Take a tour of South Sixth and 12th avenues. What do you see?
Some people say they see deterioration, empty lots and poverty. Yes, there’s that.
However, if you take the journey that Alexandra and Sharayah Jimenez are creating, you’ll see something different.
You’ll see vibrant family businesses and neighbors talking to each other and helping other vecinos. You’ll see colors and culture and community.
And you can see it without walking or driving. You can follow their journey through a unique alphabet book the sisters are creating.
“Abecedario del Sur” takes readers along parts of the two principal corridors cutting through the south side with Alexandra’s images and Sharayah’s text. Each letter in the alphabet is associated with an iconic building or business and, in one image, a truck that carries fresh green corn — the essential ingredient for green corn tamales — alongside South 12th Avenue.
The images reflect the diversity and the determination of the south side, where the Jimenez sisters grew up. In addition to the illustrations, the book will contain the stories of the individuals and families behind the letters, based on interviews conducted by Alexandra, and written by Sharayah.
“Our neighborhood is beautiful,” said Alexandra Jimenez, an illustrator, photographer and designer.
The sisters call their project a geographical alphabet book. Instead of following the alphabet’s order, they purposely mixed up the letters to follow a north-south route. The sisters want us to look inward, toward the south side, instead of looking north or away.
It’s a warm welcome. The journey begins with the letter T, from the word UNITE painted on the south-facing wall at Five Points, the intersection of 18th Street with South Sixth and South Stone avenues. And it ends with the letter U, for Mercadito La Unica on South 12th, south of Nebraska Street.
Along the way: C is for LeCaves bakery, D in the tiled Adios sign in South Tucson, I in El Indio Restaurant, F is for Rafael’s Tire Shop, H is for Handyman’s Haven, K is Save More Market, R is in El Tigre Automotive, S is for Oasis Fruit Cones and the very Spanish Ñ is found on the Muñoz Produce truck.
This presents the south side as authentic, real and true to place, they said.
“This gives the neighborhoods dignity and respect,” said Sharayah, a design architect with the local firm Poster Frost Mirto.
“We’re trying to show that we’re innovators and creative and hardworking,” she added.
The project began as a fine arts project for Alexandra while she was studying for an undergraduate degree at the University of Arizona, after earning a bachelor’s degree in animal science at Cornell University in New York. Alexandra, who graduated in the top 10 of her 2005 Tucson Magnet High School class, developed the project over the doubt and objection of her professor.
The alphabet had to be in typical order, she was told. Alexandra refused.
She had purpose and reason to reorganize the letters. “I designed the book as a journey,” she said.
But since she began her project several years ago, there have been changes to some of the places she incorporated into the project. At least two of the businesses have closed and transformed.
This reflects the reality of the south side, where change is constant despite the outward appearances that there are none. The changes also show the area’s creeping gentrification, the sisters said.
“We need to have more honest conversations about gentrification,” said Sharayah, 30, who graduated from Basis, a charter high school.
Neither do they want to romanticize the south side. Yes, there is poverty. But equally damaging is the racism and stereotyping heaped on the largely Mexican-American side of town.
The Jimenez sisters intend their alphabet book to be more than a pretty addition to a coffee table. It’s intended to provoke discussion and dialogue, to advocate for a maligned side of town that some Tucsonans refuse to enter.
Their advocacy and spirit comes from their mother, Theresa Maria Jimenez, who died in January of cancer at the age of 51. Their mother raised them and later enrolled in college, earned a master’s degree and became a teacher.
The sisters hope to finish the book this summer and start looking for a publisher. Meanwhile, Alexandra sells her illustrations and other artworks on her website, alexclamations@gmail.com
