'Engaging, Inspiring, Fascinating' Irma Herrera Brings Her One-Woman Show to TPAC This Weekend

Engaging in conversation with Irma Herrera - even if it's via Zoom in the middle of a busy day during which a remodeling project on her San Francisco home is under way, with the sounds of construction in the background as proof - is one of the most delightful ways to spend a scant hour on a sunny afternoon: talking about the importance of showing respect to another human being by pronouncing their name as they do, and discussing the intersectionality of immigrant's rights, human rights, women's rights, LGBTQIA rights, worker's rights and the rights of the poor.

To be honest, Irma Herrera is disarmingly charming, incredibly inspiring and wonderfully entertaining, and as she relates the story of her life - and boy-oh-boy what an interesting life she's led - you can't help but become totally enraptured, hanging on every word, listening intently to the anecdotes that punctuate her storytelling that is reflective of one woman's uniquely informed history of contemporary America.

This weekend - Friday through Sunday, February 10-12 - Herrera brings her critically acclaimed one-woman stage show Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name? to Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center for a three-performance run in the Andrew Johnson Theatre. And if a Zoom call with Herrera is so mesmerizing that you lose all track of time, can you imagine how transportive seeing her onstage must be?

Described as "a work of creative nonfiction," Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name? has been warmly, even enthusiastically, received by audiences throughout the country with her first foray into the Southeastern United States making her Nashville stand even more portentous. The hour-long show "is a mashup of personal narrative, lessons in American history and stories about respecting people's names, even when they don't sound and look like 'real' American names."

The daughter of Mexican-American parents, Irma Herrera was born and raised in Alice, Texas, where she grew up in the predominantly Mexican-American town, speaking Spanish and English.

"I was about six years old, I think," she says, "when I went with my parents to a birthday party for my uncle Otillo."

Sharp, inquisitive and precocious, Irma noticed her uncle was wearing a workshirt with the Anglo name "Tom" embroidered on the pocket, which prompted her to ask her parents why was Uncle Otillo wearing a shirt with some other man's name on it? "It's easier for the people he works with to say Tom than to say Otillo," she was told.

Young Irma was perplexed, unable to wrap her mind around the concept of calling someone with a perfectly acceptable Spanish name with an unimaginative, commonplace "American" name. And as she grew up - ultimately leaving the rather comfortable, if segregated, confines of Alice in pursuit of educational, economic and career opportunities - Irma Herrera encountered events even more perplexing as her once parochial world view evolved into one of global proportions.

Remaining in South Texas for her undergraduate work at what is now known as Texas A&M University-Kingsville, after graduation Herrera moved to Indiana to work her way through law school (she was a teaching assistant in the modern languages department) at the University of Notre Dame.

"When I moved to South Bend, I found that white people came in so many more varieties than I knew," she admits. "There were many people who strongly identified through their ethnicities - Polish, Irish, Italian."

After earning her law degree, Herrera had experienced enough extreme weather in Indiana - the frigid winters were quite a change from her Texas youth - she made her way westward, ending up in Washington state, working as a legal aid attorney for migrant farmworkers (including some who, like her, hailed from South Texas).

Eventually, she felt the pull to move to a more urban environment, moving to the liberal mecca of San Francisco where she went to work as a staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), the leading civil right organization representing Latinos. Later, Herrera launched a career as a journalist, working for Pacific News Service (and its successor New American Media) and joining the staff of Equal Rights Advocates, a women's rights organization focused on legal issues concerning women and girls, in which her work as a social justice advocate has allowed her to leave her mark on American history.

As a result of her wide-ranging experiences, her decision to take a class in storytelling should come as no surprise. In fact, it seems a natural choice for the woman who's been telling stories since she was a little girl, leading to the creation of her critically acclaimed stage show.

"I had taken some time off to write a book I had an idea for," she recalls. "And I reached a point where I was just stuck and heard about a course in storytelling that I thought might help me focus."

Subsequently, she decided to study acting and while taking part in several student shows, "I used names as a vehicle to start a conversation about respect," Herrera says. "I use names as a way of starting a conversation about 'othering' and 'belonging' and how we can show respect for people through their names."

In Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?, Irma Herrera (who plays 20+ characters in the course of the show, which like her fascinating life continues to evolve from one show to the next) invites audiences to experience all that life has to offer for a Mexican-American girl who leaves her segregated South Texas town in search of life: The play explores the stereotyping and dehumanizing that are at the heart of white supremacy, and the impact on individuals and communities.

Woven into her personal stories is a wide swath of American history: from the invasion of Mexico by the United States of America in the mid-1800s, to the separation and caging of brown children when their desperate parents were apprehended at the Southwestern border.

"What are the odds that a federal appeals judge, hearing a case about the detention of these immigrant children, spent three years of his own childhood in government detention in a Japanese Internment Camp during WWII?" she muses.

Irma Herrera's stories help audiences connect the dots - the Muslim ban, the racializing of COVID-19 and the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, and laws targeting trans youth - are all related. Her political commentary about life in the United States is shared with humor and warmth.

As one reviewer put it: Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name? "speaks volumes about the ingrained power structures in American society...food for thought about how the dominant culture asserts and imposes its dominance."

For tickets and for more information about Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?, which is the second offering in TPAC's recently inaugurated Perspectives theater series, go to www.tpac.org.

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