I use to hate living in the valley. I hated the desert. I hated the sand. Above all, I hated these mountains that when I was in fifth grade I learned created a "rain shadow" and this was the reason why we hardly received rain. I thought, as an impressionable adolescent who had already developed the inevitable angst of a first generation Latino, that it was absolutely necessary for me to move far, far away. Nothing was here, nothing grew, nothing flourished everything I felt I needed would die here with my spirit!

I was wrong.

Referring to Audrey Lordes' piece titled, "Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference, she discusses the idea of othering and how colored women's literature is often excluded from women's studies classes with the excuse that it is too difficult to understand and that there is no angle for white students to connect/relate. Looking past the clear absurdity of such a statement, I question: Why is the simple act of being empathetic or even just curious towards the struggles of another community not enough to heighten interests? Why should it not be prioritized for white students to be educated on the social, political and economical inequalities of poor, people of color? Lordes' example further supports my argument that the exclusion of Latinx women in areas of studies and positions of power is not only denying Latinx people the ability to fully progress in these areas in a social sense and change this narrative of being underdeveloped but also denies our older generation of Latinos the ability to evolve and see the changes being implemented by younger generations.

What is an amalgamation of years of architectural style, environmental conditions, and bright colors to retain the visual beauty of cities, has long persisted the changes of the rest of the country. Such houses has become a known symbol within the Mexican community.

The way such an architectural design can be up-kept through countless generations, the effects of the "Monopoly Metaphor" is also largely present within the Latinx community. The Monopoly Metaphor pioneered by Allan G Johnson within his article, "Patriarchy, the System (1997) An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us" explains how "the more attached we feel to the game and the more closely we identify ourselves as players, the more likely we are to feel helpless in relation to it." Thus, Latinx people as a whole with the recurrent degradation and exclusion from white legislatives, white led feminism, institutionalized racism, etc. many have grown tired in attempting to correct this image that we cannot prosper and make great changes to society. However, we are not just powerless pones within a made up cardboard world that is decided for us--there are changes to be made and we must extricate ourselves from this Monopoly Model to do so. As this pictures represents and as I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, Latinx people are ever changing, ever evolving and we as a comunidad demonstrate powerful qualities that hold great weight and are deeply powerful!