“Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?”

Irma Herrera

So how would you say her name: Irma Herrara?  If you are thinking the same as a few somewhat famous Irma’s you may know like Irma Rombauer (author, Joy of Cooking), Irma Thomas (“Soul Queen of New Orleans”), or Hurricane Irma (2017, Category 5), then you – like I — evidently are not among the 47 million American citizens who are of Hispanic and Latino heritages.  They would automatically know to do what we in the audience are up front instructed to do by the author and performer of The Marsh’s Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?:

“First you need to smile.

Say “E.”

Then say EEErma.”

(And by the way while we are at it, the “h” is silent; and the two r’s have a slight roll to them.)

Public interest lawyer and Bay Area social justice activist, Irma Herrera, has spent much of her life educating friends, teachers, and colleagues how to pronounce correctly her name.  Along the way, she has learned first-hand how engrained social prejudice is against people of darker skin, even among people who would be shocked if told they had such prejudice.  Growing up in a small Texas town named Alice ninety miles from the Mexican border, Irma Herrera comes from a family that has been in this country far longer than almost all the people who often ask her at their first meeting with her, “Where (i.e., what other country) do you come from?” 

In Alice as she was growing up, all the Mexican Americans (70% of the town’s population) lived south of the train tracks in modest homes.  All the white citizens lived north where also were all the green lawns, nice parks, a library, and the town’s one public swimming pool.  Her early, mostly segregated life shifted drastically after she left her all-Mexican-American elementary school to enter at thirteen the town’s one, integrated middle school.  There, her first-ever Anglican teacher introduced her to the class in a twangy, Texas drawl as “Irma” (with an especially irritating, short ‘i’ sound).  At that moment she remembered that her favorite uncle, Tio Otilio, had worn every day to work as a gravel truck driver in Alice a shirt with “Tom” emblazoned on it because his fellow workers could not (or more correctly, would not) say his given name.  In that same moment, Irma decided that it was the last time she would ever respond to her name being mispronounced.

Standing before us comfortable in her sock feet, the ever-smiling, sparkly-eyed dynamo walks us through the years of her life using a map of ‘name’ incidents as her guideposts.  We cannot help but also smile and laugh a lot, even as we shake our heads in disbelief – and our own ignorance – of what she has witnessed and first-hand experienced during her near-seven decades of life as a born-and-bred U.S. citizen.  Her many observations and experiences are related with big heart, with some amusement, but also with an edge and a bite that grows sharper the closer we get to our current times of November 2018. 

We can all look back with her in the ‘60s and be righteously disgusted and even disbelieving that ‘way back then’ a hometown, WWII, Mexican-American veteran and hero, Felix Longoria, could not be interned because the mortuary would not serve non-whites.  We certainly cringe as she rattles off the names that she and her friends were called in high school where Hispanic and white students were “like oil and water.”  But then she reminds us that while they were daily addressed as “beanos,” “spics,” and “tacos,” they were never in the 1960s called “illegals.” 

While we know that the prejudice she experienced growing up has not gone away, did we know that a majority of states passed between 2010 and 2012 anti-immigration laws? How many of us came in knowing that a state like Alabama in 2012 directed police to conduct road stops near Mexican-American neighborhoods asking citizens for their papers and allowed utility companies to turn off power if Alabama renters/homeowners could not prove citizenship?  And this is all before we reach the point of a President who seems to revel in deprecating remarks about people of Hispanic/Latino heritage.

Intermingled among her many examples of ignorant remarks from friends who should know better (“Has anyone ever told you that you are a credit to your people?”) and outright moments of embarrassing and pointed public discrimination (like treatment she received from a court recorder at her first, important deposition as a young lawyer), Irma — because we now feel like we are first-name friends of hers – delights us with the oft-tongue-in cheek ways she tells her stories.  Accents of Alabama, Texas, and even Vietnam roll out as easily as do her frequent Spanish phrases — those always spoken with particular care and love.  Life transition moments are accompanied with the particular year’s popular music as she winds through her life, often leading her suddenly to break into a dance of the time.  And all along the way, she looks directly at each of us eye-to-eye in the intimate, Marsh arena, speaking with a genuine gratitude that we are there to hear and to learn.

The sixty-five minute performance — directed by award-winning, solo performer Rebecca Fisher — passes much too quickly. We have the feeling that Irma Herrera has only scraped the surface as she has skipped through the decades of incidents where a name so short, sweet, and simple has constantly been so difficult for the world around her to pronounce – or even want to pronounce – correctly. 

Her final question is one that gives us much fodder for further contemplation.  After a trip to Denmark, Irma discovered hers is the name of the largest grocery chain there; and that everyone pronounces I-R-M-A the same way her name is pronounced (ēr-ma).  The question she had while touring in Copenhagen:  “If people back home thought I was from Denmark, would they try harder to say my name?”

I think the answer is obvious.  I definitely know for certain that an hour with Irma Herrera at The Marsh is an evening not to be long forgotten as we explore with her, Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?

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Rating: 4.5 E

Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name? continues Thursdays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 5 p.m. through December 8, 2018 at the San Francisco Marsh, 1062 Valencia Street.  Tickets are available online at https://themarsh.org/.  After each performance, invited speakers lead a thirty-minute related discussion on a variety of social justice issues.

Photo Credit: Chuck Revell