The View from Tucson, Arizona

I've been in Tucson for a week and temperatures have reached over 100 degrees every day this week in late June. It brought to mind Luis Urrea's The Devil's Highway and the disastrous trek over the Sonoran desert chronicled in that book. When the temperature outside the air-conditioned casita feels like the inside of a wood-fired bread-baking oven, the thought of crossing a desert without enough water in similar heat is mind-boggling. But most Tucsonians take the weather in stride, as well as the divisive politics, and air-conditioning.

On January 16, 2012 I posted on this blog about the forced dismantling of the Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American Studies program. This week, I was able to follow up on the controversy at a local independent bookstore, where a clerk directed me back to the internet to find out about SaveEthnicStudies.org, a group of teachers who have compiled statistics on the success of this ethnic studies program in helping the academic achievement of Mexican American and African American males in particular. To meet these teachers, visit the website. Tucson suspended the highly successful program this year because of the controversy, and some of its dedicated teachers are trying to explain the program over the din of well-funded, right wing extremists, led by Arizona's attorney-general.

The website says that the ethnic studies courses are mistakenly thought to be about immigration. In fact, they are about helping minority students connect with the curriculum and understand why they are in school. In the words of SaveEthnicStudies.org, it helps Mexican American students in particular "to see themselves in the world around them, to compare that to the world their parents and grandparents lived in and to seek solutions for the problems of the future." In theoretical terms, this program helps student to develop critical consciousness, a goal of education--especially for disenfranchised minorities--made famous by Paulo Friere, a Brazilian educator who worked with illiterate adults amongst Brazil's poorest class.

This summer I'm involved in studying two of my Goshen College classes to investigate how students can develop critical consciousness in college-level ethnic literature classes. We're studying the blogs that students in these courses created to respond to course materials and key questions. The controversy around the TUSD ethnic studies program has never seemed more relevant, and I've deepened my awareness of the issues by reading a variety of blogs--a tool for personal expression and social action.

This image appears on Pocho: News y Satire

Another great blog for keeping up with developments in the Arizona controversy is Three Sonorans: Progressive and Activist News in Tucson and Arizona.

Junot Diaz - Insights into The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

In their presentation on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Tavo and Stan showed part of an interview with Junot Diaz on Q TV. I'd highly recommend you watch the full 18 minutes, even though we didn't have time for the whole clip in class. Diaz is a great speaker and appealing personality, but he also said some things in this interview that will be helpful in framing our discussions of the novel next week.

The interview began with a discussion of Fukú, which Diaz explained as "a curse of consequences." "It allows you your choices, but if you make a bad one the consequences are terrifying."

Image from Wikipedia

He also referred to Fukú as a useful "bridge narrative," and compared it to some famous curses in world literature, such as Adam and Eve's being cast out of the Garden of Eden, a direct consequence of their choice to disobey God.

We'll want to talk more about this "bridge" narrative and how it functions in the novel.

I'd also like to test out the hypothesis that Fukú is a curse resulting from violent domination, that is, from the conquest of the Caribbean by the "Admiral" (aka Columbus), who is also associated with Fukú in the novel. The violence of the Trujillo regime, and even the violence in Dominican culture, whether it is police beatings, or parental beatings, or hyper-masculine domination of women, all seems to stem from this curse. Oscar, on the other hand, doesn't want to dominate anyone, although he reads comics about the consequences of the desire to dominate the world. Rather, he just wants to love and be loved. In fact, he dies for his ideal of love.

On the theme of hierarchies, Diaz says in this interview:

"Nobody is meaner than outsiders . . . .no one is more hierarchical and excluding of outsiders than outsiders."

"Who's crueler about looks than ugly people?" Diaz quotes his mother as saying.

On the domination of women:

"Has the number of women in battered shelters dropped? Have the numbers of rapes dropped?

Diaz especially decried the popular culture images of hyper-masculinity that are being fed to boys in disadvantaged areas. He quoted one high school student as saying, "the only masculinity I know about is that I gotta be a g---d--- thug."

Diaz noted: "Watch one hour of TV to see the cultural narrative boys are being sold about masculinity."

The interviewer asked Diaz whether he thinks that violence has become more acceptable now than when he was a kid.

"Is violence more acceptable, or more represented?" Diaz asked. "Has the society
gotten better because we're more polite about what happens when the camera's off?"

"My thing is to ask 'what's the reality?'," he said. "What matters to me as an artist is to look into what the culture doesn't talk about."

"It's all about how things--even when we think we know what they are--aren't that at all."

When the interviewer suggested that he might speak for Dominicans, Diaz answered:

"My field is Dominican diaspora culture. But what I do is incredibly particular--I never assume that my work is representative. My voice is just one voice among 10 million."

In response to the interviewer's comment that it's not a little voice any more--

"Reception doesn't change that it's just one voice."

Diaz went on to say that ever since Moby Dick,"the new America" has always been part of American literature. He noted that Herman Melville's novel was full of undocumented immigrants from all over the world.

Diaz's book combines elements of pop culture, European culture, even references for English teachers and scholars. And then there's the unmistakeable presence of the "genres": fantasy and science fiction. Most of us have read Tolkein, or at least seen the Lord of the Rings movies, but if you're not well-acquainted with the Fantastic Four, check out the link. Fantastic Four

Dreaming in Cuban - Questions to Explore in your Blog Posts

I'm looking forward to our week discussion Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban. While so far we've just scratched the surface of historical detail and chronology, this rich and strange novel takes us much deeper into the psychology of Cuban American life. Since this is a busy time of year for all, I thought I would post some suggestions for your blog posts here. You are welcome to choose your own topic, but in all cases I would like you to center your post on a passage from the book and to use the post to explore its relevance to a theme from the novel.

Picture of Cristina Garcia from the Random House website.

Here are some suggestions, below, and even some passages to explore:


1) What does it mean to "dream in Cuban?" Cristina Garcia's novel shows us the impact of the Cuban revolution on families and intimate relationships. What is the function of dreaming in this novel? What is the language of "Cuban" experience that shapes the dreams in this novel? For instance, When Lourdes puts on her policewoman shoes and walks her beat, "she decides she has no patience for dreamers, for people who live between black and white" (p. 129). Do you agree with Lourdes that dreamers "live between black and white," or are the dreamers those who see things in extremes?

2) Pilar says, "I resent the hell out of the politicians and the generals who force events on us that structure our lives, that dictate the memories we'll have when we're old. Every day Cuba fades a little more inside me, my grandmother faces a little more inside me. And there's only my imagination where our history should be" (138). Feminist theorists have insisted that "the personal is political." How do personal dreams reflect political dreams in this novel? Or, conversely, how do political dreams affect and shape personal dreams? Focus on the dreams of a specific character, as expressed in a specific passage from the novel, and show how they are related to or shaped by politics.

3) "'Look how El Lider mobilizes the people to protect his causes," Jorge del Pino told his daughter. "He uses the techniques of the fascists. Everyone is armed and ready for combat at a moment's notice. How will we ever win Cuba back if we ourselves are not prepared to fight?'" (132). How do the characters in this novel reflect the sides that are in conflict over the Cuban revolution? More personally, how does this attitude of always being armed to fight play itself out in the relationships between characters? Focus on one or several relationships that express this aggressive attitude. What is the effect over time? Does being in America lessen or increase this attitude? Explain.

4) "The family is hostile to the individual," says Pilar as she listens to Lou Reed (134). However, it also appears that the Cuban revolution is hostile to families, as almost every family in this novel is subject to divorce or dysfunction. What is the meaning of the individual in this novel? How do the quirky individuals in this novel relate to the concept of family? Does the family mirror the authoritarian regime of Castro's dictatorship, or is the family disempowered when another male figure is the authority? Explore the relationship between the individual and the collective, whether family or society. How much more freedom do Cubans have to be "individuals" in America?

There are many other intriguing passages in this novel as well as themes related to gender, sexuality, magical realism, family, same or other sex relationships between parents and children, etc. Also, the theme of borders that we explored in Bodega Dreams could productively be explored in this novel in terms of political boundaries as well as family boundaries. Choose a topic that grabs you--or better yet, one that connects to your course theme for your final integration project--connect it to a passage in the novel, and take your readers on a ride into your imagination as you respond to the quote and connect your insights to this novel.

The Danger of a Single Story

By reading five novels, a work of nonfiction, and numerous poems and essays in this class, I hope you are well on your way to recognizing that there are many stories that can be told under the umbrella of Latino literature. On your blog, Nate, you critiqued the notion that a writer can speak for "the" Latino experience, as well you should have, because there are as many Latino experiences as there are Latinos. (Although I think Esmeralda Santiago's syntax gets her off the hook, since she calls Quinonez's "a" voice "of" the urban Latino experience, as Tillie suggests in her response.) You also referred, in your response to Tille, to Chimananda Adichie's talk on TED about "The Danger of a Single Story." This essay is taught in World Lit, which some of you have taken, but to make the talk, which is excellent, accessible to all, I will post it here.

Yet the human mind is designed to categorize. We sort and group things into categories--the categories for things we are unfamiliar with tend to be cruder and less defined. Thus our knowledge of a group of people we don't know well can be severely limited until we decide to broaden our knowledge and take the time required to study and interact with that group of people.

Adichie's main point in "the danger of a single story" is that when minority literature is published in a dominant culture, readers from the dominant culture often only have enough room in their minds for "one" story about that group. For instance, the idea that a Mexican escapes across the border, finds work in America, and can send his or her children to school and they can thrive follows an immigrant narrative of American success that is quite familiar to us. But what if the immigrants are wealthy Mexicans? What if they are not undocumented? What if their children decide to return to Mexico? Leaving open the possibility that a particular group has a large variety of humans in it who will respond in a variety of ways to any given situation is part of becoming a mature reader and culturally sensitive person.

At Goshen College, we've had a slogan in the past: "every student, a story." I've been quite vocal about the need to celebrate the diversity in those stories. While recognizing that an education at Goshen College will affect each student's story, it is important that we preserve the distinctive qualities our each story. This is how we grow and learn, by being open to the great variety of stories we have to tell each other.

I have been impressed with the stories you have all been telling on your blogs as you grow to be more and more discerning readers of the varieties of Latino literature.

Bodega Dreams and the American Dream: Crossing Borders

What's the American Dream? Where did this idea come from?

The phrase the "American Dream" was coined by the popular historian, James Truslow Adams, in 1931, in his book The Epic of America. He describes the American Dream as "a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

In this vision of America, every citizen has the right to live to his or fullest potential, without regard to social class. This dream of America encourages the crossing of social class boundaries and discards the idea of an aristocratic class. However, in actual practice, the individual cannot progress in society without the help of systems of privilege and power. In fact, many invisible barriers exist to keep certain groups of people from fully attaining their "innate" gifts. Witness the phrase, "glass ceiling," for instance.

In Bodega Dreams (2000), Ernesto Quinoz riffs on F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous American novel The Great Gatsby (1925), often taught in high school and college American literature classes as a quintessential novel about the American dream. It's interesting to consider the similarities and differences between the two novels.

The Great Gatsby is narrated by a character named Nick Carraway, from a respectable middle or upper middle class family in the American Midwest. Nick is visiting New York for the summer, and he lives in a carriage house on Long Island next to the fabulous mansion of a mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby throws extravagant parties to which all sorts of classy people are invited (it's the roaring twenties), and Nick is included as a neighbor--or so he thinks until Gatsby asks him to do a favor--arrange a meeting with Daisy Buchanan, the love of Gatsby's life, who Nick's cousin and the wife of Tom Buchanan, a wealthy conservative bigot and former football star.

As it turns out, Daisy is the reason that Gatsby has amassed his great fortune--she wouldn't marry him when he was a poor but handsome soldier, so he became a wealthy man with an eye to winning Daisy's heart. Daisy is a seeming lightweight, but she knows which side her bread is buttered on. Tom not only has money, but he has class and family background. So while she flirts with Gatsby, she does not agree when he asks her in front of Tom to say that she never loved him. As the events of the novel unfold, we find that Gatsby's sudden wealth has come from running a numbers racket and he has many connections to organized crime. There's a car accident in which Tom's low class mistress is killed, and Gatsby takes the blame for it to clear Daisy's name. At the end of the book he is shot by the distraught husband of the mistress.

Now that you can see some parallels between the plots, take a look at what's different in Quinonez's Puerto Rican version.

Chino, like Nick, is a narrator on the edge of many worlds. But Chino is married, and the fate of his wife and the baby she is carrying mean a great deal to him. He's not just a "free agent," so to speak.

Gatsby makes his money to impress Daisy, he does not have any aspirations of bettering the neighborhood or serving his community, other than throwing extravagant parties for everyone that show off his wealth.

Daisy and Vera are both associated with the romance of money and beauty, and both marry for money. It's worth thinking about the kind of Cuban that Vera probably married (a wealthy one, for sure) as we explore Cuban and Puerto Rican relations.

Vera, however, is more overtly a betrayer than Daisy. She shoots her own husband and then has Willie take the rap so that she can be with Nazario. In my power point on gender I brought up the subject of Malinche, the Aztec mistress of Cortez, who served as his translator and guide. Malinche has often been held up as a model of indigenous intelligence, but also as a female who betrayed her people. It's possible to see Vera as a negative Malinche figure, as she shoots her husband and causes the death of her admirer in order to be with the man who has the most money and power.

Nick idealizes Gatsby, because he comes to know him as a poor boy from nowhere who wanted to live the American Dream and become a self-made man. Gatsby believes in this "romance" of the American Dream, and so, to some extent does Nick. The other characters in the novel are more cynical about this--especially the ones with the most money and "class."

Chino comes to idealize Bodega as someone who believed in the American Dream as it extends to Puerto Ricans. He wants a better life for his family, and he believes that Bodega wanted that, too. Pertinent here is Bodega's early association with the Young Lords, about which we will learn more on Wednesday.

Worth noting is that almost all of the characters in Bodega Dreams are Latino, and that while Chino aspires to have a nice apartment, a good job, and a happy family, he also wants to retain his connections to his Puerto Rican community and friends, even if it means taking a few risks. He has no desire to join Anglo-American society. However, his use of F. Scott Fitzgerald's plot for his novel demonstrates that Ernesto Quinonez aspires to write a novel that could be part of the English curriculum.

Rafael Falcon, author of Mi Gente: In Search of the Hispanic Soul

Students in Latino Literature are responding on this blog to "The Reflection of My Essence," a short essay or chapter in Rafael Falcon's book of short personal stories, Mi Gente: In Search of the Hispanic Soul.

This book explores Falcon's childhood in Aibonito, Puerto Rico and the ways in which his life is braided into the rich fabric of Hispanic culture and heritage. Rafael Falcon taught Spanish at Goshen College for over thirty years. As a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning (CITL) at Goshen, he led a seminar with Latino students in which he explored those stories with students, helping them to discover the stories in their own lives. Midway through our course, and as an introduction to our unit on Puerto Rican literature, students have been challenged to write their own versions of Falcon's "The Reflection of My Essence." As you will see from the student blogs, this has been a rich tool for helping students to think not only about their face, features, and family, but for thinking about their cultural connections, their place in the world, and their dreams. If you want to read Falcon's original story, you can find it in Mi Gente. He is also the author of Salsa, a book about Hispanic Culture, and 101 Spanish Riddles.

Falcon's American dreams brought him to the University of Iowa, where he earned a Ph.D. He met his American Mennonite wife, Christine, while she was doing service with the Mennonite Church in Puerto Rico. Later the two made their home in Goshen, Indiana when Falcon was hired in the Spanish department at Goshen College. Through the years, Falcon has maintained a strong connection to Puerto Rico, though most of his immediate family members live in the United States.

I share a special connection with the Falcons, since they are the grandparents of my beautiful Puerto Rican American grandchildren. This makes them "mi gente."

The Reflection of My Essence: What does it mean to be "White?"

If you are white, do you have a race?

As you've written your version of Rafael Falcon's "The Reflection of My Essence," a chapter from his book of stories, Mi Gente: In Search of the Hispanic Soul, you've no doubt come into conversation with your body and your physical features--the physical container of who you are--as well as key memories that have shaped you. Falcon explores the "deep suntan brown" that expresses and contains a mixture of his Spanish, Indian, and African heritages. But what if you're white? What do you see when you look in the mirror? Is whiteness actually a race, or is it a social category? Do you see your parent's and grandparent's features, or do you see a cultural blank slate?

The History of White People

In her recent book, The History of White People, Nell Irvin Painter talks about the cultural habit of classifying people by skin color as it evolved through European colonialism. Who "counts" as white today? Is this the same collection of peoples who counted as "white" a century ago? Why or why not?

Who counts as Latino?

Is Latino a term that denotes language, race, national origin, or culture--or a combination thereof? What exactly do we mean when we say "intercultural" or "ethnic?" What do you see when you look in the mirror, and how much of what you see has been influenced by categories created and taught to you by the dominant culture of which you are a part?

Famous American modernist poet, William Carlos Williams, was actually a Latino writer, but was never classified as such until a study of his Latino roots was published in 1994. Latino is a relatively new classification, and America was not yet dividing up its peoples in this way when Williams was a famous writer. What does it mean that scholars of Latino literature are now claiming this figure, long honored in the canon of American literatureas a key figure, as a Latino writer?

White Privilege

Scholar and writer Peggy McIntosh has come up with a list of white privileges, in her famous article, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege, based on critical race and gender theory that views both as social constructions. "White" is a code for the group of people who are privileged as "normative" in a society. If you are White, you will recognized and perhaps be surprised by some of the categories on this list. There are also some disadvantages of "whiteness," one of them being the assumption that other people's histories and lives don't really matter to you--or are peripheral to the history and cultural treasures of your own "race."