Divided by Difference: Dawn Martinez Oropeza

10/23/19 • 56 min

Mid-Americana: Stories from a Changing Midwest

Dawn Martinez Oropeza is Executive Director of Al Exito, a mentoring and youth empowerment organization that works with hundreds of middle and high school-aged Latinos across Iowa. She has deep roots in Des Moines, on both the Jewish and Mexican sides of her family. Since childhood, she has navigated blended identities and cultural divides. Dawn shares about her pilgrimage into the private world of César Chávez, as she preserved his legacy and helped establish a national monument in his honor. We talk about her explorations of art, food, and religious practice, a journey that took her to Seattle, Chicago, Miami, California, and back home to the Midwest.

Previous Episode

Gateway to the Midwest: Mike Draper

Mike Draper is the founder and owner of RAYGUN, a Des Moines-based T-shirt store that opened in 2005 and has since grown into a regional powerhouse with locations in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Kansas City, and Chicago. As a kid, Mike heard his Connecticut relatives speak about Iowa to other New Englanders as if it needed defending. He later felt that difference more keenly at an Ivy League university, where his peers saw him as a mystery: a guy from a blank spot on the map. We also talk about the ironies in Midwest history, the strangeness of a region that is not a navigational direction and that serves as a gateway to everywhere else, and the cultural origins of tropes, like modesty, that dominate Midwestern identity.

Browse the RAYGUN collection, “The Mighty Midwest,” and follow the store on Facebook and Twitter.

Mike Draper’s book, The Midwest: God’s Gift to Planet Earth, is available on the RAYGUN site and on Amazon.

Next Episode

Grain, Water, and Yeast: Megan McKay

Megan McKay is founder and owner of Peace Tree Brewing Company in Knoxville, Iowa. Megan was born and raised in Knoxville. She left home after high school, drawn to greener pastures on the West Coast. After four years in the Bay Area, where she worked as a nanny and part-time auto mechanic, Megan felt Iowa calling her back, and in 2009 she left the family insurance business to start a brewery in her hometown. Megan believed Knoxville could become the kind of place that might have held her as a young person, even the kind of place that could grow and thrive, drawing new residents and entrepreneurs. We talked about the brewery’s experiments with wild yeasts harvested at a local farm, how a business comes of age and remains resilient over time, the story of the Peace Tree her company is named for, and her work as a community leader in Knoxville.

Follow Peace Tree Brewing on their website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.