A Conversation with Alana is a one-hour, one-person autobiographical play written by Carlos E. Cortés. He has performed the play more than 150 times throughout the United States. In his play, Cortés presents his story of growing up as a young man of mixed ancestry in racially segregated, religiously divided, class conscious early post-World War II Kansas City, Missouri. The son of a Mexican Catholic immigrant father and an American-born Jewish mother, whose parents came from Austria and Ukraine, Cortés had to learn to navigate Kansas City's rigid racial, ethnic, and religious fault lines, while simultaneously dealing with the internal conflicts of his own divided family. The Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside, Cortés travels the world with his wife, Laurel, while lecturing on cruise ships, reviewing television scripts, and giving talks and workshops on diversity.