A CONVERSATION WITH ALANA: ONE BOY'S MULTICULTURAL RITE OF PASSAGE

A Play Reading

by Carlos Cortes

"A Conversation with Alana" is a new one-person, one-act autobiographical play by Carlos E. Cortes, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside. In his play reading, Cortes presents his story of growing up as a young man of mixed ancestry in racially segregated, religiously divided early post-World War II Kansas City, Missouri. The son of a Mexican Catholic immigrant father and an American-born Jewish mother, whose parents were immigrants from Austria and the Ukraine, he had to learn to navigate Kansas City's rigid racial, ethnic, and religious fault lines, while simultaneously dealing with the internal conflicts of his own divided family. Following the play reading, Dr. Cortes will be available to discuss the play and have others share their own unique multicultural experiences.