Entry Question
Pick one of the four paintings by Martin Wong. In an index card describe what you see. How does the painting give a spotlight on how life was in NYC in the 1980s?
Wong’s work ties together brick, queer erotics, tenement living, city disinvestment, exploitative landlord arson to cash in on insurance money, and the Black, Brown, and Asian lives of Loisaida. Wong’s paintings, and the poems of Piñero and Rivas, represent a time that the current landscape of the Lower East Side actively conceals. The condemned tenement I pass by seems to be one of the only remnants left. It gives shape to the stories of yesterday, with its blasted windows and barred doors, this obelisk invisibly inscribed with their memories, keeping their Loisaida alive.
-Marcos Gonsalez
Non-fiction writer, Marcos Gonsalez, of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent reflects on his time living in Loisaida (LES). He references architecture, poetry, visual arts, and scholarly work to reflect on the Lower East Side’s history, vibrant culture, systemic marginalization, the derivative social ills that came with it, and eventual gentrification. In the essay, he argues that in order to avoid the erasures that come with gentrification it is vital to learn from the stories of the long-standing neighbors of the area as well as the arts.
Group Discussion
Groups 1 and 2
In groups, select and discuss a quote from the essay in which Gonzalez tries to respond to these questions:
How do we “continue to struggle for the rights, well-being, and lives of the marginalized, in places like Loisaida, New York City, and beyond?
How do we keep thinking of, and fighting for, the displaced?”
Groups 3 and 4
How does Gonzalez compare life in suburbia vs life in the city?
Class Presentation (s)
Nuyorican Poets (Cafe) and Urban Storytelling/Poetics
My time in Loisaida cultivated a particular kind of sensibility which was not the one I was raised on. The high concentration of people in such a small perimeter taught me ways of being in the world with others that were about caring and responsiveness, about being attuned to the ebbs and flows of neighbors and strangers alike. It was about the ways a story is told – the emphases of the voice, the twists and turns of a plot, the preciseness of words – and not just about the content itself. It was about the listener and audience, keeping them with you in story, in emotion, in longing, towards laughter, crying, thinking. My time in Loisaida was about learning to live in a space where the odds were stacked against you. It was about the imaginative reanimating of a past that was but will never again be, lived through the streets and tenements.
-Marcos Gonsalez
Latino poets, playwrights founded iconic Nuyorican Poets Café
How does Piñero’s poem simultaneously create a portrait of himself and the neighborhood?
How does Denise Frohman think of her mother’s accent? How does she connect it to Puerto Rican culture?
Final Check-In
Instructions:
1. In Pairs think about these questions:
What Latino/a/x/e neighborhood are you inclined to photograph and write about?
What lens and/or thematic approach are you planning to take?
Where are you in the process? What steps do you need to take to complete the project?
What sources from the class are inspiring your work?
2. Share your plans with a partner
3. Report on the plans you heard.
OPTION ONE
Why did Marcos Gonzales start his essay on Loisaida (the Lower East Side) by referring to the Luxor Obelisk?
Marcos Gonzales starts his essay on Loisaida by referring to the Luxor Obelisk because he uses the structure to compare it to the abandoned tenement building that he used to pass by when he lived in Loisaida with a Puerto Rican friend between 2011 and 2013. He explained that just like the Luxor Obelisk that was taken to France from Egypt, “people pass the abandoned building, but none paused over it.” Marcos goes on and calls the abandoned tenement This “Obelisk invisibly inscribed with their memories, “Keeping Loisaida alive. Parallel to the inscriptions on the Luxor Obelisk that are seen by tens of thousands of people but can’t be read or understood by the tens of thousands of people that pause to look at it.
I believe that both structures carry the spirits of the communities that once lived amongst them engraved in the actual structure.
What does the obelisk represent in the essay?
The obelisk in the essay represents a structure that is there to remind us of what Loisaida used to be in the past. The abandoned tenement stood at the same location as the community and people that once lived in Loisaida change with time. The abandoned tenement reminds us of the spirit of what Loisaida once was in the past and that a different Loisaida at one time existed.