Origin Stories: Los Cuentos

In 2001, after nearly twenty years, my mom left her work at a garment factory in downtown Los Angeles to start her own business, a newsstand on the streets of East Hollywood. I was just on the cusp of reaching my teen years then and couldn’t understand why she suddenly chose to start selling newspapers and magazines for a change.

But one major change after this was that she was much closer to home, where she could keep a much better eye out for my brother and I, especially since yours truly was starting at Thomas Starr King Middle School in the fall of that year. Throughout my adolescence, then, I would frequently join her at the stand after my last class was through. There, alongside her, I came to meet a customer base full of people from across Latin America and the city of Los Angeles, each one of them holding their own piece of a community our family would depend on for our survival; and little did I know it then, but every single one of their greetings, tips of the hat, witticisms, and most of all, their smiles in the face of adversity let me know that I could make it in the concrete jungle, too.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I could actually appreciate how while my mom’s own experience in the classroom was cut short before she had to work to earn her living–she only got as far as the equivalent of the 6th grade–she simply loved learning too much to let it go completely. In turn, her newsstand was a site where she could reconnect with her childhood love of words, literary minds, and the Cuentos they held. Ultimately, mom’s triumphant leap into her own business completely lifted our family’s fortunes. After all, seeing my mother make her own claim through the heaviness of city living made clear to me that I had to do at least the same.

Today, inspired by mom’s unlikeliest of dreams coming to fruition, Los Cuentos de Los Angeles emerges. On the one hand, each Cuento carries ‘old’ legends and trails; and on the other hand, entirely new dreams and ambitions. It’s a vision born out of grit, and informed by L.A.’s classrooms, buses, garment factories, the people who make them come alive, and infinitely more.

So stay tuned. More Cuentos are on the way in no time. Try to keep up!

J.T.