[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] Latinos [Music] means participamos en Los Angeles regionales facitor at student Productions productor independent like Historia inspirada history Luis Alberto orea foreign [Music] everything about my riding career had been against the odds movie extra cartoonist uh toilet scrubber donut cook yeah I'm a professor now it's pretty cushy you know it's a nice job [Music] I was born in Tijuana my father was Mexican my mother was American and they had met in San Francisco and he romanced her you know and swept her off her feet she was from New York and I think she believed she was going to go to a beautiful Hacienda in Mexico you know she ended up on a dirt street in Tijuana my parents would go to the United States every day to work and so I didn't really see them very much I spent my days with my grandmother aunts cousins so I learned Spanish before I learned English so Spanish was my first language we had a an outbreak of tuberculosis and people were dying all around us and and I got it I was quite ill I was I think it was probably going to die I was about four or four and a half and that's why we came to San Diego because they were trying to save me and uh so we settled in a in a in another barrio in southeast San Diego our Barrio was very uh explosive a lot of racial violence I you know it was it was at the turn of the Civil Rights era I was you know English was my second language a spot like this man I spoke Chicano I was you know talking Tijuana so here I was looking like an Irish white boy and you know everywhere I went I was in trouble in fourth grade uh we we left the sort of Border oriented part of town and moved up north to a little white working-class suburb so we left my dad's world and went to my mom's World in a lot of ways and um I I went to high school in college I was the first family member to go to college you know went through my life thinking Tijuana was cool and then I moved away from the Mexicans and found out that all the white kids around me thought Tijuana was filthy Mexicans were dirty my family was dirty Spanish was stupid I was shocked what what happened are you kidding do not ever tell people you had tuberculosis because it's shameful and dirty do not ever tell people that we were poor because it's shameful and never tell anybody you're from Tijuana lied because Tijuana everybody was ashamed of it and you know you grow up with these rules and then you realize that those are the strength later those things that caused embarrassment or shame and I think part of my job uh spiritually anyway aside from our writing career is to go and talk to lots of people who are carrying a lot of those shames my dad he was he was actually killed at the hands of Mexican police when I was a senior in college and um I was having a really hard time dealing with that I started doing relief work in Tijuana with a missionary group feeding the poor the Tijuana garbage dump and I spent years doing it and that is oddly enough partially what led to my going to Harvard also totally against the odds and the first book I wrote was called across the wire I don't think across the wire I wrote about that experience and it was rejected by every publisher in the country for 10 years and I remember one of the editors in New York told me nobody cares about starving Mexicans I'll never forget it and that seemed like a real curse at the time but that became the ultimate blessing because that gave me my agenda nobody cares about starving Mexicans I'll Make You Care urea's number one writing rule is where the bastard's down [Music] [Music] in addition to the Devil's Highway one of his non-fiction works being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Luis has received a land and literary award a Christopher award an American book awardee we've been hoping to host Louise Alberto Reyes since the day we opened probably we made uh pitches for every uh publication of every book we read his book in our in-store book club we wrote blogs about it um just whatever we could do to show that we're really enthusiastic did you shall I make it for her this is the beginning of my national book tour for the paperback of queen of America which is the sequel to the hummingbird star oh I'm Gonna Knock the queen down and it's the the story of my great aunt who was uh known as the Mexican the Mexican Joan of Arc uh the saint of cabora there were all these women who lived in the house power women people always talk about how I write books about women I have a lot of women characters and it's probably because of these powerful females that raised me we had this fantastic aunt tialetti and Leticia la flaca the skinny aunt and she was a remarkable character she she'd gone blind when I she was always squinting and smoking and she loves scaring us and she'd tell us these ghost stories and we would Gather in this house in Tijuana no heat cold dark and they used to have I don't know if you remember these kerosene tower heater it had Green Glass orange flame so it made this really ghastly light ghastly shadows and it made a continual Roar in the background we were all gathered one year and she came and you got to imagine this pitch black room with this Roar and suddenly her face appears above the heater lit from below with a squinty eye but in the midst of all that storytelling she starts telling me about it this ant you know you have a Yaki Indian ant S I do yes she heals the sick you know and she can raise the dead out of the grave and bring it back to life and she can fly cabron so I grew up with those stories and then I went to work as a bilingual ta at a community college in San Diego and the professor I was working for said yes you're a son of the saint aren't you and I said Son of the saint what saint the Saints I said oh the flying Yaki thing no no I said that's not true that's just a folk tale he said oh it's true and he had a textbook with a chapter about her and I xeroxed it and I didn't know that was going to begin a lifelong research project in uh 1995 I moved to Tucson because I thought if I'm going to write about Yaki people I should be near the Yaki people they changed my life and they made me experience things and see things I still have no explanation for I quit a million times and it was a very difficult process it was really hard hard living so all told the two books took me 26 years to write and I'll tell you what if they if you had told me at the beginning I would have not done it it's a lot too much work you know so the books meant much more to me than just books you know they weren't really uh career moves so much as the ultimate I felt Testament of not only my family's soul but This Woman's soul and maybe you know us as people there are a lot of young folks that are really deeply hurt really deeply uh painted by the endless anti-immigrant Vibe you see in the country which often turns into a kind of anti-latino rant that never lets up anti-mexican and that hurts kids and I just want to tell them you know you're beautiful your story is beautiful you're sacred your story is sacred [Music] is families epidemia foreign the Grupo says [Music] important information Alzheimer's the thing that was most agonizing to me was losing this giant of this man when I would talk to him and I would see that blanks there or when we would finish talking to long time friends and he would say mom who was that and I would say really and he said well I have no idea many times I just wanted to grab him and Shake him and say Ed I know you're in there I know you're in there you have to come out you have to come out but because of the progression of the of the of the Alzheimer's dementia that was impossible to me it was a very personal experience my husband now has been gone now for for five years it's been it was five years in May that that my husband passed for probably two or three years this is where I this is these were the caregiver of my husband I would drop them off here they would take care of my my husband two days a week I would bring him and I wouldn't have to worry I would drop them off and pick them up and knew that he was in the best hands we need to know that there's help there are resources to help you cope with this caregiving role that that people must must have first off Hispanics and Latinos right now are the most uninsured group in Wisconsin if you don't have health insurance that's obviously a barrier of going to the doctor but even if you do go to the doctor there are some barriers around getting a proper diagnosis many of the tools that the practitioners use are culturally biased they have language problems there's another barrier in that there's not enough clinicians in Hispanic practicing doctors and Clinics and that's one of the great stories of UCC and the Latino Geriatric Center because we're a national model now because we have broken that barrier we have dementia capable care for Latinos in Milwaukee that doesn't exist in some other parts of the country I think that if the person has concern about memory or if a family member especially has concern about changes in the loved one in the spouse or in the parent if that concern has to be addressed because one does not have to assume that we're dealing with a progressive Alzheimer's disease one does not have to assume that this is just normal aging because in the field of Alzheimer's we know that Alzheimer's disease is nothing but the end stage of a process that started probably 20 years earlier if not even further back so we need to intervene pharmacologically not when the person has Alzheimer disease but before otherwise we won't have enough time to make a difference it's a clear-cut disease you can see what it does to brain cells it destroys them so by the time a person is in the middle stages of Alzheimer's as much as 25 percent of their brain has actually been destroyed it's not there anymore so cure is a hard word because you'd have to figure out a way of not just replacing all those brain cells but replacing all those memories so the big goal in Alzheimer's is actually prevention to through research to come up with ways to identify it as early as possible even before the person is showing symptoms and then take steps that will push it off into the future five years ten years maybe allow people to avoid it 100 percent that's the goal of the research [Music] actually embargo Los estudios investigations tiene un Esperanza una cos important is thank you foreign [Music] says foreign [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign please family please contributions as a Dairy Farmer we are working with 7 000 Latinos Latinos are are essential they are here they're with us they're next to us they're working beside us and it's not just the dairy industry it's every industry that is throughout Wisconsin is [Music] we have friends and Neighbors they are family just like us and it is so very important that we fulfill the promise of immigration reform because they are waiting [Music] yes I know [Music] is Essentials families are with our families their kids are with our kids you are part of us there should never have been a divide we should all be together is President Biden he's got that planned build back better this is part of being built back better we need citizenship for all Pueblo General is is foreign [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] honest [Music] thank you [Music]