Janel Martinez is a Black Garifuna writer living in the diaspora. Her personal essay “Abuela’s Greatest Gift” thinks of her matrilineal lineage and examines how she connects with her Garifunidad. She underscores the “gifts” she has inherited: ancestral memory (historical/ spiritual connections to the homeland and its people); truthful storytelling; historical awareness and visions for the future; survival; individual and collective self-love and oral traditions.
2. Read the personal essay “Abuela’s Greatest Gift” by Janel Martinez.
2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (25o-word minimum).
OPTION ONE
Based on Janel Martinez’s essay and the documentary elaborate on how Garifuna people in the diaspora learn, transmit and protect their culture. Bring specific examples from both the essay and the film.
OPTION TWO
Janel Martinez says that “my lived experience as a Garifuna woman born and raised in the Bronx is different than that of my family in Honduras” (227). How do Martinez and the documentary show the differences between Garifuna people living in Central America and those in the diaspora?
OPTION THREE
By referring to the essay and the documentary analyze the role of social and alternative media in adding complexity to Garifuna and Afro-Latinx identities in the US.
Why Ramos argues that the labor conditions of farm workers and the addiction to methamphetamine are connected?
How seeing these social issues from a health and ecological perspective could possibly change the way they are addressed by institutions and the Latinx communities?
In the Second half of this section of Finding Latinx, Paola Ramos touches upon reproductive health and the real and symbolic borders ostracizing Latinas and LGBTQ+ youth. Ramos also explores the correlation between gun violence, ethnic discrimination, and mental health.
The El Paso shooting, in many ways, was the culmination of all the stereotypes society has otherized us with, all the barriers society has pushed the Latinx down with and all the stigmas society has taught its members to internalize. It was a wound that exposed not just the pain that’s inflicted by piercing bullets but all the different manifestations and facets of that pain: the pain of longtime discrimination. (Ramos, 87)
Following and expanding on Ramos’ argument, how do anti-immigrant policy and rhetoric from politicians and media personalities, the rejection and dismantling of ethnic studies, patriarchal systems of oppression, and the lack of gun regulation are connected?
1. Read pages 64-99 of Paola Ramos’ travelogue “A Journey From the West to the Southwest.”
2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (25o-word minimum).
Deadline: 3/1 before the class
OPTION ONE
What Paola Ramos means when she talks about “the other wall” and how it relates to health issues related to Latinas and LGBTQ+ youth?
OPTION TWO
How does one of the most recent gun violence tragedies in Texas allow Ramos to reflect on the label “foreigner” and the “otherization” imposed on Latines?
OPTION THREE
What are some of the mental health issues Ramos shed a light on in this section? What signs of hope, mobilization, and transformation Ramos identifies in the younger Latinx generation?
United States’ Latinx population is diverse, and complex and has plenty of untold stories to share, proposes Paola Ramos, a correspondent for Vice, Telemundo, and MSNBC and former deputy director of Hispanic media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She spent 2 years exploring the changing nature of the “Latinx” identity. In this her first book, Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity (2020), Paola engages in the genre of the travelogue to thread stories from Latinx community members across the US.
Through a journalistic and activist approach, the first section of the book is dedicated to the West coast and southwest and she investigates the interrelationship between the farming and the drug industries; the prison industrial complex, and its impact on trans and Central American indigenous lives.
Paola Ramos and her understanding of the term/movement Latinx
6:40
With Trump’s unforeseen win came a desire for belonging. His victory mobilized millions of people- women, youth, students, black communities, Latinos, immigrants, Dreamers, victims of sexual assault-to take to the streets and fill a void with their voices. People marched with furor, organized their communities, and spoke up in boardrooms and town halls, louder than they had before. Fear induced courage, and the undercurrent of racism that was now fully exposed pushed many of us to embrace inclusion. It was sometime amid this resurged movement that I noticed the word “Latinx” had started to become part of the daily vocabulary of the resistance. (5)
Discussion in Trios
Do you agree that the term “Latinx” signifies the emergence of a “movement” for inclusion and social justice? How do the different administrations in power strengthen or debilitate the “movement” Ramos refers to? What has been achieved and what has been lost since 2016? What is your personal tally?
1. Read pages 23-63 of Paola Ramos’ travelogue “A Journey From the West to the Southwest.”
2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (25o-word minimum).
Deadline: 2/22 before the class
OPTION ONE
What Paola Ramos denounces in “The Heartland” regarding the ecological, health, and gender-based violence issues plaguing Latinx agricultural communities in California? Why she then connects the crystal meth epidemic to the previously described issues?
OPTION TWO
Explain the title of the chapter “Shining Light” and its relationship to the rights and resilience of Latinx trans lives.
OPTION THREE
Following the chapter “American,” elaborate on how thinking of Guatemalan and Central American migration from an indigenous point of view requires that we decenter the Spanish language and Hispanic culture as a frame to understand the experiences of Central American migrants and the notion of “America” as a whole.
Achy Obejas is a Cuban-American writer and translator focused on personal and national identity issues, living in California. She frequently writes about her sexuality and nationality and has received numerous awards for her creative work.
“The Sound Catalog” belongs to the story collection The Tower of the Antilles describe like this by the publishing house Akashic Books:
“The Cubans in Achy Obejas’s story collection are haunted by islands: the island they fled, the island they’ve created, the island they were taken to or forced from, the island they long for, the island they return to, and the island that can never be home again.”
How can we apply this description to our story today?
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society’s majority group or assumes the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
How does the story “The Sound Catalog” by Achy Obejas represent the tensions between the goals of assimilation and Cuban cultural retention in the diaspora?
How does this story use the enhancement and loss of perception to explore topics of dislocation and empowerment?
Michael J Bustamante argues that “there are two widely familiar versions of the Cuban story.” In one “the ‘triumph’ of the Cuban Revolution marked the definitive end of one period of the island’s history—nearly six decades of ‘pseudo-republican’ scandal following the island’s ‘mortgaged’ independence in 1902—and the beginning of true liberty under the banner of revolutionary change. “On the other, “the Cuban Revolution represented not a fulfillment of nationalist dreams but an unmitigated tragedy. For many of those who left the island in the 1960s, Cuba’s turn to socialism made the prerevolutionary period look like a paradise lost, transforming their homeland into an island in chains.”
How do these two competing narratives clash in Achy Obejas’ story? How Cuba is remembered by the different characters?
.After reading pages 59-60 from “The Sound Catalog” by Achy Obejas compare the characters’ contrasting understanding of and desires for their respective home countries.
1. Read the short story “The Sound Catalog” by Achy Obejas.
2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (25o-word minimum).
Deadline: 2/15 before the class
OPTION ONE
By bringing concrete examples from the stories, compare how Achy Obejas centralize hearing to tell her story. In what ways has your perspective on the characters’ bodies and interior world expanded thanks to this narrative approach?
OPTION TWO
In Remembering and Forgetting the Cuban Revolution Michael J. Bustamante argues that “popular visions of the Cuban Revolution’s legacies today are in many ways polarized” but “polarization conceals more nuanced, evolving viewpoints, and it is the result of political processes that were and continue to be anything but neat.”
How does Achy Obejas elaborate on the contested narratives about Cuba in Chicago’s diasporic communities? How do Obejas’ characters have different responses to those perspectives?
OPTIONTHREE
Pick one of the sounds from “The Sound Catalog” by Achy Obejas and through that section, examine the complex gains and losses of the main two characters while in the diaspora.
.Pro-capitalism upper and middle classes fled. They receive refugee status in the U.S.
.The US imposed a blockade
.Mariel Boatlift 1980 (black and poor Cubans discontented with the revolution arrive in Miami)
.Cubans rebuild Miami as a thriving Spanish-speaking city and diasporic center.
. After a number of years of negotiation in 2016 (under the Obama administration) Cuba and the US re-start a more direct political relationship and some sanctions are eliminated in favor of increasing negotiations and access. These fell through during the Trump administration.
Chico and Rita and the pre-Cold War, pre-Revolution Cuban migration
As the film, Chico and Rita demonstrates before the Cold War Cuban migration to the US was very connected with the manufacturing industries and the Afro-diasporic cultural explosion in NYC. Many Cubans musicians like Mario Bauzá or Chano Pozo migrated to NY to engage with the thriving Afro-musical world of the times. These pioneer musicians transformed jazz and created an inter and transcultural musical path that continues to this day (mambo; bugalú; salsa; Latin jazz; merengue; hip hop; bachata; reggaetón).
The animated film (see Chano Pozo’s description of NY and the US and Rita’s speech at Las Vegas) and Jairo Moreno’s essay depict how for Afro-Cubans the US represented a space of musical evolution but also of deep racial oppression, segregation, and coloniality (the legacy of everyday colonial practices and mentalities even when the official colonial relationship is over).
Moreno quotes Gillespie’s reflection on the loss of African musical traditions, polyrhythms, in favor of European metrics, and monorhythm. His encounter and collaboration with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo allowed him to reclaim Africanness in his music via the influences of Caribbean rhythmic organization, arrangements, and Pozo’s (Afro-spiritual) musicianship.
See pages: 183-185
Interestingly, his relationship with Pozo showcases- just like Bauzá experienced or the characters in Chico and Rita- elements of US exceptionalism, colonialism, exoticism, and imposed subordination.
Film Aesthetics
The curvaceous and floating animation style in Chico and Rita could be interpreted as a “translation” of the fluidity, and transnational reach of Afro-Cuban music in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the US.
In his essay, Moreno precisely highlights Mario Bauzá’s transcultural approach to music. He features the dominant musical culture (orchestra and harmony) alongside the rhythms of his native (subaltern) Cuba.
Following the tradition of the Afro-Caribbean ballad, the bolero, Chico and Rita is the story of the romantic and musical encounters and misencounters between a young piano player with big dreams and Rita, a singer with an extraordinary voice. Their journey as lovers and at times musical collaborators brings heartache and torment as they deal with life in pre-revolutionary, US-(economically) controlled Cuba, and later in the diaspora.
ASYNCHRONOUS ASSIGNMENT (Deadline 2/8 before the class)
Instructions:
1. Rent and Watch the film Chico and Ritahere or via other screening platforms.
2. In the comment section down below answer ONE of the following prompts (2oo-words minimum) that integrate the reading by Jairo Moreno “Bauza-Gillespie-Latin Jazz: Difference, Modernity, and the Black Caribbean.”
OPTION ONE
Jairo Moreno describes Latin jazz origins as a “musicoaesthetic experimentation by Black Cubans and Black North Americans” (178). How Chico and Rita presents these collaborations? Refer to specific examples from the film.
OPTION TWO
Moreno proposes the notion of the “Black Caribbean” as a phenomenon inscribed “in the particular temporal [time] and spatial [space] dislocations of a North American modernity… a tense and dynamic syncopation [overlapping] of sonic and cultural histories and temporalities” (178). What examples from the film can you bring to illustrate the multiple spaces and dislocations of the Black Caribbean?
OPTION THREE
Describe the ways Chico and Rita showcases New York as an “obligatory destination of sorts for musical pilgrims and also for those interested in incorporating themselves into a rapidly emerging international market centered in and around United States mass culture” (Moreno 179)?
