RIP Anita O'Day

FROM November 23, 2006

Shout to Ms. O'Day, feminist rebel of the swing set: RIP.

Anita O'Day means nothing to me for her scatting. But she means a lot to me for her slanguistics: she gave my tio July a name. He was an Escobedo by birth, the eldest of my mom's sisters and brothers. During WWII, he enlisted; some of his Mexican friends were changing their last names to avoid the vagaries of racial prejudice (aka to avoid getting stuck with the shit missions) and they advised him to do the same. (There is also the possibility that he was legal like Ugly Betty's dad -- which is to say not at all -- considering he was born, you know, elsewhere.) But anyway, my tio is/was a mestizo light enough that he could pass, so he foresook Escobedo and took O'Day after his favorite singer Anita.

O'Day. You know, short, concise, doesn't sound Spanish. To this day my entire family refers to him jokingly as "our Irish Uncle Joe." He married a white woman who looked a little bit like Anita, too. She also constantly referred to my grandmother Guadalupe as "Mary." (Unless you're Juan Diego, that's not a direct translation.) But now I'm airing out the family bizzness and I better stfu before one of my cousins hears about it.

RIP Anita O'Day.

This book, about how WWII affected Mexican-American civil rights, looks very interesting. "Neither dogs nor Mexicans." Classy.