview, she reflect on how she had always been drawn to gauged ears, and it was only later on that she came to learn about the ritual and importance of stretched ears in her indigenous culture.
We Had La Migra Talk
Most black families have to have the police talk with their kids. We had La Migra talk. You know, the ICE talk.
Dr. Martinez reflected on how her roots and her parents’ experiences influence the way she approaches her work as a professor. For example, she includes a service learning component to her courses, which has ruffled some feathers among students and other faculty. But for her, acknowledging the sacrifices her parents made and the reality of her own upbringing leaves her no choice but to be real.
She explained that since her parents were undocumented, they did not travel due to fear of what might happen to them. However, these topics were not discussed openly when she was a child. To this day, she has not gotten the full story, and it’s only through projects from Chicano studies classes that she had the opportunity to interview her family members and learn as much as she has.
Twenty-Five to Life
I’m trying to do this undergraduate degree so that I can get a job and buy my mom that house she deserves… but then arriving here it was like my life got rocked.
When Dr. Martinez was an undergrad, she found out that her younger brother was arrested in connection with an alleged gang-related stabbing, and he was facing the potential of 25-to-life. She explains the dramatic scene of walking into the room, seeing her mother on the ground bawling, and her family all gathered around before she was told by her cousin what had happened. Being pulled down to the ground to hold her own mother while she wailed over the arrest of her son is a memory that is forever etched into Dr. Martinez’s mind.
One thing that stuck out to me about her recounting of this story was just how it’s such a good reminder that you don’t know what the hell is going on behind the scenes for people. She was a great student, and she went back to classes after this. Somehow nobody took the time to ask her what was going on, and she was just expected to carry on her studies at the same exceptional level she had been previously.
I think we have all been there to some extent. Trying to focus on work or school while your world is crumbling in some way in the background. It’s sad to me that there isn’t more space and understanding for the ways in which life can interfere with the ability to play the game of school and work.
It Only Takes One Person
That changed everything because then he opened up to me about being formerly incarcerated in the juvenile hall system in Oakland himself and that he was gang-affiliated. I was like, “Whoa. How the hell did you get here?”
In a time when there is so much huge shit going on in the world, I truly think it’s important to remember the impact that a single person can make. I have heard so many stories where there is one figure in a person’s story that prompted them to change direction. Sometimes it’s a family member or a coach. In the case of Dr. Martinez, it was a professor.
In the interview, she shares an emotional memory in which she was honest with her professor about what was going on with her brother and the struggles she was having trying to stay engaged in school. This prompted him to share his own past as a formerly incarcerated person and his research with Chicano gang members in the community. Eventually, they developed a mentor relationship, and Dr. Martinez started her own line of research as a McNair scholar, which later evolved into her dissertation research.
I Don’t Know if I Want to Be Here Anymore
I loved life, but I didn’t want to feel this way anymore. I was drowning and no one was seeing me.
One of the most vulnerable moments from the interview is Dr. Martinez speaking about her experiences with depression. During her first year of graduate school, the best friend that she had made during college unexpectedly passed away. Dr. Martinez did not have the language to describe what she was going through at the time, but this clearly threw her into a depression.
She described sitting in classes and not being able to pay attention. She got C grades for the first time in her life, and she didn’t care. Nobody could see her. And this is why she tries to make a point to engage with each of her students as a professor. It can be tough to be engaged when there are so many individuals, but she has learned how important it can be to just be seen during your time of need.
Eventually, things got to a breaking point, and Dr. Martinez told her parents that she wasn’t sure she wanted to be alive anymore. The immediately told her to pack her things and come home. Coincidentally, when she got there, she discovered that another person she had known of died by suicide, which was a sobering reminder of the actual impact that someone’s death has on those left behind.
I’m Still Here
They saw that I wrote that, and then they walked up to me and said, “I’m glad you’re still here.”
After Dr. Martinez made the decision to stay, she began to be more open about her struggles with mental health. She explained how her openness invites openness from others, and that she had multiple students open up to her about their own experiences with suicidality.
Recently she decided to participate in an Out of the Darkness walk for people impacted by suicide and suicidality. She chose the color beads that corresponded to her own experience, and she was joined by two of her students. Dr. Martinez shared an amazing experience in which she went to the chalkboard to write a message and without even thinking wrote, “I’m still here.”
And I’m very glad that she is.
There’s So Much More
Dr. Martinez shares many more insights in this interview. Way more than I could write here. For the full experience, make sure you check out the entire thing. Thank you for your time!