100 Latina Birthdays

Art has always been an important way for 20 year-old Kaelah Serrano to explore and express her queer identity. Born and raised on Chicago’s southwest side, Kaelah found an artistic home in Yollocalli Arts Reach, a nonprofit based in Little Village that provides arts, media, and storytelling education for young people—many of them Latinx—in Chicago. Yollocalli is an example of a crucial “third space”: a place separate from home and ...

Dariana Urbina is just 17 years old, but she is responsible for far more than the average teenager. She takes care of her three younger siblings—budgeting, cooking and cleaning, and doing paperwork and translation for her parents, who work jobs with grueling hours. Dariana’s heightened burden of responsibility is an example of what experts call “adultification” or “parentification”, in which children are forced to take on the respo...

Nine year-old Rosalia Gonzalez and her teammates love playing flag football through Beyond the Ball Girls, a Little Village organization that teaches children life skills through sports. Safe outdoor recreation is especially important to the families in Little Village, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Chicago impacted by higher rates of gun violence and gang activity compared to much of the city. Little Village also faces hig...

Andrea Luna Oviedo got her period for the first time in fourth grade, a year before her school district typically began puberty education for its students. She was able to tackle this new phase of her life with the help of supportive family and friends, and her school district in Berwyn, IL began teaching puberty education to fourth graders the year after. 

In this episode, reporter Francesca Mathewes explores the increase in early ...

For Latina parents like Melissa Huerta in Berwyn, IL, providing her children with food that reflects her Mexican upbringing is a priority. But this objective is complicated by the relative convenience of processed foods, and her 9-year-old daughter’s preference for spaghetti and meatballs. In this episode, reporter Julia Binswanger digs into the array of issues facing families looking to feed their children healthy and culturally s...

High school teacher Itzel Carranza always knew she wanted to have a child, but difficulties arose along the way: from trouble conceiving and gestational diabetes to an intense labor experience and trouble breastfeeding. The anxiety Itzel felt was exacerbated by a cold Chicago winter, and she says she experienced postpartum depression for three months. While she was never officially diagnosed–about half of those suffering from it ev...

Gina Ramirez learned she was pregnant in the fall of 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Unable to practice social distancing due to her job, she came down with the virus when she was just two months pregnant. Like many Latinos in her neighborhood of Brighton Park in southwest Chicago, she had to navigate the anxiety and insecurity of not knowing how her job would support her while sick or pregnant, or how the virus would impact he...

Many of us think miscarriages are rare, but at least 1 in 3 Latinas in the U.S. experience them . Mayra Buitrón is a birth and bereavement doula in Chicago–a health worker who helps parents navigate the physical and emotional fall-out of pregnancy loss. She lost a pregnancy in the past, and experienced the shame and silence that makes it hard to talk about it openly; a stigma that has only increased with the crackdown on the use of...

New parents Wendy Miralda and José Paz are navigating the first year of their daughter Jelyani’s life, in Spanish. Language is key to their connection as a family and as Hondurans living in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in Waukegan, Illinois. The Paz family never questioned teaching their baby Spanish. But many Latinos in the U.S. grapple with the misconception that doing so could delay their child learning English, or affec...

The health and wellness of Latinas is crucial to the health and wellbeing of the U.S. economy. In 100 Latina Birthdays, an original documentary series from Peabody-nominated LWC Studios, reporters in Chicago investigate the health and lifetime outcomes of Latinas in the United States from birth to age 100. In season 1, the stories that unfold center Latinas during their perinatal journeys, childhood, adolescence, and up until age 2...