Month: April 2023

Entry Question

Helen Ceballos describes the experience of arriving as an undocumented migrant and the weight of being seen or perceived in transit. What does this suggest about the challenges and risks of migration, and how might these experiences shape the ways migrants view themselves and their relationships with others?

Thinking of these questions describe how the photographs expand on the topics of migration present in Ceballos’s text.

Bio

Helen Ceballos is a Dominican performer, visual artists, writer and cultural promoter that addresses issues of migration to Puerto Rico and the US; Black Atlantic and Queer Afro-Latinidad.

As a photo-text, Cerezas por papeles/ Cherries for documents is part of a larger piece that Ceballos staged and performed in a gallery in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The piece is comprise of fragments inspired by Ceballos’ life experiences migrating to Puerto Rico and traveling and living in other countries including Brazil, Argentina and the US. Ceballos proposes that the topic of migration requires that we engage in multiple registers, narratives and perspectives. In particular she is invested in how migration affects Dominican and Caribbean women. She is also interested in how the vulnerability of being a migrant is intersected by gender-based oppression, anti-blackness and constant misreading.

Class Presentations

Silva,Anna L

Singh,Gurnoor

Group Discussions

Group One

How does Ceballos’ exploration of empowered womanhood intersect with her reflections on the perils and strategies of migration and traveling?

Group Two

Can you explain how Ceballos’ need to perform citizenship and belonging affects her interactions with other members of her community in her piece? What does the birth certificate for rent suggest about the challenges faced by undocumented immigrants and the lengths they may go to overcome them?

Group Three

Ceballos describes the labor and sacrifices of the women in her family. How do their experiences inform her understanding of the challenges faced by migrant women in the labor force today?

Group Four

How does the story of the author’s aunt Cathy highlight the difficulty and complexity of legalizing documents as an undocumented immigrant? What are the consequences of being unable to do so?

Entry Questions

Please discuss the following questions with a partner. Each person will speak for 2 minutes and the other person will listen.

Who benefits from policing?
Who suffers?
Whose interests are advanced?
Who pays the costs?
Who/What is protected and served?
Who is bullied and brutalized?
What might be some alternatives to policing?

Bio

Alejandro Heredia is a queer Afro-Dominican writer and community organizer from The Bronx. He has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA, the Dreamyard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, and the Dominican Studies Institute.

How does your experience as an immigrant shape your writing, if at all? How does the history of where you are from affect your identity, and in turn, your writing?

AH: I suppose that’s where it all begins for me, being an immigrant. I migrated to New York from the Dominican Republic when I was seven, so I had to learn a new language at a young age, and more, learn how to translate myself into a new set of words and linguistic patterns. And it wasn’t all easy and pretty. I didn’t have a choice but to learn English to survive the classroom, doctor visits with my mom, and run-ins with authority figures. In that way and in so many others, being an immigrant, a Dominican immigrant to be exact, informs so much of what I write about and how I write about it. 

For example, when I was growing up, I was surrounded by kids from all over the African diaspora—kids from the Caribbean, West Africa, and Black American kids whose lineage in the United States goes back half a dozen generations. There’s so much richness there. This place was where all these ethnic groups were forced to share schools, apartment buildings, supermarkets, etc. I’m endlessly curious about the connections we made, the stories we created together and about each other across differences. There’s an endless pool of inspiration there, in those cities and barrios I come from.

I don’t pretend to represent anyone else. I can barely represent myself entirely. But through my work, I do hope to expand the narrative possibilities for people like me who come from The Bronx and Santo Domingo.

The Case that Inspired the Story

Remembering The NYPD Shooting Of Dominican Immigrant Kiko García And What It Means During Today’s #BlackLivesMatter Movement

Muchacho

In “Muchacho,” Heredia portrays the aftermath of a police killing in a Dominican community. He delves into the multifaceted process of mourning, from individual experiences to collective grief. By investigating the significance of a name, Heredia exposes the dehumanization of Black and Brown lives caused by police brutality and media coverage that reduces individuals to anonymous bodies. Additionally, Heredia examines the politicization process within a community that is often marginalized and strives to remain inconspicuous.

Furthermore, Heredia employs the narrative perspective of the mother to emphasize the contrast between private and communal experiences, shedding light on the emotional burden of a missing son. Through the mother’s voice, Heredia conveys the intimate pain and suffering that is often overlooked in discussions of police brutality and its impact on marginalized communities.

Class Presentations

Garcia,Kaitlynn

Ramos,Genesis

Razeen,Tahmeed

Policing in NYC

The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy

Reactions

Please discuss the following questions with a partner.

How do you feel after watching/listening to his story?

Why this story is pertinent to Dominican and Latinx Communities in NYC?

How do you connect this video with Heredia’s short story?

Writing Exercise

Write a 7-word story about how you feel about the police killing in the story and the myriad ways the community responded. You can choose any aspect of Heredia’s narrative. Here are two examples:

No son. Justice, people yell his name.

Saw what happened. The memory won’t fade.

ASYNCHRONOUS ASSIGNMENT (Deadline: 4/19 before the class)

Instructions:

1. Read the short story “Muchacho” by Alejandro Heredia

2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (2o0-words minimum).

OPTION ONE

Elaborate on how the killing of Lourdes’son by an undercover cop generated an unexpected mobilization of the Dominican community in Washington Heights. Describe how the protest evolved.

OPTION TWO

Examine why Lourdes resists engaging the community in protest. How Heredia explores different types of mourning through her relationships with the people in the community?

OPTION THREE

Unpack the connotations of naming in the story. How do names allow grasping “reality”? What does it mean to name somebody or an event that happened?