For the first seven years of her life, comic Cristela Alonzo lived with her family in an abandoned diner in a south Texas border town. Alonzo's mother, a Mexican immigrant, had left an abusive marriage and was supporting herself and her four kids by making $150 a week working in a Mexican restaurant.
Living in the diner, the family's electricity came from an extension cord that Alonzo's mother stretched to the building from the house next door. In the winter, she used a space heater to cook and to warm up water for bathing.
"[My mother] used to have a 10-gallon pickle tub from work that she would fill up with water," Alonzo says. "We would get a little cup and we would fill the cup with water and then pour it on our bodies. And that's how we showered in the winter."
Alonzo says being poor meant there was no time to relax. She served as her mother's translator and helped with the household's paperwork. Her mother didn't have a bank account, so paying bills meant going to the post office to purchase money orders.
"I was helping my mom with budget, household things my entire life," she says. "When I was in high school, I wallpapered our house while other people were going to prom, going to school dances."
Alonzo attended a theater program in high school, and then went on to study theater in college. But she had to put her own ambitions on hold and quit college twice, to care for her mother and to help her sister raise her children. Eventually, Alonzo broke through as a stand-up comedian by performing across the country on college campuses.
Alonzo's comedy is very personal, often focusing on socioeconomic class, her childhood experience and the current political climate. In 2014, Alonzo created and starred in Cristela, a semi-autobiographical sitcom that ran for one season on ABC. Her three Netflix specials are Lower Classy, Middle Classy and now Upper Classy.
Currently a resident of Los Angeles, she says the recent ICE raids in the city remind her of the fear she experienced living with her mother, who was undocumented until Alonzo was 10.
"You were hoping that your mother wouldn't be taken away from you," Alonzo says. "Living in Los Angeles and seeing the ICE raids, it reminds me of me being a child trying to protect my mother. And I had forgotten the feelings until I saw what was happening now and it brought it all back."
Interview highlights
On why her parents immigrated to the U.S.
That's the thing that I think is one of the perspectives in immigration that we don't talk about enough, is immigrants come to this country mostly out of a need. It's in search of this opportunity that they don't have at home. But if my parents could have made it happen, if they could have had a decent life … they would have stayed in Mexico. But they decided ultimately the United States was a better opportunity for their children. ... In my experience, the immigrants that I grew up with and knew were so brave and they never understood that they were brave. They never gave themselves credit for doing everything that they did.
On her mom's decision to leave her abusive marriage
My mom grew up in a little village, a little ranchito in Mexico called El Zancarrón. Back then, it was, like, in the middle of nowhere. And my mom grew very Catholic. And her parents were very strict, her mother was very strict. And people couldn't date. You actually had a lot of arranged marriages a lot of times, where girls would be engaged to older men, because the men had all the power. ...
My mom and my dad got married through the Church so they couldn't divorce. My mom left my dad, but they never divorced because they were Catholic. So she stayed married to him. But after they got married … he would drink a lot, be very physically abusive to her. He had another family. … She became the first woman in her family to leave her husband. ... This woman had, like, a second-grade education, couldn't speak the language here. And she decided that that was better than staying married to my dad.
On the stress of growing up with an undocumented mother
She ended up getting her resident alien card. That's the highest she got. I was about 10 years old when she got her card. So for the first 10 years, it was a lot of us trying to protect her when we were in public. In the border town that I grew up in, in McAllen, Texas, it's a border town so you had border patrol agents out in public just kind of living amongst you because they were working near the border. So if we went out to eat and there was one of them there, my mom would have us either try to make some noise, pretend that we're throwing a tantrum so that she has to take us out of the building immediately to protect her. And we would have to play along, because we wanted to make sure that she was safe.
On making the jump from theater to stand-up comedy
I wanted to do Broadway. And then a voice teacher when I was 18 years old told me that as a Latina, I could do West Side Story and Chorus Line and then I was kind of done. And it was weird because at that moment, I felt like somebody had said that my dream was limited and I had no chance to do it. And I ended up doing some kind of theater, but I couldn't get auditions. And I stopped doing theater. And then I decided to move to LA to try to be in TV and film. Then when I moved to LA, they were like, "Well, you have a crooked tooth and you're plus size. So I don't know how that's gonna work for you." …
My mom ended up getting sick. My brother told me that she was on her deathbed and I had to come home, quit my job, went to Texas to see her. ... When my mom passed away, I was stuck in Dallas. We had moved to Dallas because we moved in with my sister, which is where the premise of my sitcom came. It came from that time of my life where I was taking care of mom and helping my sister raise her kids. My mom died. I was stuck and I needed a job. And I responded to this help wanted ad that needed office help and it was at the comedy club in Dallas, the Improv. And I became the office manager. And I started watching comics and I was like, you know what? This is kind of like theater. … And then I'm like, wait, I can write what I talk about? This is amazing. I'm gonna do stand-up. Stand-up is like theater. ... I was completely depressed. I was grieving my mom's loss and I went up on stage and started talking about my family and that's how it happened.
On the culture shock of having money
Medical attention is such a luxury to so many people. I had to learn how to work with it, how to deal with it. I say it in the last special, like I didn't know what a checkup was. Like, why would you go to a doctor when you're not sick? Like, people just go? It was such a foreign concept. But yeah, I started having money where I could put my bills on auto pay. I could go to the doctor. I could buy a car. I bought a new car, like, 10 years ago. How? How was I able to do all of this stuff? I was always so grateful for the most basic things that I couldn't afford when I was a kid. I still go through that.
On being mentored by and working with labor activist Dolores Huerta
I am a caregiver. My entire life has been caregiving. So for me, you tell me that I need to help someone and I am going to show up. It is my nature. It is in my DNA. It's my default. So the moment she and I became close, and I became friends with her kids, and I started just seeing her more, and during election years we would go and do voter registration, voter outreach. We would go to these house meetings out in the middle of the fields with, like, farm workers. I was so into trying to have that message that she has, which is coming into your power and using it. …
I think that one of the biggest things for me is really actually putting a face to a community that is kind of invisible at times. I think that by being specific about my life and talking about it in stand-up, it allows others to know that a lot more people have things in common than they are different. I think the way that I was most helpful is to help give a narrative that doesn't sound preachy. I almost believe that I trick people into learning about my community.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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