![]() ![]() “There was a fruit car on Sesame Street with apples and bananas and stuff like that,” she shares. I’m just a kid from the Bronx, I’m not a political leader” But then I kind of kept waltzing out and I naturally rose to the occasion,” she recalls.Īnd better representation started with food. “Matt Robinson, who was the original Gordon, said to me “You’re not here to be the cute Latina, you’re here to make sure that all the Latin content is appropriate.” And I thought to myself, “What?! When did I become a spokesperson for the Puerto Ricans. ![]() After being criticized for its bilingual content, Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop), set out to include a more diverse cast. In 1972, Manzano, then an actress on the original production of Godspell was casted as María. Manzano grew up surrounded by extended family, gathering on the front stoop to enjoy the day, memories she used on Sesame Street bits. ![]() Even though I never saw anybody who looked like me, porque en esos días no se veían puertorriqueños en la televisión, ningún latino,” says Manzano, who went on to study at the High School of Performing Arts and Carnegie Mellon University. “I always looked to television for, I don’t know, some sort of peace. On her memoir, Becoming María: A story about Love and the South Bronx, Manzano wrote about her father’s abuse, how she’d noticed the black eyes on her mother and how she’d hide their knives on the oven. It was the role that made a South Bronx kid a trailblazer Latina. For 44 years, Sonia Manzano played the iconic Maria of Sesame Street, a groundbreaking character in its normalcy of portraying Latinos as regular people. ![]()
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