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LearningTranscript
00:00Oh, hey, hola.
00:02Hi, Maria.
00:07In 1969, there were no people of color on television.
00:10The very beginning of Sesame Street, when it first went on the air,
00:13it was a really revolutionary concept to turn on your television show
00:17and see a cast that was heavily integrated.
00:19Sesame Street's first target audience was the African-American child.
00:23What kind of shape is that?
00:24Triangle.
00:25A triangle.
00:26All of these Latino activists got together and said,
00:29Sesame Street, you should have role models for the underserved Latino child.
00:33Grover, this is Maria.
00:36For so many years, the only Latina on TV we had was Maria on Sesame Street.
00:41The only Latino before that was Desi Arnaz on I Love Lucy, and he was a dude.
00:46Seeing Maria meant everything to me.
00:49She was my Mary Tyler Moore.
00:51When you see somebody like you on television, you go, oh, what a relief.
00:55I exist.
00:56She represented a whole bunch of the women I grew up around,
01:00all these women who got stuffed up.
01:02Sonia Manzano, the Maria of Sesame Street.
01:06So how much of Maria was you?
01:08She's all me.
01:09She's a better Sonia, a kinder Sonia, a more patient Sonia.
01:14Here's a picture of me when I was a teenager.
01:16I can't believe that was you.
01:19I escaped a chaotic childhood by losing myself in the stories I saw on television.
01:26My father drank.
01:28I was raised in a household ruled by domestic violence.
01:31My fourth grade teacher took me to see West Side Story when I was 11 years old.
01:39It kind of got me interested in the arts, I think.
01:44Sonia started her career in the original cast of Godspell.
01:47Stephen Schwartz wrote Turn Back, Oh Man! for me using the only three notes I could hit.
01:52Your name Maria?
01:53That's right.
01:54You Puerto Rican?
01:55I always had some questions with the Latino content.
01:58It was not as interesting or zany as Cookie Monster eating this table.
02:03I wrote three bits and got hired right on the spot as a writer.
02:08She's won 15 Emmy Awards as a writer.
02:11What happens next in the story, Maria?
02:13After I had left the show, I started writing books.
02:16PBS said, can you create an animated show with a Latinx family?
02:20I said, sure.
02:22You have been a mentor, a guide, a cheerleader, a friend,
02:27and a teacher of generations of children.
02:32So Sonia, can you tell us some of the lessons that you've learned throughout the show?
02:36Tell us some of the lessons that you've learned throughout the years.
02:39Oh, the spelling bee.
02:41You know, the spelling bee was such a big thing.
02:43The word that I failed was cocoa.
02:46And I knew that cocoa was C-O-C-O-A.
02:50Under pressure, I didn't trust my instincts.
02:55That's the lesson that we should all learn from.
02:57Trust your instincts.