Cristela Alonzo - Music to My Years: A Mixtape Memoir of Growing Up and Standing Up

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Copyright 2019 by Cristela Alonzo

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First Atria Books hardcover edition October 2019

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Interior design by A. Kathryn Barrett

Jacket design by James Iacobelli

Jacket photograph Koury Angelo/Dayreps

Author photograph Koury Angelo/Dayreps

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Alonzo, Cristela, author.

Title: Music to my years : a mixtape memoir of growing up and standing up / Cristela Alonzo.

Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019019265 (print) | LCCN 2019980326 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501189203 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501189210 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501189227 (ebook other)

Subjects: LCSH: Alonzo, Cristela. | Women comediansUnited StatesBiography. | Hispanic American comediansBiography. | Children of immigrantsUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC PN2287.A544 A3 2019 (print) | LCC PN2287.A544 (ebook) | DDC 792.702/8092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019019265

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980326

ISBN 978-1-5011-8920-3

ISBN 978-1-5011-8922-7 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to the people who have worked in the fields, picking the food we eat. The people who clean houses, take care of children, and work in restaurants. To every person who has worked in a job that sometimes makes them feel invisible, I want you to know that not only do I see you, but I am a child who comes from someone just like you.

People like me get to live out their dream because of people like you who have sacrificed their own dreams in order to let their future generations have a chance at life.

Gracias.

Thank you.

I m sitting in my living room, having just finished a bag of Flamin Hot Cheetos that I dipped into melted nacho cheese. My fingers are stained from that weird (yet delicious) red coating that makes me look like I just murdered someone with my bare hands. And I cant help but think, Cristela, this is NOT how you write a book. Unless its a guide to murder.

I have to be honest, if you had told me when I was a kid that I would ever attempt to write a book, I wouldve said, Get away from me, stranger. I dont know you. And the truth is that this is not really a book, per se, but a brand spanking New Testament. You read that right. Ive decided to write a new Bible. I figured since we seem to be remaking old TV shows and movies, why not reboot the Bible and update it for what people are into nowadays? Lets add more explosions; maybe a car chase?

Im kidding. I was raised very Catholic: I dont know anything about the Bible.

So why am I writing a book? It was inevitable. Im one of the few Latina stand-up comedians that get to travel the country and live their dream. I made TV history by becoming the first Mexican American woman to create, produce, and star in her own network TV sitcom, Cristela (named after me, of coursenot some other Cristela). I was also the first Latina lead in a Disney-Pixar release when I got the opportunity to voice the character of Cruz Ramirez in a little movie called Cars 3. My life is now filled with mansions and limos. Im living the life of a Brown Barbie. Isnt that exciting? I know, I am SO successful!

Kidding again. The closest I get to living in a mansion is being able to afford all the brand-name cereal I wantand that is EXACTLY where I am happy being. I consider my journey a success story because I chased after my dream and accomplished it. And how many people can say that? People ask me how Ive been able to do what Ive done, and the answer is always the same: I have no clue. I mean it. There is no map I can give people to show them my path. I am not Dora the Explorer, even though if you saw childhood pictures of me, you would think otherwise.

I was raised in a tiny town in south Texas, on the USMexico border, by a Mexican immigrant woman who had a second-grade education and a PhD in spankings.

Life wasnt easy. I grew up really poor. I know a lot of people say they grew up poor, but my family lived well below the poverty line for decades. You know how some kids would play The floor is lava? I would play The floor is a real floor that doesnt have holes! I used to watch extreme home makeover shows and wish my family could one day live in a house that looked like the before picture.

For most of my childhood, I was a latchkey kid. It was vital I get home immediately after classes. I wasnt allowed to go outside and play because my mom didnt think it was safe. I couldnt spend time with my friends after school and had to spend my life indoors. I had to create my own world filled with friendships that would fit the constraints I had been given. Little did I know I would find the best friend I was yearning for inside my house.

This friend was perfect for me because I could pick whenever I wanted to spend time with it and ours was the kind of friendship my mom approved of. I didnt have to leave the house to spend time with it, and it protected me from the outside world. It was pop culturemy intense love of music and TV, to be specific. It was enabled by the amount of time I would spend by myself as a latchkey kid in search of life lessons and friendship. I forged friendships with characters from my favorite TV shows, connecting with them as if they were real people. I would listen to my music on a little red AM/FM plastic radio from RadioShack.

My love of music and television became not only my best friend but my teacher as well. It taught me to love art. It taught me to speak English (Spanish was my first language). It taught me how to be American. I didnt know that was a lesson I would even have to learn, since I was American myself, but I had been born in Texas and my mother hadnt. I had to figure out a lot of stuff on my own because my mother was unfamiliar with certain things, like how important college was or what a casserole was. I still dont know what a casserole is, but I imagine its a lasagna thats not Italian. Am I even close?

She came from a culture that was different from the one I was being raised in. Some of her thinking didnt coincide with ideals I was discovering in Texas, like in regards to what she had been taught about gender roles. She had been raised to believe women were meant to serve men and didnt have a voice. The men could do whatever they wanted to women because the women were seen as property. Men could pick the women theyd marry and the women (and young girls) had no say. Yet what I learned by watching TV shows in America was that women had their own minds, their own thoughts. They could make their own decisions, and if that meant being single, then so be it. That is a lesson I learned from watching