Evangeline Ordaz (center)

Chicana/o Studies faculty member Evangeline Ordaz is one busy woman. In addition to teaching at California State University, Northridge, Ordaz is now writing the popular teen soap, “East Los High,” for the internet-only television service Hulu. It was a big summer hit for the ascendant Hulu, which is fighting with companies like Netflix for viewers. With “East Los High,” and particularly East Los Angeles-raised Ordaz’s voice as a writer, Hulu officials have attracted a long-neglected audience that is drawn to the “East Los” realism they find on the screen.

“You know, I grew up saying things like, ‘Oh, we’re going to go down her house’; ‘Al lay’ instead of ‘el lay’ [LA],” Ordaz says about the East LA patois she uses to write for her characters. “We elongate our vowels like crazy. So it’s like, ‘Brendaaa, com’ere!’ It sounds like a whine to everybody else, but to us, it’s just the way you talk.”

To keep current of not only the way her “students” in “East Los High” speak, but what they say, Ordaz has used the things she hears while mentoring students at Legacy LA, a youth development center. She has even gotten the producers of the show to film in and around the Ramona Gardens housing projects, where some of the fictional show takes place, and to employ some of the local residents. For Ordaz, it’s only a small way to give back to an area that has given her so much, including this opportunity.

“I’m just stealing their stories,” she says. “I’m putting them on paper and taking credit.”

For more: East LA Homegirl Goes Hollywood (WFSU)