Santillan Olmos, Crystal (Crystal)

 

Hola! My name is Crystal Santillan Olmos, preferred pronouns being she/her/ella. I am a third year undergraduate student double majoring in Chicanx Studies and Sociology, and am currently looking for different fields to have a minor in. I am a first generation college student coming from my hometown Long Beach, Ca hoping to pursue the opportunities given to me to attend UCLA. I plan to attend graduate school to obtain a Masters certificate in Social Work. I would like to explore the different careers I can pursue with my degrees as well as the different sides of those careers. Currently I am very interested in exploring medical social work. However, as my Chicana identity has become more expressive in the last years, I do wish to maintain that part of me whether it is through hobbies or an actual career if I decide to explore that way. My heart knows that I want to continue working with my Latinx communities. 

I enrolled in this course because of my growing love and expression for my Chicana identity and Mexican histories. I love to express myself through different forms of art such as painting and Folklórico dancing and Aztec dancing. I am looking forward to exploring what impacts art can have, even what impacts my own art can have. In regards to Venegas’ reading “Conditions for Producing Chicana Art”, I wanted to know about what conditions there were for us Chicanas. It became clear that Chicanas have not or are not entirely producing what they want to produce because of the social complications set upon them. For example, the Virgin de Guadalupe as talked about in the reading, has created this huge social image of what an ideal woman should be, look like, and how they should act, which is submissive, caring, nurturing, and a mother/ wife. Especially in our Mexican culture, she has been the ideal Latina. this makes it harder for all Chicanas to go beyond their boundaries and create the art that they desire, fearing it might be hated by society or rejected or ignored because it doesn’t show the ideal Chicana. I am looking forward to reading more and discussing more about these topics, and hopefully including my own art and ideas into the discussions.