MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Michele Serros gave voice to a generation of young Mexican-Americans through her short stories, poems and her memoir, "How To Be A Chicana Role Model." Serros died of cancer on Sunday at her home in Berkeley, California. She was 48. NPR's Mandalit del Barco has an appreciation.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Michele Serros was a new kind of Latina writer. She didn't speak Spanish much, listened to Abba, she was a vegan who liked to surf and skateboard. She made wisecracks about breakfast cereal, graffiti taggers and thumping sound systems.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Reading) Why can't I be like those cool girls and like the cars that go boom ba boom.
DEL BARCO: Serros was a college student in 1993 when her first book was published, titled "Chicana Falsa: And Other Stories Of Death, Identity, And Oxnard." It was a collection of wry stories and poems about growing up in an unincorporated, rural, agricultural community, Oxnard, near the California coast. In it, she wrote about protesting in the frozen food aisle of a grocery store and lusting after chicharrones.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Reading) Man, I couldn't get enough of that crackly pork skin. I crammed them in tortillas that were always too small, so I ate them right out of the pot, throwing small, crispy bits into the air, like popcorn, letting them land into my open, anxious mouth.
DEL BARCO: Like others in what came to be known as Generation Mex, Serros and her writing were influenced by both her working-class Mexican-American heritage and Southern California pop-culture.
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MICHELE SERROS: I relished the fact that I was a fourth-generation Californian, but not looking like the stereotypical blond beach girl. I always felt like an outsider.
DEL BARCO: That's Michele Serros on NPR in 2000. She appeared on this network many times over the years. Serros was also a part of the lively spoken word scene in Los Angeles in the 1990s. She often performed as a member of the Chicana poetry collective called Y Que Mas? Screenwriter Evangeline Ordaz was also in the group.
EVANGENLINE ORDAZ: In fact, when we were performing together, like, she always had to go last because none of us wanted to follow her.
DEL BARCO: Ordaz says Serros's writing was different from the militant identity politics of an earlier generation of Chicano poets.
ORDAZ: She still talked about really, you know, important issues in the Latino community, but she did it by telling funny stories.
DEL BARCO: Michele Serros told those stories on stage with 11 other poets on the Lollapalooza tour in 1994.
ORDAZ: It kind of really showed where poetry was at the time that it was, like, OK, alongside rock music. And if anybody could, like, stand up next to a rock star, it was Michele, because she was literally the rockstar of the poetry scene at the time.
DEL BARCO: Playwright and performance artist Luis Alfaro was among those performing with her at Lollapalooza.
LUIS ALFARO: She speaks for a whole generation of Mexican-Americans, you know, who have a very different way of looking at their parents' culture and trying to make sense of all of those crazy rituals that are you.
DEL BARCO: Alfaro donned a poofy dress for one of those rituals, a quinceanera - a sweet 15 party - that Michele Serros threw for the publication of "Chicana Falsa." She also had a more serious side, writing two young adult novels - "Honey Blonde Chica" and a sequel, "Scandalosa!" She said she wanted them to be different from the books she grew up reading.
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SERROS: They followed a similar theme and that's a theme I call, like, the three B's. It was always about barrios, borders or bodegas. And I wanted to present a life that truly goes on that we don't always see in the mainstream media.
DEL BARCO: Michele Serros is also well-known for her guidebook, "How To Be A Chicana Role Model." She wrote it as a tongue-in-cheek chronicle, but for many readers she remains someone to emulate. Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.