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."

Martin Espada - Latino Poet of his Generation

Martin Espada, a renowned poet, translator, and essayist, came to national and international recognition through his poem Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100, published after 9/11 in memory of the kitchen workers--many of them Latino--who died in the crash of the twin towers.

This image is from the Poetry Foundation biography of Espada.

You can hear Espada read this poem in a formal setting, with an explanation of the poem here and in an protest setting here. Note how the delivery changes depending on the audience.

Espada was born in 1957 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in the Puerto Rican community there. There are actually more Puerto Ricans in New York than in Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans born in the USA are often called "Nuyoricans."

The Sonoran Desert

Unique ecosystem, or death trap?

The large cactus dominating the picture to the left is a Saguaro (Sa-wah-ro). These get so large that phone companies hide cell towers inside them.

Below is a picture of a Cholla (choy-a). These cacti are so prickly that the needles can jump into your skin if you walk too close to them.

These pictures were taken by me in late December 2012 in the Saguaro National Forest in Tucson, Arizona.

Resources on Immigration and the Mexico/U.S. Border

Some internet resources on immigration:

How to immigrate to the USA

Migration Information Source
This site has many excellent articles on the subject of immigration

Editorial on Illegal Immigration: Fact vs. Fiction
Feb. 5, 2012 -- Minneapolis Star Tribune

NYTimes Article on the Mexican Government's advice for those attempting to enter the United States.

NYTimes _ Every Immigrant's Guide to Crossing the Border Illegally (2005)


ASU Press - Rape Trees - Border Crossing and Human Rights Violations

ABC News (2010) An Illegal Immigrant's Journey to Arizona

The Kind of America I want to be a Part Of

"It's all about identity--it's all about the kind of America we want to be a part of." At the end of 9500 Liberty, filmmaker Annabel Park quotes one of Prince William County's supervisors, John Stirrup. Stirrup made this point while arguing for the "probable cause" resolution that amounted to racial profiling against Latinos. Park, however, places this quote in a different context--after the resolution was rescinded. She accompanies it with video footage of Obama's rally in Prince William County the night before his successful bid for the Presidency. The closing moments of the film are hopeful.

The degree of Xenophobic hatred displayed by white people in 9500 Liberty is shocking. That this hatred was stirred up and fueled by several outside interest groups is deeply disturbing. That community members running for re-election collaborated with these outside interest groups to create an "election issue" around immigration is downright ugly. That "probable cause" legislation has since been passed in Arizona and Alabama is an insult to the U.S. Constitution. In the kind of America I want to be a part of, elected officials show leadership by bringing members of a community together--and this means members of all colors, genders, religions, classes, ages and education levels--for the common good. They uphold the laws that create a framework for the equality of all Americans--even recent immigrants from a place some fear is overtaking our country.

Steve Nolt, co-author of Amish Grace, about the Amish response of forgiveness to the Nickel Mines school shooting, challenged viewers to summarize or explain the point of view of someone with whom they did not agree in this film in his discussion of 9500 Liberty at Goshen College. There are some characters in this film so loathsome to me that I find it difficult to practice this form of compassionate communication. But setting aside my own emotions, what I see is fear. Fear that a vision of America, held dearly by these individuals, is threatened. The America they wish to preserve is white, is right, adheres to extremely authoritarian and simplistic ideas of God, religion, and privilege. Their vision of America threatens my vision of America--a vision that rejoices in opportunities for people from all races, cultures, and creeds to live together in mutual respect granting the right to life, liberty, and happiness to each other.

Photo from The Boston Globe online

The film Park made with Eric Byler is titled after the address at which Gaudencio Fernandez began painting posters protesting Prince William County's "probable cause" resolution and prejudice against its Latino citizens. These posters galvanized and gave voice to members of the Latino community and served as yet another form of media protest during this complex time. But finally these posters moved beyond conciliation to accusation, and the last one was torn down by the city in 2009, after the "probable cause" language was removed from the law. Perhaps this was because the poster accused Anglos of sponsoring genocide against Native Americans and referred to the racist tactics of Hitler. These are not bridge-building words, but they do hold Americans accountable for the promise of equality for all.

In the vision of America I want to be a part of, people meet at the borders and build bridges. Prince William County, Virginia is far from the U.S. Mexico border, but 9500 Liberty clearly showed that many borders exist within the county--borders that divide rich and poor, Latino and Anglo, those who fear immigrants and those who welcome them as fellow citizens. While I saw little border-crossing in this film, I did see bridge-building in the peaceful persistence of Alanna Almeda and the blog she started, in the ways in which Elena Schossberg and others had the courage to confront Supervisor Corey Stewart with their disappointment in his collaboration with extremist hate groups, in interfaith dialogue about the situation, and even in the use of Spanish by one supervisor who attempted to explain to the Spanish-speakers at the town meeting that the "probable cause" law would not harm them. Gaudencio Fernandez was also attempting to cross borders by posting his messages across from the Amtrak train station and next to a major highway where they would be seen by everyone.

The border is not just a legal demarcation between nations. It exists wherever people live and it is created in the mind. What was missing for me in 9500 Liberty was the portrayal of border-crossing in this film--of Latino and Anglo families socializing, working together, collaborating in leadership. The invisible borders between people need to be open for traffic is we are to successfully counter the hate bred by fear.

To open and cross these borders I need to have a good sense of my own boundaries--who I am and where I come from. But my boundaries should be more like the semi-permeable membranes of cells that the steel walls of the border between El Paso and Juarez. This means I need to be interested in people from other levels of society, other races, cultures, and speakers of other languages. This means I need to see humanity first in all of my interactions. It means I have to tolerate--learn to listen to--points of view I don't agree with, lifestyles that are different from mine. And it means that I need to be open to change. Which is scary. But also exciting.

The Devil's Highway

The Devil's Highway

The Guardians

Who are the guardians?

Let's start with the border patrol.

Making the Invisible Visible

In his famous poem, Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100, Martin Espada draws our attention to the kitchen workers who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.

Bless Me, Ultima - Composing the Chicano World View

In his fiction Rudolpho Anaya has undertaken "a quest to compose the Chicano literary world view"(Olmos 40). Looking at his first and best-know novel, Bless Me, Ultima, through this lens we see a world view grounded in the families, traditions, and values of the northern New Mexican landscape. Through the interaction of his title character, a curandera named Ultima, and his child protagonist, Antonio Marez, he has woven together indigenous and Spanish traditions in the context of a community that is self-contained, although it is subject to an Anglo power structure. However, in this novel Anaya's focus is not on the clash of Anglo and Hispanic cultures, nor is it on the borders. Rather, it is on the unfolding of a story in a setting where every character is part of the Latino New Mexican community. Within this community he explores complex tensions and diverse points of view. The realities of the Anglo setting--the participation of sons in World War II, the school taught in English--impinge on the characters, but their characters are fully formed by their own cultural landscape.

Bless Me, Ultima is also portrays a traditional community in transition. The Marez and Luna family fight over whether Antonio will represent one or the other in his way of life. But in truth, both ways of life are disappearing. Antonio's mother persuades her family to move to the town of Guadelupe because she understands that Antonio needs to go to school. But she cannot face what it might mean for her boy to grow up and be a man. To preserve his "innocence," or at least the special qualities she discerns in him, she urges him to become a priest. His father, devoted to the freedoms of the vaquero lifestyle he has left behind, insists that Antonio will grow up to make his own decision. But in post World War II New Mexico, he will come of age in a world that neither of his parents can yet imagine.

Although much in New Mexico has changed since the 1940s that Anaya portrays--including the use of Northern New Mexico as test sites for atomic bombs--the indigenous culture still persists and curanderas are still around. The curandera was originally an indigenous healer, but Spanish settlers quickly incorporated this health care practice in their societies. It is possible that some folk healing practices from Spain were incorporated with indigenous healing traditions, as every culture has its folk healers. In Desert Pilgrim, Mary Swander writes a memoir of a healing journey to New Mexico in which she encountered both a curandera and an orthodox priest who contributed to her recovery from a debilitating spinal injury.

Because it has been a popular book in schools since its publication in 1972, there are many internet resources on Bless Me, Ultima. It was also a selection of The Big Read. See some of these resources below.

Resources and interview with Anaya about his desire to document in fiction the spirit of a way of life that was disappearing.

Resouces from the University of New Mexico, including links to several critical articles from peer-reviewed journals.

Bless Me Ultima is also #75 on the American Library Association's list of Banned Books. Read about it on the blog Pluma Fronteriza.

It also appears that a movie based on the book is in production, but not yet released.

Works Cited

Olmos, Margarite Fernandez. "Historical and Magical, Ancient and Contemporary: The World of Rudolfo A. Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima." In U.S. Latino Literature: A Critical Guide for Students and Teachers. Ed. Harold Augenbraum and Margarite Fernandez Olmos. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. 39-54.

Thoughts from MLK, Jr. Day at Goshen College

On Monday January 16, 2012, Goshen College held its annual MLK,Jr. Study Day. One of the events was a public interview with Dr. Vincent Harding, a historian and colleague of Dr. King. Dr. Harding has been a visitor at Goshen College numerous times. He is a former Mennonite pastor and knows Mennonites and our campus well.

Photo is from pilgrimpathways.wordpress.com

He was asked to speak about our goal of building a multicultural community. Some of this things he said are relevant to our study and discussion of Latino Literature. Below I have paraphrased part of the conversation from my notes:

Q: What does it mean to have an intercultural campus?

VH: A community in which we are encouraged to share our uniqueness. A community built of many communities whose goal is to create something new together.

Q: Will opening too wide to others cause us to lose our (Mennonite) identity?

VH: Identity is not of much value to us when we are grasping onto it too tightly, but rather when we use it as a basis for engaging others. Live is about metamorphosis. If the caterpillar refused to be anything but a caterpillar, it would lose its chance to fly.

Q: What is your definition of servant leadership?

VH: Leadership is something that is always in process of developing. King became a pastor and a Ph.D. to be a "leader," but he only truly began to lead when he began listening to the people who shared his vision and listening to how they wanted to be led.

Harding ended by answering several questions he had been asked earlier, on paper.

He emphasized the role of women in the Civil Rights movement, a vital component that is too often overlooked on MLK,Jr. Day.

He insisted that Christians cannot take Jesus seriously without looking for society's outcasts and standing by their side.

And he spoke of freedom as a process that we live into. He quoted a South African he has once heard on the radio say, "I am a citizen of a country that does not yet exist." He adapted this saying to inspired us with the vision that "We are citizens of a country that we are still in the process of creating."

The March on Washington. Photo found on desertpeace.wordpress.com

"Knowledge has always been dangerous . . ." --Sor Juana de la Cruz

In the United States of America, as we speak, books that would encourage Mexican American students to understand themselves and their cultural heritage are being removed, by law, from Tucson, Arizona's Mexican American studies curriculum. Ethnic Studies have been banned in Arizona public schools by a controversial anti-immigration state law, HB 2281. The result is the removal of a large number of books from the classroom--including Paulo Friere's famous The Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Shakespeare' The Tempest--because it might lead to discussions of race! A recent article in Salon.com compares this book-banning measure to similar actions in South Africa during Apartheid.

Sor Juana de la Cruz was criticized for reading such freethinkers as Erasmus. Now children in Tucson, Arizona are not only being deprived of Shakespeare's classic play, written in response to the settling of the New World, but are also being deprived of a curriculum that would foster their identity and offer all students a broader, more accurate representation of history.

But wait! American ingenuity--Latino ingenuity--arises.

You've heard of wetbacks--now we've got "wet books" in a program to smuggle banned books back into Arizona from . . . Texas!

Librotraficante.com

More on the TUSD ban of books associated with the Mexican American Studies curriculum. As one respondent points out, it's not just a ban on Mexican American authors, but also on Native American authors.

Contemporary Connections with the Plight of Sor Juana de la Cruz

I enjoyed reading your blogs on early Latino literature and your passionate responses to the film, I, the Worst of All. Most of you were shocked at the sexism in the film, never having experienced this in your own lives. A few of you dug a bit deeper into family history and found that there was, in the recent past, some prohibition against women preachers in your churches.

One thing no one mentioned is the systematic discrimination against women in many parts of the Islamic world today. Islam is not inherently a sexist religion, any more than Christianity is, but religions are interpreted by human beings and human institutions. During times when people seek to reinforce hierarchies and consolidate power, sexist hierarchies also tend to be reinforced.

Image from Surghar Daily.



For instance, in areas where the Taliban is active, women are highly repressed today. In Afghanistan, women a generation ago were educated and served as doctors and professors. According to a book entitled My Forbidden Face, written by a woman who escaped from Afghanistan, under the Taliban women were not allowed to see male doctors, and no female doctors were allowed to practice, thereby leaving women devoid of medical care. Inside closed walled, women who were no longer allowed to participate in society, practice their careers, or be educated formed circles of support for each other. However, in war-torn parts of the world where family honor is invested in the purity of its females, rape is often used as a weapon and the woman is disowned by her family as "tainted." Because of this ideology, women are treated as property and isolated and rejected--sometimes even killed-- by the families who should protect them and support them. Women in such communities who are raped and are able to hide the fact dare not ask for help or treatment for fear of
their lives.

Those of us who have never experienced sexism have lived in social settings created by people who have worked hard to eradicate it. However, I sometimes feel that we take for granted the strides for women's equality made in the past century, even the past 30 years. Machismo is an ideology prevalent in Latino culture, but it is certainly not the only culture in which forms of male dominance are practiced.

We will find in Latino literature many examples of strong women, and many of the writers are female. However, let's stay aware of gender dynamics, as well as the interlocking systems of oppression that tend to reinforce each other. Portrayals of such systems can serve as windows and mirrors, as well as reminders that people who experience oppression often internalize it, thereby limiting their own potential.

I wonder whether part of Sor Juana's breakdown at the end of the film was caused by her having gradually internalized the negative critiques that surrounded her, particularly as they were mirrored back to her by her confessor. He appears to care about her "soul" as an abstract thing--but not about her as a human being. As long as Sor Juana had people around her who could mirror back to her the positive aspects of her gifts, she was able to fend off these negative images. But once those mirrors are gone, she looks only into the negative reflections of those around her.

Internalized racism, sexism, ageism, etc. can be carried in the very people who are subject to these prejudices because identity is social. Thus as we continue to read Latino literature, we should also look for the ways in which identity is constructed--both positively and negatively--in the social situations it portrays.

Humility is a virtue, but I do not believe that humility caused by cruel and unusual treatment, bordering on psychological abuse, is redemptive. Whether or not it is true to life, the film portrays an abuse of power on the part of the archbishop, as well as the men who must stay in his favor or risk their own reputations. I did not see much humility displayed by any of these characters.

Let's not overlook the good that the Catholic Church has done in Latin America, where for decades many Catholics have been actively involved in helping the poor and the oppressed. Recently a group of Catholic priests signed a document in solidarity with immigrants from Mexico to the United States.

Will Latinos Transform the Way Americans look at Race and Culture?

One of the key themes in our class is identity. Sure, I thought when I started planning this class, identity is an important theme--we'll introduce our various points of view, talk about the various words for Latinos, and then move on. I had no idea then how complex the topic of identity is in Latino literature and culture--it's at the heart of everything we're reading and discussing, whether it's a 16th century exploration narrative turned spiritual pilgrimage or a late 20th century hybrid genre experiment in philosophy and poetry. Because, you see, it's not just about who you are--its about how the very categories of identity are constructed. This is illustrated by an article in The New York Times this week (13 January 2012). In "For Many Latinos, Racial Identity is More Culture than Color," Mireya Navarro writes about the dilemma "Hispanics" face when filling out the census forms. "People of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin may be of any race" the census form reads. So what race(s) do Latinos choose? More than one-third by passed the option of "mixed race" (pick two) and marked "other." The article argues that Latinos have a very different view of race--and that the issues most central to Latino life, such as language and immigration, have nothing to do with race. I wonder whether this attitude will eventually change the way all of America views race.

Sandra Cisneros

With the publication of The House on Mango Street in 1983, Sandra Cisneros put Latino Literature into the high school classroom. Although she has since published three books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a novel, The House on Mango Street remains both her path breaking and most widely read book. This may be partly because of the timing as well as because of the format. Published a year after Alice Walker's The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982, it emerged for a readership eager for multicultural stories, and classrooms open to a more diverse curriculum. The short vignettes that make up The House on Mango Street are skillfully written and evocative--each one is a prose poem that displays Cisneros's poetic gifts. Collectively these Vignettes create the story of a neighborhood and the complex relationships between generations and genders. Integrated into the vignettes are social, cultural, and economic references. The narrator, Esperanza, longs to escape her neighborhood, and yet she has an appreciative eye for detail and manages to draw the reader into her world, its humanity and special flavor, even as she plans to escape it. The photo of Cisneros is from somaywebe.com.

The House on Mango Street, now nearly 30 years old, has garnered praise from such highly regarded authors as Gwendolyn Brooks and Maxine Hong Kingston. It is enshrined in the high school and college curriculum, as is evident on Spark Notes and the many websites that share class plans for the book. Yet, some student reviews on Amazon.com that complain about the "randomness" of this book. This naive response to the elegant structure of The House on Mango Street indicates another feature of Latino Literature: it is stylistically and linguistically innovative. Cisnero's vignettes together begin to paint a complex portrait of the factors involved an identity that is embedded in a community. A straightforward narrative might offer a sociological analysis of Cisneros's Chicago community, but it would obscure the daily events and imaginative responses to a variety of cultural stimuli that create Esperanza's world.

As you explore the "circles" of your multicultural selves, and write your own version of "My Name," note how intricately and yet simply Cisneros's story is composed. It has a clear sense of voice, offers the quirky associations of an individual mind, and weaves in a family story that subtly comments on traditional gender relations. What elements from your own life and imagination will create a composite portrait of your world and relationship to your communities?