Comic Cristela Alonzo grew up in fear of border patrol. ICE has 'brought it all back'

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Today we continue our end-of-the-year series featuring some of our favorite interviews of 2025. This is an interview I recorded last September.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: If you're not familiar with the comedy of my guest, Cristela Alonzo, I think the best way of introducing her is with a clip. But first, I should set it up. Cristela is Mexican American, the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her mother was living in Texas undocumented and pregnant with Cristela, her fourth child, when she left her abusive husband and raised her four children on her own. Cristela grew up in a Texas border town. This clip, like much of Cristela's comedy, is autobiographical.

(SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "CRISTELA ALONZO: MIDDLE CLASSY")

CRISTELA ALONZO: My family, we're from south Texas, you know, we're from Mexico. And...

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: That's south Texas. It's south Texas. It's kind of south Texas? It's like south Texas.

(APPLAUSE)

ALONZO: I grew up in a mixed-status family. If you guys don't know what that is, that means that half of us were documented, half of us were undocumented, and we're not telling you which one's which.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: Guess what. We all look alike.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: We didn't have a lot of money growing up, you know? We had to share a bathroom and a birth certificate. It's like...

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That was from Cristela Alonzo's first Netflix comedy special from 2017 called "Lower Classy." It was followed by her 2022 special "Middle Classy." Her new one, "Upper Classy," is now streaming on Netflix. You can tell from the titles that class and money have been defining issues in her life because she grew up in extreme poverty. For the first seven years of her life, Cristela, her mother and three siblings were squatters in an abandoned diner in Texas with a toilet on the outside.

Cristela managed to get into a theater program in high school, win theater awards, study theater in college but had to put her own dreams and ambitions on hold and quit college twice to care for her mother and help her sister raise her children. Eventually, Cristela broke through by performing across the country on college campuses. In 2014, she became the first Latina to create, write and star in a network TV show. Her semi-autobiographical sitcom, "Cristela," ran for one season on ABC.

Cristela Alonzo, welcome to FRESH AIR. It is a pleasure to have you on the show.

ALONZO: It is so good to be here. And I love hearing you sum up my life because I think that sometimes we forget the things that we have gone through in our own lives. So to hear it from someone else is kind of a really wonderful reminder.

GROSS: (Laughter) Well, good. Can we talk about what the clip was about, with that half of your family was undocumented? Can we talk about that...

ALONZO: Yes.

GROSS: ...Without worrying about your family being deported now?

ALONZO: (Laughter) Yes, we can. They're all citizens now, so that's very exciting.

GROSS: How old were you when your mother became a citizen?

ALONZO: Well, actually, she ended up getting her resident alien card. That's the highest she got. I was about 10 years old when she got her card. So for the first 10 years, it was a lot of us trying to protect her when we were in public.

GROSS: How would you do that?

ALONZO: Well, you know, in the border town that I grew up in, in McAllen, Texas, it's a border town. So you had border patrol agents out in public, you know, just kind of living amongst you because they were working near the border. So if we went out to eat and there was one of them there, my mom would have us, you know, either try to make some noise, pretend that we're throwing a tantrum so that she has to take us out of the building immediately, to protect her. And we would have to play along because we wanted to make sure that she was safe.

GROSS: How worried were you at the time?

ALONZO: I was terrified. You always wanted to make sure that you did your job well enough to where you were hoping that your mother wouldn't be taken away from you. And I was an American citizen. And it's weird to have that much power as a little kid and that much stress. And I think that's why, with what is happening now, living in Los Angeles and seeing the ICE raids, it reminds me of me being a child trying to protect my mother. And I had forgotten the feelings until I saw what was happening now, and it brought it all back.

GROSS: What has it been like for you recently in LA? And what was it like for you when the National Guard troops and Marines were just showing up in LA?

ALONZO: It was kind of unbelievable. You ask yourself - you live in the United States, and you live in Los Angeles, one of the biggest cities in the country. And it's happening here. So there was a moment of disbelief. And then once you realize that it was happening - I personally started remembering the immigration sweeps that happened in the '80s in my hometown, where a lot of times you would not see your friends anymore because their parents had been deported. An immigration raid came and, like, just deported people at a factory, at a company, what have you.

GROSS: You grew up in a border town on the American side of the Texas border. And the town was just about all Mexican and Mexican American. And you used to cross over the border a lot to visit family on the other side in Mexico. What was crossing the border like then? This was in the 1980s during the Reagan administration.

ALONZO: Yes, back then, you didn't need a passport. You needed a birth certificate. Passports kind of became a required thing later on when I became kind of, I want to say, around a preteen, teenager. You could just pass back and forth as long as you had the birth certificate. A lot of times when you're a child, you're crossing the border, and the Border Patrol agents want to ask you all of these questions to make sure that you are who you are, that you're not someone from Mexico that they're trying to bring in, you know, quote-unquote, "illegally."

So they ask you for your name. They ask you how old you are. And then they kind of go off of your answers and decide, what more am I going to ask her? So as a little kid, it's, what's your favorite school subject? Who's the name of your favorite teacher? What's the name of your elementary school? And it's all of these questions.

And I remember going through the border one time with a cousin of mine who's older than me. And he was a little bit on the spectrum and had trouble answering a couple of questions. And they detained him, and we were held over for a long time. And that is something really heavy to deal with. But at the same time, it became kind of your normal thing, your normal way of life - that you were so used to it that, again, you didn't realize how big it was until later, until you got older.

GROSS: Your mother raised you, your sister and two brothers - that's four kids - on her own. And she was on her own because she left her abusive husband. Would you describe how she ended up being married to him against her will?

ALONZO: Yes. So my mom grew up in a little village, in a little ranchito in Mexico called El Zancarron. Back then, it was like the middle of nowhere. And my mom grew up very Catholic, and it was this thing where her parents were very strict. Her mother was very strict. And people couldn't date. You actually had a lot of arranged marriages a lot of times where girls would be engaged to older men, you know, because the men had all the power. And the men, if there wasn't an arranged marriage, the men had all the power where they could kidnap the women and take them from their house.

GROSS: Do you mean literally kidnap?

ALONZO: Yes. So the women, once they were taken from their home, they were basically this man's property. And that's how my mom and my dad ended up together. And it was this culture, this environment where the women were submissive to the men. You know, my mom and my dad got married through the church, so they couldn't divorce. You know, my mom left my dad. But they never divorced because they were Catholic. That was how much my mom couldn't do it. So she stayed married to him. But after they got married, because he was the man, he would drink a lot, be very physically abusive to her, had another family. That's the thing that made my mom leave my dad, when she discovered that he...

GROSS: The church doesn't approve of that.

ALONZO: Absolutely, you know? Absolutely. It was this thing where, you know, she became the first woman in her family to leave her husband. You never left your husband. You didn't divorce. You didn't separate. You stuck through, and you dealt with it. And she decided to leave him with - I mean, this woman had, like, a second-grade education, couldn't speak the language here, and she decided that that was better than staying married to my dad. And...

GROSS: So there - this is at the point where they're already in the U.S.

ALONZO: They had been coming back and forth from the U.S. and Mexico. So they would come here, and then they'd go back to Mexico. They were trying to establish a life here, but then they would go back for a couple years. It's one of those - it's really off-and-on. That's the thing that I think is one of those perspectives in immigration that we don't talk about enough, is immigrants come to this country mostly out of a need. It's in search of this opportunity that they don't have at home. But if my parents could have made it happen, if they could have had a decent life, they would have stayed in their home. They would have stayed in Mexico. But they decided, ultimately, the United States was a better opportunity for their children.

And, you know, when my mom left my dad because she was such a Catholic woman, she told my dad that his punishment for being such a terrible person is to have no contact with his children ever again, and he was never going to be allowed to ever meet me. And I never met my father my entire life. There were times where he tried to reach out, and my mom never let him because she didn't want me sullied by having known him.

GROSS: I'm thinking of how brave your mother must have been to be in the U.S., undocumented, pregnant with you, three other children she had, and, like, leave your husband, have no real income. She ended up working at restaurants, but, you know, it - they were not exactly high-paying jobs. She didn't have a home. Was she very brave in other ways, too?

ALONZO: Yes. And I think that - you know, I think that's something that I really try to make a point in talking about a lot on stage as well, is that in my experience, the immigrants that I grew up with and knew were so brave, and they never understood that they were brave. They never gave themselves credit for doing everything that they did. And with my mom, she was such a religious woman. She just loved Catholicism so much. But the way that she had accepted religion, the way that she accepted Catholicism and taught us to do it, to believe in it was to have faith that everyone was worthy of being a person that had respect and was treated well.

When I was a kid, our neighbor was - we had a gay neighbor that lived right next to us and another neighbor that was gay that lived catty-corner to us, and she always made it abundantly clear that we were always supposed to treat everybody - the lesson was, if you're gay, it doesn't matter. You're a person. You deserve to be loved and supported. And it was from the Catholicism. And it's interesting to me because the way that we talk about religion right now in this country is - it's not the way that I learned it. It's about hope, love and compassion. And that's what she taught me. And she - and it was part of her strength. In a weird way, she was very liberal, but she had no idea she was liberal.

GROSS: She wasn't so liberal with you, though. She was very strict with you.

ALONZO: No, she wasn't.

GROSS: You couldn't date, right?

ALONZO: She was very strict with me.

GROSS: She didn't even want you to go outside.

ALONZO: No, yeah. She was very strict with me. And I think a lot of it had to be because she was a single mother, and she was doing it all on her own. And I think that by keeping me inside, she thought that was the safest way to protect me. She didn't want me dating.

GROSS: But she couldn't be there to protect you 'cause she had to work.

ALONZO: Exactly. I was a latchkey kid. You know, I started being left alone by - you know, right after we moved from the diner, so, you know, 8 years old, because my brothers were - they started working to help support the family, you know? So I would stay by myself. And yeah, I was very Rapunzel. I was a brown Rapunzel, you know? So - but it was that thing where I didn't know better. I didn't know what I was missing out on because as children, you think everybody lives like that.

GROSS: Yeah. Well, we need to take a short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is comic and actress Cristela Alonzo. Her new Netflix comedy special is called "Upper Classy." It's a follow-up to her two previous specials, "Lower Classy" and "Middle Classy." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with comic and actress Cristela Alonzo. Her new Netflix comedy special is called "Upper Classy." She grew up poor in a Texas border town, the daughter of an undocumented Mexican immigrant who eventually got her green card. Alonzo is also the author of the memoir "Music To My Years," which was published in 2019.

So your family was so poor. And your mother was, you know, supporting the family - you know, four children - on her own. What kind of job did she have?

ALONZO: She was trying to do any kind of, like, physical labor that she could do. She would clean houses. She started washing dishes at a restaurant - at a Mexican restaurant. And then she eventually became a cook at another restaurant - at a Mexican restaurant. So she started working nights - the dinner shift. And then she realized that she needed more money, so she started working double shifts. So she worked double shifts for years, and she would make about $150 a week.

GROSS: Whoa.

ALONZO: That was her pay.

GROSS: How do you support five people on that?

ALONZO: You don't. It was really hard. The way to survive is a lot of rice and beans. You ate the same thing over and over again - a lot of times where we didn't have any utilities, any electricity. You kind of made do with that. A lot of times we didn't have hot water. First of all, in the diner, we had this extension cord...

GROSS: Let me just explain again that you were...

ALONZO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Squatting.

ALONZO: Yes.

GROSS: The family was squatting in an abandoned diner.

ALONZO: Yeah, we were squatting in this abandoned diner on the main street of my little hometown, San Juan, Texas. It's Nebraska Street. And this little diner, we had neighbors. There was a little house next to this diner. And my mom used to use an extension cord. They would let her use an extension cord for a fee, like, she would pay the neighbors a little bit to borrow some electricity. And in the winter, she would have the space heater. And this is before the space heaters had safety features that would turn off the heater when they tipped over. So my mom would have the space heater and put the heat facing up, and that's how she would cook food on this space heater. And...

GROSS: That sounds really dangerous.

ALONZO: It is. But, you know, being hungry is even worse. You know, in the winter when it was cold, she used to have this, like, a 10-gallon pickle tub from work that she would fill up with water. And she would warm it up. And that's how we used to shower. We used to stand in the middle of this washtub. She'd fill up this big bucket of water, warm water that she warmed up in the space heater. And we would get a little cup. And we would fill the cup with water and then pour it on our bodies. And that's how we showered in the winter.

GROSS: Were you known as the family that lives in the abandoned diner?

ALONZO: No, we were very private. We didn't really have a lot of friends outside of our family. We were very insulated, and I never told anybody where I lived.

GROSS: It must be so interesting to be onstage doing comedy about all these horrible things from your childhood that you could have been in legal jeopardy for, that a lot of your family could've been deported for. And now you've found a way onstage to make that funny, and of course, to make it very public.

ALONZO: I think it's so necessary to talk about it, though, because I realize that people need to know that, despite how I grew up, that I was able to go to school. I was able to be a great student. I kind of wanted to show people that the narrative that is presented about someone like me or like my family wasn't true for everybody. A lot of times, if you're not familiar with the Latino community, or namely, like, Mexican Americans or anything - when I moved to college, I went to college in St. Louis for a year when I first moved. And it was the first time that I realized I was a minority.

And it wasn't until I moved away from my Mexican little border town that I realized that people were going to treat me the way that they thought I should be treated based on their assumptions on who I am. Meaning that if they were unfamiliar with me, they would ask me a lot of tropey, stereotypical, offensive questions that I would have to answer because they wanted to get to know me.

GROSS: What kind of questions?

ALONZO: They wanted to know how I was smart.

GROSS: (Laughter) How could that be possible?

ALONZO: Yeah. People thought I was lying about how poor I grew up because I spoke so well.

GROSS: Let me stop you for a second. Is that because you watched so much TV when you were a kid? You had to stay home. TV was your friend. Music was your friend. You learned a lot about America from TV. Is that where you learned, like, this perfect English...

ALONZO: Yes.

GROSS: ...No accent kind of sound?

ALONZO: Yes. My mom had this rule. My mom was a Spanish speaker, never spoke English. She had a rule at home. We couldn't speak English at home. We had to speak Spanish so that she knew she could understand everything that was being said in the house. Having said that, when I was a kid, I loved TV so much, I started imitating what I heard on TV - the voices, the accents, everything. That's how I learned English. But when I was a kid, I loved shows like "Murphy Brown." I don't know why. And I think the closest thing that I could understand is my mom used to make me translate the news to her as a little kid.

So when I was a little kid, I'm translating all of these big things, these big ideas to my mom. So I think that when I watched "Murphy Brown," I recognized some of the names from the news and it made me feel smart. It's like, this kind of comedy, the words, the vocabulary. I was a big word nerd. I did all the spelling bees, you know? I did the Scripps spelling bee, like the regional, when I was in fifth grade. I love vocabulary and I just like learning. I was a big public library person. I would go to the library. That's how I spent my summer vacations when I was a kid. I would go to the public library and read because it was free.

GROSS: So let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is comic and actress Cristela Alonzo. Her new Netflix comedy special is called "Upper Classy." We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL FRISELL'S "PLEASED TO MEET YOU")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with comic and actress Cristela Alonzo. She grew up extremely poor in a Texas border town. Her mother was an undocumented Mexican immigrant who later got her green card. For the first seven years of Cristela's life, her family lived as squatters in an abandoned diner. Her new Netflix comedy special, "Upper Classy," follows her 2017 special, "Lower Classy, " and her 2022 special, "Middle Classy." In 2014, she became the first Latina to create, write and star in a network TV show. Her semiautobiographical sitcom, "Cristela," ran for one season on ABC.

Your mother taught you that when you're poor, as you were, there's no time for pleasure and there's no time to relax. And she - if she felt that you were just, like, relaxing while she was around, she would give you projects to do. So what were your responsibilities at home when you were growing up?

ALONZO: When I was home, I was the person, oddly enough, that - I used to put all the furniture together. Like, I would do do-it-yourself projects. When I was in high school, I wallpapered our house while other people were going to prom, going to school dances. All the paperwork, you know? My mom, there were four kids. And my sister eloped when she was 18. I was about 8. Right when we left the diner, she eloped. And she was the one that did all the paperwork, so when she left, I had to do all the paperwork.

I would pay the bills with my mom. My mom didn't have a bank account. She did everything cash. So all the utilities - you know, the phone, the water, electricity - we would have to go to the post office. I, a little kid, would have to order money orders for the amount that we were going to pay. And then depending on the utility, we would have to walk - because we didn't have a car. We didn't drive. My mom didn't drive. So we would have to walk to the location where we could drop off the bills for the electricity, water, everything. So I was really into - I was really helping my mom with, like, budget, household things my entire life.

GROSS: You know, we were talking about TV before and how, you know, you learned so much about America. You learned to speak with an American accent from television. And you loved "Murphy Brown." And you were wondering, like, why did you love it so much? So it was either in one of your specials or in your memoir that you mentioned that you love "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" because...

ALONZO: Oh, yes.

GROSS: ...Mary Tyler Moore was this, like, independent woman.

ALONZO: Yes (laughter).

GROSS: And she didn't have children, she didn't have a husband, but she had a really interesting life. And that affirmed the kind of life you wanted to have. You wanted to be independent. You wanted to have a job. You wanted to have an interesting life, a more worldly life. And maybe "Murphy Brown," maybe that was the same kind of thing.

ALONZO: Oh, absolutely. You know, when - "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" I was obsessed with. And to me, television from the '70s, it was revolutionary because it really allowed - especially if you were familiar with "Mary Tyler Moore" after, like, "The Dick Van Dyke Show." What an evolution from "Dick Van Dyke" to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." I mean, the evolution of a woman, you know, being able to just, you know, she's the single woman. She's working in an office. It showed such a change. And I've always felt that in my family, we're a little behind. As - coming from a Mexican family, we're a little behind on social standards, social cues, where, you know, I want to say that women got the right to vote here in, like, 1920, and I want to say that in Mexico, they got the right to vote around 1950, 1954. So there's, like, a 30-year gap between American women getting the right to vote and Mexican women getting the right to vote, especially...

GROSS: That's really late.

ALONZO: Yeah. So in a weird way, TV really allowed me to learn things that my mom couldn't.

GROSS: So your mother told you that dreams were for people with money, and you didn't have any. So I want to play another clip of your comedy, and this is about your dreams and your fantasies, and it's from your first Netflix comedy special, called "Lower Classy."

(SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "LOWER CLASSY")

ALONZO: When I was in fourth grade, I realized I was poor 'cause I was a really big fan of New Kids On The Block. Loved them, right?

(CHEERING)

ALONZO: I couldn't afford to see them in concert, right? So I had this fantasy when I was a kid, you know, that I was going to meet them, and they were going to fall in love with me, right? Like, no joke, you guys. This was the fantasy. Fourth grade. I was going to be the maid on their tour bus.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: And I was going to clean things so good that they were going to fall in love with me.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: Like, in my head, I thought they were going to get on the tour bus and they were going to be like, oh, my God, who made that bed right there? You know what I mean?

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: Like, oh, my God, this tour bus is so clean. Who made that bed right there? Who made that bed right there? Who made that bed right there? You know?

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: Like, yes. Yes. And then I would say, I made that bed. And they would be like, we love you now. And I'm like, (screaming). That was it. That was in fourth grade.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: Then 20 years later, I thought about that story. I looked back and I was thinking, why the [expletive] am I a maid in my own fantasy?

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: Like, even in my fantasy, I can't give Latinos better jobs?

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: And then I started thinking about it. And you know why? It's because a lot of the women I knew, that's what they did for a living. They cooked at restaurants. They cleaned houses. They came here and had those jobs to get a better life so that their kids didn't have to do those jobs. And when I understood that, I realized that as a woman, I wanted to break that glass ceiling, you know?

(APPLAUSE)

ALONZO: Yeah. But as a Mexican, I want to clean that [expletive] too. You know what I mean?

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So that's my guest, Cristela Alonzo, from her first comedy special, "Lower "Classy." Her new comedy special on Netflix is called "Upper Classy."

So that's a really, really funny and really, really revealing clip. But you did have a dream - like, a real dream. Your dream was to be in theater.

ALONZO: I did.

GROSS: How did you discover it?

ALONZO: I was in choir in junior high. The school got the choir program defunded. So I had to switch. I wanted to do something in the arts still. So eighth grade, I switched over to theater. I had this, like, really basic acting class. My teacher, Mr. Honel (ph), had this exercise. It's very "Chorus Line," you know? He's like, I want everybody to pick an appliance that they're going to act out, they're going to pretend to be. And then when I say go, you're going to act out that appliance, make the noise of it, blah, blah, blah. And he said that, and I didn't do anything 'cause I thought it was so ridiculous. And then he came over to me and he's like, why aren't you doing it? And I'm like, I am. I'm a vacuum cleaner, and I'm broken.

GROSS: (Laughter).

ALONZO: And literally the next day, I get called in to the office - the principal's office. And the principal tells me that my drama teacher, Mr. Honel, has changed my schedule to put me into this advanced theater class. I had no idea what that was, got so upset, went to him - went to his room, got so upset because my best friend and I were going to have different lunch periods, and that made me furious. And he was like, you need to do this. He's like, you have to do this. I need you to do this.

GROSS: That's a leap.

ALONZO: Yes, it was.

GROSS: I mean, you're basically doing nothing. You were refusing to do his assignment.

ALONZO: Yes.

GROSS: And you found out a great, like...

ALONZO: Yes, yes.

GROSS: ...Cover story for that, a great disguise for that.

ALONZO: Yeah.

GROSS: And he thinks that you should be doing more theater as a result.

ALONZO: And we're still friends.

GROSS: Wow.

ALONZO: Like, he actually - he went to the taping of my first special.

GROSS: You are lucky.

ALONZO: Yeah. I am very grateful. The teachers - my drama teachers - I am very grateful for. I'm still friends with them. I've always said, it's like, without Mr. Honel, I don't know what I would've done.

GROSS: So did you want to be in music theater?

ALONZO: Yes. Oh, my God, yes. I wanted it so much. Couldn't afford dance classes, couldn't afford singing lessons, so I took it upon myself to just record movies that I could get off the TV on my VCR. I'd learn their dances. Then when I got to high school and started, you know, auditioning for college, they were like, oh, you can sing. And I was like, I can? I had no idea.

GROSS: (Laughter).

ALONZO: And, yes, I wanted to be on Broadway.

GROSS: But you ended up in stand-up comedy. How did that happen?

ALONZO: Well, you know, I wanted to do Broadway. And then a voice teacher, when I was 18 years old, told me that as a Latina, I could do "West Side Story" and "Chorus Line," and then I was kind of done. And it was weird because at that moment, I felt like somebody had said that my dream was limited and I had no chance to do it. And I ended up doing some kind of theater, but I couldn't get auditions. And I stopped doing theater. And then I decided to move to LA to try to be in TV and film. Then when I moved to LA, they were like, well, you have a crooked tooth and you're plus-sized, so I don't know how that's going to work for you. I'm like, wow, this is really great, you know?

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: Like, oh, sold, you know? So it became this thing where I was working as an assistant at a travel boutique. My mom ended up getting sick. My brother told me that she was on her deathbed, and I had to come home. Quit my job, went to Texas to see her. My mom got better. I showed up, and she got better. And she asked me to stay with her and be her caregiver until she passed away. And I decided to do that because I had been taught that my job was to take care of my family my entire life. When my mom passed away, I was stuck in Dallas. We had moved to Dallas because we moved in with my sister, which is where the premise of my sitcom came. It came from that time of my life where I was taking care of my mom and helping my sister raise her kids.

My mom died. I was stuck, and I needed a job. And I responded to this help wanted ad that needed office help. And it was at the comedy club in Dallas, the Improv. And I became the office manager. And I started watching comics, and I was like - you know what? - this is like theater. It's like, you're onstage. And then I'm like, wait, I can write what I talk about? This is amazing. I'm going to do stand-up. Stand-up is like theater. And I was completely depressed. I was grieving my mom's loss. And I went up onstage and started talking about my family, and that's how it happened.

GROSS: Let me just take a break and reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is comic and actress Cristela Alonzo. Her new Netflix comedy special is called "Upper Classy." It's a follow-up to her two previous specials, "Lower Classy" and "Middle Classy." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with comic and actress Cristela Alonzo. Her new Netflix comedy special is called "Upper Classy." She grew up poor in a Texas border town, the daughter of an undocumented Mexican immigrant who eventually got her green card. Alonzo is also the author of the memoir "Music To My Years," which was published in 2019.

So I want to play another clip. And this relates to how you put your dream on hold to move back with your family, and then after your mother died, to help your sister raise her kids. So I want to play a clip from your new comedy special, "Upper Classy." And you're talking about not being married and not having children.

(SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "UPPER CLASSY")

ALONZO: I'm 46 years old. I'm not married. I don't have kids. People always ask me, when are you going to have kids? I'm like, dude, I'm 46.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: At this point, if I get pregnant, that's the second coming of Jesus. Like, Oh, my God.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: I always tell people you should never ask people when they're going to have kids. It's none of your business 'cause some people don't want kids.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: And that should be a good enough reason. They don't want them. Then there's other people that want them and can't have them. Why are you bringing it up? And then there's people like me that we don't talk about enough. I already raised children.

(APPLAUSE)

ALONZO: I helped my sister raise her three kids. Like, three kids from, like, babies to adults. And let me tell you, man, once you raise a child one time, you never want to do it again.

(CHEERING)

ALONZO: Ugh. They're terrible.

(LAUGHTER)

ALONZO: They don't tell you that. They're terrible. I feel bad for parents. God, you get tricked. 'Cause when people say they want kids, they usually mean, I want a baby. No one ever says, aye, I want a 17-year-old.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That's really funny. How were you able to exit that life and return to the life you were trying desperately to build for yourself?

ALONZO: It sounds terrible to say this, but I feel that my mom dying was so liberating to me because my mom had chosen me to be her caregiver when I was a little kid. She told me that when she got older, I was going to be the one to take care of her. And I took that on because she had done so much for me. She sacrificed so much for my family. How could I not do what she wanted me to do? So when she passed away, I thought, wow, I can finally chase my dream. If I don't do it now, I'm never going to do it. And that's what I decided to do.

GROSS: So eventually, you started doing comedy shows. You...

ALONZO: Yes.

GROSS: ...Did college tours, doing comedy at colleges around the country. And you eventually had enough money that you could buy things?

ALONZO: Yes.

GROSS: You were amazed you would be able to see, like, doctors.

ALONZO: I had no idea how doctors worked. I really didn't.

GROSS: Oh, you tell this great story...

ALONZO: I had no idea.

GROSS: ...That you...

ALONZO: Yes.

GROSS: ...Go to a gynecologist, and you have no idea...

ALONZO: Yes.

GROSS: ...What part of your body she's about to examine.

ALONZO: I had no idea.

GROSS: And you're so embarrassed.

ALONZO: And let me tell you, I grew up in the kind of family where it's not the kind of conversation you have - I had with my sister. My sister and I wouldn't talk about that. We were raised so conservative that we never talked about, like, OB-GYNs. She had three children. It's like I almost didn't know how she had them.

GROSS: (Laughter).

ALONZO: Like, you know what I mean? (Laughter) It's like that thing where we just didn't talk about it. Medical attention is such a luxury to so many people. I had to learn how to work with it, how to deal with it. I say it in the last special. Like, I didn't know what a checkup was. Like, why would you go to a doctor when you're not sick? Like, people just go? It was such a foreign concept. But, yeah, you know, I started having money where I could put my bills on autopay. I could go to the doctor. I could buy a car. I bought a new car, like, 10 years ago. How? How was I able to do all of this stuff? I was always so grateful for the most basic things that I couldn't afford when I was a kid. I still go through that.

GROSS: Yeah. If you're just joining us, my guest is comic and actress Cristela Alonzo. Her new Netflix comedy special is called "Upper Classy." It's a follow-up to her two previous specials, "Lower Classy" and "Middle Classy." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF KING CURTIS' "WHAT ARE YOU DOING NEW YEAR'S EVE?")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with comic and actress Cristela Alonzo. Her new Netflix comedy special is called "Upper Classy." She grew up poor in a Texas border town, the daughter of an undocumented Mexican immigrant who eventually got her green card. Alonzo is also the author of the memoir "Music To My Years," which was published in 2019.

So there was a period - and I think this was after your first Netflix special. And it was around the time that Trump was serving the first year of his first term, that you were very depressed during that period. And you gave up comedy for a while and became more of an activist, working with immigrants or, you know, people who wanted to become citizens but were undocumented. What led you to do that? And I also just wonder, like, how you were changed or affected by the experience.

ALONZO: In 2015, I was doing a show. I was doing a stand-up show in Bakersfield, California. And I was doing a meet and greet after the show, and I see this little old woman walking by. And I tell my best friend, Steve, who opens for me on the road, I'm like, I think that's Dolores Huerta. And he was like, who? And I was like, hold on. And I yell, Dolores, to see if she turns around. And she does. And I was like, I will be right back. I have to go meet this woman.

GROSS: She cofounded the United Farm Workers.

ALONZO: Yes. She started the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. She's, you know, civil rights icon with the farmworkers movement. I actually knew of her from one of the summers that I went to the public library. They didn't teach about her in my school. I learned it on my own. And she had gone to see my show. Her daughter took her. And I couldn't believe...

GROSS: Wow.

ALONZO: ...That she was there. And we just became friendly. And then I want to say I started meeting people from the sitcom. People asked me, well, do you want to be in this campaign about immigrants? Do you want to talk about immigrant reform? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Absolutely. Yes, let's talk about this. I ended up getting invited to the White House to basically host this little gathering about DAPA, which was the DACA sister program for the parents that were undocumented. And it no longer exists. But I went.

GROSS: Is this the Obama White House?

ALONZO: Yes, the Obama - oh, yes, it was the Obama White House (laughter). It was the Obama White House. And I met Dolores at the White House, and we bumped into each other. And she says, I want you to use your power for good, and I want you to continue my work when I'm no longer here. And I'm thinking, well, that's kind of a big ask. And at that point, she and I had already talked a bit, but having the White House as a backdrop of that moment made me realize that it's what I wanted to do. And she and I became friends. She became my mentor. And she started teaching me about the power of your voice and how it was so important to use your power for change.

GROSS: It sounds like she became kind of like a maternal figure for you, like a mother figure in a mentor kind of way, and said you have to do this for me in the way your mother used to say that. But they gave you opposite messages. Like, your mother said you have to stay home and help your family. And I guess it's a similar message. Huerta's telling you, you have to use your voice and stand up to protect people. And it's your larger family, do you know what I mean? It's family in the larger sense. That they're in the position you were in, and now it's your turn to help them. It's not your blood family, but it's, you know, your larger social family.

ALONZO: And that's actually how I took it. Exactly how you said it, that is how I took it because my default, I am a caregiver. My entire life has been caregiving. So for me, you tell me that you - that I need to help someone, and I am going to show up. It is my nature. It is in my DNA. It's my default. So the moment she and I became close - and, you know, I became friends with her kids, and I started just seeing her more and during election years for - you know, we would go and do voter registration, voter outreach. We would go to these house meetings out in the middle of the fields with, like, farmworkers. Like, I was so into trying to have that message that she has, which is coming into your power and using it for change.

GROSS: Where did you think you were most helpful? Like, what did you feel you could do that would be of most use to the people who you wanted to help?

ALONZO: You know, I think that one of the biggest things for me is really actually putting a face to a community that is kind of invisible at times. I think that by being specific about my life and talking about it in stand-up, it allows others to know that a lot more people have things in common than they are different. I think that the way that I was most helpful is to help give a narrative that doesn't sound preachy. I almost believe that I trick people into learning about my community.

GROSS: Do you do different comedy in a more activist setting than you do, say, for a Netflix special?

ALONZO: Yes, because it depends on the topic that I'm doing, where I'm going. You know, I'm diabetic. I'm Type 2 diabetic, so there are certain events that I talk about health, and I do a whole thing about being diabetic, right? That's the beginning of this big thing where you talk about how important it is to eat better, to take care of yourself, to go to the doctor. You know, I talk about how, especially with a lot of Latinos, a lot of Mexican Americans that I grew up with, they find out they're diabetic and it's almost like a fun fact about them. They don't do anything about it. You know, they're just like, oh, it turns out I'm diabetic. It's like, what are you doing? Oh, it was nothing, you know? (Laughter) You're just - like, it's so weird. They're like, you're supposed to try. You're supposed to try to fix it, you know?

GROSS: Well, Cristela, it's really been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much.

ALONZO: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

GROSS: My interview with Cristela Alonzo was recorded in September after the release of her latest Netflix comedy special called "Upper Classy." Alonzo will be traveling the country with her "Midlife Mixtape" tour starting in January. We'll continue our end-of-the-year retrospective tomorrow with Tonya's interview with Malala Yousafzai. She became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner when she was 17 years old. In her new memoir, "Finding My Way," she shares a vulnerable story of a young woman navigating friendship, first love and self-discovery while living in the global spotlight. Hope you'll join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with engineering today from Adam Staniszewski. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock is our director. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.