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