Okay, here’s just one reason why poet and photographer Marisela Norte is so wildly incredible. For about sixteen years, from 1993-2003, Marisela took the # 18 bus to work (besides being an artist and a writer, she was a Membership Coordinator at L.A.’s Museum of Modern Art).  Now, okay, taking the bus is something a lot of people do.  That itself doesn’t make her special.  I myself have taken the bus many times and usually use it as an opportunity to 1) sleep, 2) mope, 3) wish I had a chauffeur.  Not Marisela.  She used that time on the bus to really carefully notice everything around her, and then transformed her observations into some of the most amazing poems that have ever come out of Los Angeles. 

Take for example, Peeping Tom Tom Girl, the poem that wound up being the title verse of Marisela’s 2008 book.  This is how it came about:  One day, when Marisela was on the #18, she looked around her, and saw a girl and her parents riding at the back of the bus.  The girl didn’t look happy.  Why should she have?  Her parents were snapping at each other.  Also, the girl looked bored and kind of uncomfortable in her own skin, particularly as she was wearing an ugly dress. 

Marisela took this little slice of life, and wrote: 

I am a Peeping Tom Girl, and from my seat on the

downtown bus,

I have been driven through, been witness to, invaded by

las vidas de ellas.

I’ve made myself up to be the girl who sits in the back

with the black

mask over her eyes, the high school doll too anxious to

experiment, la

muchachita stuffed into the pink lampshade dress who

listens as her

parents argue through different neighborhoods.  She shuts

her eyes and

tries to memorize the menus on the chalkboards outside. 

Isn’t that amazing? Marisela is such a genius at creating these incredible life stories that glow with color and heat and beautiful, quirky images.  It’s one of the reasons why she’s been called the poet laureate of East L.A., and has been so successful doing spoken word performance art in venues like L.A.C.E., the Women’s Building, M.O.C.A., other galleries, and coffee houses.  She’s also recorded a CD, titled Norte/word. 

Marisela was born in 1955 in East L.A., to a mother from Veracruz and a dad from Chihuahua.  She says that theirs was a “Spanish only” household, and that she learned English by watching shows like The Naked City and Movies till Dawn on the family’s black and white T.V.  She later went to Cal State L.A., but left the university after an idiot English professor asked her if she was “illiterate.”  She wound up haunting cafeterias and coffee houses, honing her observational talents and stating to write poetry and stories.  She wound up joining a Latino writing collective that met in a storefront on Spring Street, and says that was one of the most positive creative experiences she ever had; from there, she developed into the performance artist and spoken word master that we know today.

The other cool thing is that Marisela is also a photographer, who’s had her own show at the Tropica de Nopal Gallery.  I’ve seen some of her photographs – one that has stuck in my mind is of a girl’s sparkly shoes and fancy white socks, like Dorothy had decided to take a walk through downtown.

Don't you love it?  Yea!!!!

p.s.  One more thing:  I wasn't able to reproduce Peeping Tom Tom Girl with its original word breaks, so if you want read the poem as Marisela originally wrote it, please buy or check out her awesome book.