- Letter today.

- That's a nice looking letter.

- Yeah, it's very important on Sesame Street today.

- [Soledad] She's a beloved figure who taught children their ABCs and one two threes in English and Spanish.

(upbeat music) - I was the first Latina on national television who was allowed to be herself - [Soledad] As the first Latina actress on Sesame Street, Sonia Manzano's legacy didn't begin or end there.

Her story began in the South Bronx.

- We didn't feel we had to blend in.

We were the community.

Everybody was Puerto Rican, or coming from Puerto Rico or a Nuyorican.

- [Soledad] Today, she shapes young minds and shares her love for the South Bronx through books and an animated girl named Elma.

♪ So many questions, so much to explain ♪ ♪ Figure it out and then hop on the sixth train ♪ - I think that my first is opening the doors of children's television.

More diverse writers, more different cultures.

- [Soledad] This is Sonia Manzano, and she was first.

♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ ♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ (gentle music) - [Narrator] Major funding for this program provided by Felicia Taylor, a journalist who dedicated much of her life's work to honoring and celebrating the accomplishments of women.

(cheerful music) - And here's my favorite character.

- Oh.

- Oh, Oscar, I love you.

(Soledad laughs) I always say I left the show 'cause 44 years is long enough for me to wait for him to propose.

I'll just sit right by him.

- Oh, perfect, perfect, perfect.

- Yes, Oscar the Grouch, you rat.

- Hello, hi.

- Whoa.

(Soledad laughs) A speeding kid.

(both laugh) Well, one thing I've learned, you can't, you could be upstaged by a kid at any moment or a Muppet.

- Yes, yes.

Sonia's life and the character she played, Maria, were deeply entwined.

- I imagine that's why people relate to me and see me as a real person.

- [Soledad] That connection has always been central to Sonia's story.

And to understand where Maria ends and Sonia begins, you have to go back to where it all started.

The South Bronx.

(upbeat music) - I thought all Puerto Ricans loved music and could dance because in my community, everybody did.

I loved that every Friday, the guitars would come out around the kitchen table.

They would sing (speaks in foreign language), I love those songs.

- [Soledad] As US citizens, Puerto Ricans have always migrated back and forth from their Caribbean island.

From the 1940s to the '60s, a sudden great migration to New York City created more than one million Nuyoricans, including Sonia Manzano's parents.

- It was a little disconcerting when they would talk about the poverty that they escaped and everything was prefaced with (speaks in foreign language), the struggle.

They'd say, "How are you?"

(Sonia speaks in foreign language) They'd answer the phone.

(Sonia speaks in foreign language) You know.

And then they would bring out their guitars and sing these beautiful songs about this place they were just talking so badly about, you know?

And as a kid, I had never been to Puerto Rico.

- [Soledad] Sonia grew up in a home where hard work and music went hand in hand.

But beneath the music, there was another reality.

Tell me about your childhood.

- Oh, it was terrible.

It was ruled by domestic violence.

It was all about what was going on with my parents.

They would have battles, they would separate, we'd move, we'd run away.

One time we ran away in the middle of the night, there would be protective orders.

They'd make up.

This is my gorgeous mother with those shoes.

Ugh.

And that suit and her aunt on the rooftop.

And Puerto Ricans spent a lot of time on the rooftop.

- Those look great, I love your mother's, like, clothes.

- [Sonia] Oh, she was so stylish, her hair.

- She was complete hottie.

- She had gorgeous hair.

And when she got older, she was dying it a lot.

And I said, "Mom, if you keep dying your hair, you're gonna lose all of it."

And she said, "So what?

I enjoyed my long, beautiful hair long enough."

(laughs) It was confusing to me that my mother would stand for the treatment because she was so funny and much stronger than he was.

Yet she tolerated being abused by my father who drank and just would go into a rage and then not remember anything the next day.

I don't understand why she would tolerate that.

- [Soledad] Were there strategies you had to survive that?

- But I think that I found refuge in stories.

I could make stories out of anything.

I would look at the cracks in the ceiling and I could make a story out of the cracks.

(somber music) I love the subway 'cause it was going places.

My life was spent looking out the window at the Third Avenue El and it was like looking through a hole into the rest of the world.

And I wondered where those people were.

Did they know about me?

Was I ever gonna be in that world or stay in my own?

And I found comfort watching television.

"Father Knows Best," "Leave It To Beaver," all of those.

The stories always had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And they ended usually on an upbeat note.

I liked the order of it.

I don't know that I thought it was the perfect life 'cause there were things about my life that I loved that I didn't see it.

But I did like that it seemed unchaotic.

- [Soledad] Then came a movie that changed everything.

- Seeing "West Side Story" blew open the door for me.

Yes, it was seeing Rita Moreno.

Yes, it was seeing a Puerto Rican story.

♪ I'll get a terrace apartment ♪ ♪ Better get rid of your accent ♪ - I mean, Rita makes this gesture that's so Puerto Rican.

She's mad at her boyfriend when she goes, (groans).

(Sonia laughs) It was so typical to me.

But it was seeing the things that I saw in my neighborhood every day exalted.

All of a sudden I see the fire escape as a place of importance.

I had a fire escape.

And I realized on some level that that's what art was.

You take a banal thing and you exalt it.

Like we all have rotten flowers in our kitchen table at some point in our lives, right?

But when an impressionist painter paints it, generations come and see it.

And that's what made my life and my problems and my mother being beaten up by my father small because there was this.

- Was that a moment when you thought, I should be acting, I should be storytelling?

- I believe so.

- On the path to realizing her dream, Sonia was accepted into Manhattan School for the Performing Arts.

Her talent and determination carried her to Carnegie Mellon University, home to one of the most prestigious drama programs in the country.

You were in Godspell in college.

- [Sonia] Right.

- And then pretty quickly, you were off Broadway.

- And it was the first time I knew I could be funny when I did certain things and people would laugh.

And I'd say, mm, this feels pretty good.

So I got obsessed with Charlie Chaplin.

(laughs) The show came to New York, became a big hit.

And then "Sesame Street" happened.

♪ Can you tell me how to get ♪ ♪ How to get to Sesame Street ♪ - I'll never forget the first time I saw Sesame Street.

I loved it immediately.

At Carnegie Mellon University, I walked into the student union.

There on a black and white television is a very young skinny James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet in a very deliberate manner.

A, B. The letters flashed over his head.

I didn't know what it was.

I thought it was a show that taught lip reading or something like that.

And then when they cut to Susan and Gordon, I was absolutely thrilled because you never saw people of color on television in those days.

In this urban environment, you didn't see that a lot, never in a kid's show.

It was so real and I was just fascinated by it.

- How did you get to Sesame Street?

♪ Can you tell me how ♪ ♪ How I got to Sesame ♪ - I actually, that just popped into my head.

I wasn't thinking of that.

- Susan and Gordon, African American, were cast so that African American children would have someone to relate to.

Chicanos on the West Coast said, "You know, if you have representatives for the black community, you should have representatives for the Latino community."

Sesame Street said, "Okay."

And they just sent out a casting call.

There weren't any actors though.

I mean, I wish I could say I clawed my, hundreds of people showed up.

- [Soledad] It was you.

- It was me, Carla Pinza, and Priscilla Lopez.

And I got cast.

I'll give you a hint.

My name begins with this letter.

- It does?

- Yeah, and my name is Maria.

- [Soledad] In 1971, at only 21 years old, Sonia Manzano joined "Sesame Street," the first show ever to use TV to educate children.

She was the first Latina on the show and was one of the first Latina actresses in a leading role on national television.

- I'm proud that I speak Spanish.

It's such a beautiful language and it's a part of who I am.

And I realize on some level, people hire you so you can solve their problems.

They wanted to reach the Latino community.

They wanted Puerto Ricans to tune in.

They needed me to help them do that.

- [Soledad] Sonia brought her whole self to "Sesame Street."

The Bronx, the Puerto Rican roots.

- I noticed that the fruit cart had bananas and apples and oranges.

And I thought that if this was an ethnic neighborhood, it would have (speaks in foreign language).

And I went up to them and I said- - "Where are the (speaks in foreign language)?"

- Where were the... And they got 'em the next day.

So I diversified the first fruit part on natural television.

- Another first.

- Another first.

- [Soledad] And a way of speaking that didn't always follow the rules.

Because I'm a Nuyorican, I speak Spanglish.

And because "Sesame Street" gave me such freedom.

Do your thing, be yourself.

I started speaking Spanglish on the show, and I would say to Big Bird, "Meet me at Hooper so we could (speaks in foreign language)," for lunch.

Or, "Let's go to (speaks in foreign language)," for roof, or (speaks in foreign language) to park the car.

- Which sounds like it should be a word.

- Right.

(Soledad speaks in foreign language) (Sonia speaks in foreign language) - It should be a word.

- So the academics said, you know, "She's not speaking Spanish.

Those aren't real Spanish words."

And I said, "Of course they are.

My mother uses those words.

That is Spanish."

And you know, it reminds me of something that I wanna share and confess.

- We love confessions.

- Okay, great, true confession.

So I first get on "Sesame Street," one of the writers writes about Maria being from Puerto Rico.

Here I am in my hometown after all these years.

I'm back in the place where I was born.

I was born in Bellevue Hospital.

And I thought, oh, they think I'm from the island.

I better not correct them because if they think I'm from the island, I'll be more authentic.

And so I kept that to myself.

But why are we censoring ourselves?

So what?

I'm still, I am still who I am in whatever capacity that is.

In whatever degree it is, I'm an individual person.

I would complain about the Latino segments.

I would say, why is it always about food?

Why is it always about language?

Why is, you know.

So the producer, Dulcy Singer, brought me the curriculum notebook with all of the goals.

She says, "This is what we do."

And she says, "If you think you can possibly do some Latin bits, why don't you write them?"

- [Soledad] In 1981, Sonia became a writer on the show, helping shape stories from behind the camera with the same heart and honesty she brought to the screen.

- I mean, it was my memories of my life as a kid that I would put into all the stories.

(upbeat music) See, those houses were where my apartment was.

- [Soledad] What number are we looking for?

- This is it, 737.

- [Soledad] Oh, wow.

- Yes.

- [Soledad] So this is it, huh?

- [Sonia] This is it.

- What does it feel like?

- This is it.

- You can't even speak.

- I can't even speak, I'm speechless.

You know, it's always so, it's so different.

Like there was two women hanging out of these windows on pillows talking to people.

(upbeat music) And it was a vibrant community.

And I remember I told somebody once that my girlfriends and I used to sit on the cars.

He said, "You sat on other people's cars?

How is that possible?"

And we did that, you know, just hanging out.

We used to hang out in the streets when I was a kid in the summer.

And I had a cousin who lived right down the street.

Well, my parents at a certain time would say, "Okay, time to go upstairs."

While my cousin stayed out.

In my mind, the minute we left, my cousin did fabulous thing.

I don't know what happened, why I wanted to stay with them.

One time my mother says, "Okay, you could stay with the cousin."

They didn't do anything, they went home too in like 10 minutes later.

Very disappointing.

When I wrote for "Sesame Street," I made Big Bird wanna stay up with Susan and Gordon and not wanna go to bed.

- Come on, can I stay up a little while?

Please, please, please, please, please?

- All right.

But Big Bird, just for a little while.

- And Susan and Gordon watched the news.

- [Soledad] Once Sonia was on the writing staff, her life and Maria's began to mirror one another.

Sonia married her husband in 1986.

Two years later, Maria married Luis in one of "Sesame Street's" most beloved episodes.

And when Sonia became pregnant, Maria became a mother too.

- Wow.

- Aw.

- What's her name?

- [Maria And Luis] Gabriela.

- We wanna show that everybody has the same hopes and dreams.

They wanna fall in love, they wanna get married, they wanna have a baby, raise a child.

That had nothing to do with us being Latin.

- Did you feel like, oh gosh, I'm being put in this position of being a spokesperson.

- Right, who elected me president of Puerto Ricans?

You know, I don't know what everybody does or what everybody says.

So my fallback position was always do what I think, the way I see things.

And I think that when you operate from yourself and not think you have to represent the whole world, people relate to you more because women have come up to me who are blonde and blue eyed and come from different lifestyles and say, "I related to you so much.

You were exactly like me."

I go, "How was I exactly like you?"

But there you are.

- Right, right.

- So that's- - I think, 'cause that's authenticity, right?

What they're saying is, I felt that you were saying something that was universally true.

- Right.

- Sonia would play Maria for more than four decades, earning 15 Daytime Emmy awards for her work as a writer on "Sesame Street."

And in 2016, she was honored for the legacy she built on the show.

- I am thrilled to present the Daytime Emmy for Lifetime Achievement to Sonia Manzano.

- I just couldn't believe it.

And the fact that Rita Moreno gave it to me was really, really special.

If truth be Told, it all started with Rita Moreno and West Side Story when I was 11 years old.

To the point where when I got up there and I started thanking her, I went on so long about her that I heard her from off stage say, "Stop talking about me."

(Sonia laughs) I escaped a chaotic childhood by losing myself in the stories I saw on television.

And I grew up to be able to provide that same kind of comfort for children in similar situations.

Gracias, gracias.

(audience cheers) - [Soledad] Even after "Sesame Street," Sonia never stopped telling stories.

She's written nearly a dozen books.

- I read Frank McCourt's book, "Angela's Ashes," and Oh man, I was just so taken by that book 'cause it was the most miserable Irish American childhood you could think of.

And it was so funny though.

And I thought to myself, hmm, I had misery in my childhood.

I'm funny.

And then I wrote "No Dogs Allowed!"

Everything that I write is kind of based on something that happened to me or some memory that I had.

- [Soledad] And in 2021, Sonia returned to television with a new animated series inspired by her hometown.

- I could do things in Ohio, I could do things across the country.

But really look in your own backyard is more comfortable to me.

♪ It's Alma's Way ♪ ♪ Here she comes ♪ ♪ Beaming with pride and something to say ♪ ♪ From the Bronx ♪ ♪ Singing a le lo lei lei lo le ♪ ♪ Our island song ♪ ♪ Saying Alma's way ♪ - [Soledad] How would you describe the Bronx to somebody who doesn't know the Bronx?

- First of all, I think you have to bring them to the Bronx so they could really understand it.

But I think, I feel there's a juxtaposition of so many things.

There's a private house next to a mobile station- - [Soledad] Next to an apartment building.

- Next to an apartment building.

- Next to the auto places.

- Next to the auto place.

The people are just as juxtaposized.

It's the word like I feel, hibbity hibbity when I come to the neighborhood.

- Hibbity hibbity.

That's what you said.

- I think I try to find beauty in things.

So even this cars, highways, trains all in a congested area.

I've tried to tell the artists of "Alma's Way" to make attractive, because kids live here.

I wanted to to show the diversity of the community, the racial differences amongst Puerto Ricans.

And it's fun and it's joyful.

- Like real life.

- Like yes, yes.

And so if it's true about us that we are one group and there are so many different kinds of us, gee, do you think that's true about other groups as well?

- Yeah.

How do you think about activating the next generation?

- I think we're living at a time where there's no critical thinking.

People can't separate one idea from another.

People want rules to follow.

And I'm hoping that I can inspire kids to not do that necessarily, but to think of the world they wanna live with, not the world that's handed to them.

So the goal of "Alma's Way" is that everybody has a brain and everybody can think.

And that's simply the message of the show.

- That's it, I know what to do and who to ask.

- "Alma's Way" has earned major honors, including an NAACP nomination and two Imagen awards for its authentic portrayal of Latino life.

- I've opened up the doors being an executive producer on "Alma's Way," insisting that we have a lot of writers of color.

And the scripts are always richer.

I don't wanna be the gatekeeper, I wanna open it up so that other people can be in the realm of children's television.

- It's a love letter to the Bronx, to Puerto Rican families, and to community.

You talk about, you know, trying to get out of the Bronx.

- Yes.

- And then not only were you driving around the Bronx, but you spent so much of your life digging into helping out the Bronx and being in the Bronx and being the face of the Bronx and being a voice of the Bronx.

Kind of contradictory.

- Well, but I remember that I assumed that there were other kids like me going through what, you know.

And if I remember what that was like, why not anticipate those issues?

- [Soledad] Sonia's commitment to her hometown inspired her to create a space that reflects the dreams of children like her.

- [Crowd] Three, two, one.

- Cut it!

- Yeah!

(crowd cheers) - The Bronx, as you know, was the one borough that did not have a children's museum.

People got together and the Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, the other Sonia from the Bronx.

We worked together to get this brick and mortar museum.

You know, it took a long time, - [Soledad] A quiet reading nook named Sonia's Corner honors both Bronx-born trailblazers considered the godmothers of the museum.

Oh, there's your sign!

Yes!

We're here.

- I love it, I love it.

I'm gonna take a picture of this.

- Okay.

We are in the Bronx Walk of Fame.

Aha!

Is in the Walk of Fame.

I'm on the Walk of Fame.

And this was before 2004, before everybody wants to be from the Bronx.

- Wow.

Wow.

So you're a important icon, and you are, don't- - But thank you.

- Don't make that face.

- I know, I know.

- You are.

- Thank you.

- You are, the number of people I've told that we were doing this interview and they're like, "Oh, I love her."

- Thank you, thank you.

- Not everybody says that about everybody 'cause you're a big part of people's childhood in a lot of ways, you know?

- I think I came into their life when there were just learning and growing and I'm sort of like a catalyst.

- What do you want your legacy to be?

Do you ever think about that?

- Yes.

- You do.

- And I want it to be that, wow, when that show "Alma's Way" was on, there were 1,000 other shows just as diverse as that one.

That's what I'm hoping, that there's stickability to it that other people go and create other shows because they saw "Alma's Way."

- Sonia's story isn't just about breaking barriers, it's about turning pain into purpose.

She used her platform to help children and found healing too.

Because for Sonia, storytelling has never been about escaping the past.

It's about transforming it.

So many people that I've interviewed, really bad childhood, ruins them.

Ruins them, right?

They just never really recover.

And it seems like you took out of that a lot of strength and resilience and the thing that you're great at, which is telling stories.

- Don't think that it hasn't affected me though.

You always carry it, it's like a weight.

But imagine I was very young when I got on "Sesame Street," like 21.

I was becoming aware of the world and coming of age in a show that was doing the very same thing that was expanding the world to kids.

(Sonia speaks in foreign language) This is my spot.

I would sit up here like this.

It was easier to get up there in those days and have a scene with Oscar.

It was kind of doing my life as a do-over, you know?

Like it was my block as a kid.

It was like reliving my life, but a positive good one.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Major funding for this program provided by Felicia Taylor, a journalist who dedicated much of her life's work to honoring and celebrating the accomplishments of women.

(mysterious music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)