If you made any jokes yesterday about Native Americans sitting down to dinner with illegal immigrants over the first Thanksgiving dinner, I hope you’ll take the time to read this installment of Vanessa’s story. Because it’s all well and good to keep the conversation easy and breezy for family, but at the end of the day the reservation system continues to cause real, daily problems for Native people both on and off the rez.

I used to waitress. I’ve been working since I was twelve, so I was waitressing at this place called the Navo Nation Inn. I started as a busser and then when I turned thirteen-ish I started waiting. There’s no alcohol or anything. It’s a dry reservation. I was there and a woman came in with some people. She had decided that she was going to be a teacher’s assistant at one of the schools on the Navajo Nation, and I don’t remember her name, I don’t remember how she...

In our hyper-branded, if-you-like-this-you’ll-also-like-this, 24-hour-news cycle culture, we forget how easy it is to specialize unthinkingly. Meaning: we narrow our own interests so severely that, for example, we no longer talk to our neighbors. We don’t treat the foreclosures down the street as news. We don’t think our individual circumstances can possibly reflect the same national or international concerns we glimpse on cable news or read on our RSS feeds.

And we forget how early it starts. How quickly and efficiently we narrow. Categorize. Dismiss. Until finally we are demanding of people: what is interesting about you? Why should I care?

I’d met Vanessa a number of times over the years, and exchanged pleasant enough conversation with her. Yet when I began Revision Street: America, she appeared on none of my initial lists of interview subjects. Simply put, I had no idea what she might have to say. Nor why I should care.

But Revision Street has been about allowing those things to be said anyway: finding place for them, granting them import. So I trundled down to her Pilsen home on a quiet...

Jose Guerrero does make art in his Pilsen studio. In fact, he’s getting ready for a show as we speak. But mostly, Gerrero gives tours of all the murals around the Pilsen neighborhood. It’s because of this that he calls himself an amateur anthropologist.

Amateur anthropologist? I repeat. Seems to me like you’re a pretty well-established anthropologist.

Jose Guerrero laughs hard for a minute, slapping the table in front of him.

I’m glad you said that, he says. Did you hear that, Margaret? I’m an established anthropologist. He turns back to me. I hope you write that down in your article, he says. Established anthropologist.

So you’ve watched Pilsen and Humboldt Park change since 1964. Do you think art has impacted the sense of community in Pilsen, and have you seen anything similar happening in...