Personal Statement for my application to The Evergreen State College

My name is Elisa Miranda, I am fourth generation Chicana that was born and raised in Washington state. My identity as a Chicana is directly related to my personal experiences, as well as, my political and social convictions. I am the youngest of four, the only female to graduate from High School. I am the first to obtain a college degree and attend a four year institution of higher education. Both my parents were Migrant Agricultural workers born in Texas. Since the time of my birth my parents have been active advocates for Agricultural Workers' rights. My mother jokes that my first political meeting was at six months, advocating for funding for a migrant day care center, during the times she worked closely with the Washington Migrant Council in Eastern Washington. When I turned eight, I became actively involved in a leadership development program at an organization called El Centro de la Raza in Seattle, Washington. This organization is unique in its principles and connection to the community with which it serves. In the fall of 1972, the Chicano community of Seattle occupied an abandoned elementary school building after the funding for an ESL program had been cut at Seattle Central Community College. Before the program was cut students, families and community members had convened to discuss the detrimental issues afflicting the Chicano Community of Seattle. Thirty-four and half years later the organization is still a conviction to the efforts of those that occupied the building during one of the coldest winters Seattle has faced, and I have been fortunate to be embedded in the organization's history at such a young age. Since the first time I entered the doors, I was exposed to leadership circles that developed my organizational skills, my historical knowledge of the plights of the Chicano community, and most importantly I found my voice as a poet. My first poetry reading was at the age of ten, after our poetry youth group had been published in an anthology called "Word Up!", and from that point on I participated in numerous other performances. These performances, as well as the poetry that I wrote, centered around the social and political issues that I was becoming aware of. Although the skills and knowledge were abundantly being past down to me, there was still the personal economic and social difficulties that I was faced with. During my sophomore year of high school I became less involved with my academics, and more involved in self-destructive habits. The neglect of my academics soon caught up to me and my own school counselor did not see any hopes of graduation for me. A close friend that had worked along side me through the political activities I was involved in at El Centro de la Raza took me under his wings and introduced me to an organization that saved me from dropping out and help me form a sense of personal strength and identity. At the age of sixteen I became involved in MEChA, which stands for Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (the Chicano Student Movement from Aztlan). I learned that being Chicana did not signify me as a Mexican-American, but proudly announced that I was a conscious woman of color that would resist assimilation and embrace the true history of my people. Although this might seem a repeat of the knowledge that I received at El Centro de la Raza, this became an academic sanctuary and a foundation to stand on while immersing in an educational system that denied me of my true history, of literature that came from a perspective other than that of a Eurocentric perspective. They were a group of students, like me, that felt something within our educational system was wrong. Without the continual support of El Centro de la Raza and MEChA I would not have been motivated to graduate high school, let alone consider college an option. My college history has had major bumps in the road as well, which has both taught me valuable lessons of life and gave value to the education that I have received. This is my first year in a four year institution, and it has been a difficult one. I have expressed some of the lack of identification with the curriculum I am exposed to here at Central Washington University to fellow Mechistas, and was encouraged to look at the academic programs available at Evergreen State College. After much consideration and review, I believe that Evergreen can offer me a valuable exposure to my field of academic interest, more so, then I feel any other institution might otherwise. The programs are designed to speak to me as an individual, not as a standardized framework from which my cultural identity is extracted. Thank you for your time in considering me as a perspective student and I hope that this statement is testimony to my ambitions to attending your institution.