The annual Best of the South Side was my introduction to South Side Weekly. Seeing the paper intentionally platform the South Side against a media ecosystem that amplified Chicago’s downtown, North Side, and suburbs–while encouraging neighborhood writers to determine this coverage–was revolutionary.
I mean, there was a whole section in the issue dedicated to La Villita. That blew my mind.
In 2019, shortly after contributing a short blurb to BoSS that summer, I found myself writing for the Weekly about displacement in Pilsen, a brief history of the Little Village and South Chicago Mexican parades, the 50th anniversary of Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition, disinvestment in our communities, and more.
What BoSS taught me is that writing about home and your place in the world can become a jumping-off point—for writers, journalists, poets, artists, culture makers, and, really, anyone. It spoke to the larger ethos of the Weekly: that people and places are intrinsically connected, that our lived experiences shape our perspective, and that objectivity is often subjective.
Knowing yourself and speaking your truth is a show of resistance in a system that commodifies or erases your reality. And all of those truths packaged and printed into a single issue only speak a larger truth about the South Side and us as Southsiders. I think of it like a family photo album; it’s as powerful now as it will be in posterity.
I hope you enjoy this vistazo into my life. And hope to see you in a future BoSS.
Jacqueline Serrato is the Weekly’s outgoing editor-in-chief.