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Social Studies Connections

Note to educators:

Our intent here is for students to experience the Lowriding Virtual Exhibition and accompanying educational activities. The goal is to heighten their sense of identity and community as they learn about this expression of Chicano and Chicana culture. As always, we encourage you to view these activities as suggestions and incorporate your own materials, ideas, and approaches. Enjoy!

Target audience: High school students and adults

Key Terms and Concepts

• Public space
• Reading objects and texts

Guiding Questions/Themes

• In what ways does the public space in your community reflect the people who live there?
• What forms of art are presented in your community?
• Why use a car as a canvas?
• Are there members of your community who are represented more than others?
• What meanings do you think low rider cars have for the people who create them?

Opening Activities

• Write the term public space on the board and ask students to brainstorm about what this means to them on individual sheets of paper.
• Create a class list on the board or large poster paper
• Working with the class collective understanding of the concept “public space,” ask students to complete a ten-minute “quick write” in response responding to the following questions (can be done individually, in pairs, or in small groups depending on the dynamics of your class):
• Where is my community?
• Who comprises my community?
• How would I describe it to someone who has never been there so that they could imagine it in their mind?
• What qualities characterize the public space in my community? For example are there certain colors or hues that stand out more than others? Is there any art or decoration (natural or human made) displayed in public spaces?
• In what way does the public space (including the art) in your community reflect the people who live there?
• Report
• Ask students to share some of their insights
• Concepts of public space, representation, and art are key to understanding the exhibit they are about to see. Ask them to consider these ideas as they navigate the exhibition.

Viewing the Exhibition

• Have students work in pairs to view the exhibition.
• Ask them to write down questions and responses as they move through the exhibition.
• Once they have familiarized themselves with the content, ask them to return to the exhibit and select a car and text (a quote, poem, or song) that moves them, stands out to them, or resonates with them. Direct students to poems by Levi Romero (printed below) for further examples.

Analyses

• Pass out an activity sheet with the following quotes (from Denise Sandoval’s curatorial essay for the exhibition) printed at the top.
1. “We (Chicanos) have taken a Detroit machine and we have personalized it. We Chicano-ized it.” Gilbert “Magu” Lujan

2. The cars become the canvas on which to represent oneself and one’s dreams and hopes for the future. Most especially, they call on society to look at Chicanos.

3. The history of lowriding reveals the importance of understanding how it is that urban cities and regions become symbolic landscapes within the cultural practice of lowriding, wherein individuals use their cars to negotiate identity, gender, ethnicity, class, technology, and the media.

Suggested discussion questions/themes:

• Why personalize a car?
• What meanings do these cars have for the Chicanos and Chicanas who created them?
• Why might low riders express their “dreams and hopes for the future” in such an open and public way?
• Are there public canvases expressing identity in your neighborhood, community, or city/town?
• Are there members or groups within your community who are invisible in the public space?
• What does quote #3 mean to you?
• How are the above quotes related to the poems by Levi Romero?

Poems by Levi Romero. In the Gathering of Silence. West End Press: Albuquerque, NM (1996)

Wheels how can I tell baby oh honey, you’ll never know the ride the ride of a lowered chevy slithering through blue dotted night along Riverside Drive Española poetry rides the wings of a ’59 Impala yes, it does and it points chrome antennae towards ‘Burque stations rocking oldies Van Morrision brown eyed girls Creedence and a Bad moon rising over Chimayo and I guess it also rides on muddy Subarus tuned into new-age radio on the frigid road to Taos on weekend ski trips yes, baby you and I are two kinds of wheels on the same road listen, listen to the lonesome humming of the tracks we leave behind

Daddy’s Old Trucks At night we would sit with our father at the kitchen table where he would draw antique cars and trucks for me and my brothers daddy what does a ’32 Chevy look like what about a ’34 Ford daddy now draw a Model T and we would ask him to draw old trucks like the one that our teachers mocked him for driving and some of the kids were reluctant to be our friends because we didn’t own a new car or truck in class I would be made to stand in the corner because I drew too many old cars I remember Poems by Levi Romero. In the Gathering of Silence. West End Press: Albuquerque, NM (1996)

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