Sonia Manzano is one of the most influential voices in the history of public television. For more than 40 years, she was our neighbor, Maria, on Sesame Street, and she continues to connect her experiences and imagination through her new show for PBS Kids, Alma’s Way. In Part Two of her Your Hometown episode, she talks with host Kevin Burke about how she made her way from her coming of age in the South Bronx to Sesame Street and how the real and fictional maps of those neighborhoods – one real, one imaginary – overlapped inside of her and in the TV worlds she created for us. As a magical storyteller, Sonia knows just where to go in her memories for that powerful combination of laughter amid pathos – the funny in the sad, the lessons in the every-day.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

Chesterfield Cigarettes Kinescope Tobacco Commercial from the Perry Como Show 

Father Knows Best: “Bud Takes Up The Dance” – Season 1, Episode 1 (1954)

Louis Prima & Keely Smith – “Don't Worry 'Bout Me”

Little Rascals: Our Gang of Follies of 1938

Original Godspell Cast on the Today Show

Godspell Cast performs at the Tony Awards (1972)

Sesame Street: Show Open Season One

Clip from Sesame Street Episode 0832 (1975)

Classic Sesame Street: “Maria’s Interruptions”

Classic Sesame Street: "Maria's Present for David”

Classic Sesame Street: "Maria Discusses Her Jobs”

Classic Sesame Street: "Mr. Hooper Helps Gordon”

Sesame Street Unpaved: "Mr. Hooper's Death”

Clip from Sesame Street Episode 2615 (1989)

Clip from Sesame Street Episode 3658 (1997)

Music

“A Boy Like That” from West Side Story (1961)

Nina Simone, “Feeling Good” (1965)

“America” from West Side Story (1961)

“Razzle Dazzle” from Chicago (1996 Broadway Revival Cast)

"Just My Imagination" - The Temptations (1971) 

Illustration

Tunshore Longe

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Recommended Viewing

Alma’s Way and Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

Recommended Reading

Sonia Manzano, Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos