General Guidelines

Choose one of the following prompts and respond to it. Be sure to include at least one quote from the primary source along with analysis of that quote. You may choose to write your response, make an audio recording, or provide a visual representation of your response. Get creative! Remember, these are going to be self-graded, so it’s the perfect opportunity to take a risk and try something new with at least one post this semester.

Maximum 6 students per prompt.

For written responses:

Address the questions in the prompt in approximately 500-600 words. Be sure to organize your ideas and have a clear beginning, middle, and end with distinct paragraphs. State the name of the text you are quoting in your reflection and provide an MLA in-text citation for it.

For audio responses:

Address the questions in the prompt in approximately 3-5 minutes. Be sure to organize your ideas and have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Announce the author and title of the text you are quoting. Upload the audio file to the shared Google folder for the class (link found on Blackboard) and link it in your blog post. Include a 3-5 sentence overview of what you discussed in your reflection as part of your blog post.

For visual responses:

Address the questions in the prompt in either 6-8 images with brief captions or a creative collage with a short 3-5 sentence description. Be sure to organize your ideas before creating the visual. Include at least one quote and acknowledge the title, author, and page or timestamp (if applicable) where you found the quote.

Blog Post #1 – Latina Voices (due Sunday Feb 11th)

• Option 1: Choose one of the readings from 1/30 or 2/6 and explain why it resonated with you when you were reading it. What stood out to you the most? Were there moments, words and phrases, or feelings that you connected with? Why do you think this is? How do your own experiences both parallel and differ from what was addressed in this content? What do you think is the universal value of sharing a specific experience?

• Option 2: In Borderlands/La frontera, Anzaldua writes in both English and Spanish. Why do you think she does this? Who is her intended audience? What does she want them to take away from this reading? Whether or not you read Spanish, what impact did this have on you as a reader? What moments in the text stood out to you? How does the fact that she wrote this over 35 years ago influence your understanding of her chosen topics?

• Option 3: Choose one of the episodes of Latinx Visions that was assigned for 2/8. Who was the interview with? What did this individual share with listeners of the podcast? What about this subject matter resonated with you? Why is that? How does this episode demonstrate the value of Latinx Studies and working with Latinx communities? How could you integrate your major area of study with Latinx Studies?

• Option 1: After reading Jennine Capó Crucet’s short story “How to Leave Hialeah” and her essay “What We Pack,” we discussed the possible reasons for writing a story in the second person point of view including centering your reader within the experiences being told and an author perhaps wanting to distance themselves from their own personal experiences. With that in mind, share a moment your own educational journey in the second person. What does that journey look like as told in the second person? What mindset do you wish to establish for your audience? What struggles will you address? What successes and achievements will you share? How will you invite the audience into the experience? (Suggestion: try audio for this one!)

• Option 2: Theater allows for the combination of verbal and visual storytelling. Generally speaking, dialogue is crucial to a theatrical performance. But it is also helpful for the playwright to establish the actions and props within the scene as necessary. Taking this all into consideration, draft a brief scene between a Latina and another family member in which they discuss the family and education. What dynamic will you establish between the characters? Where will the conversation take place? What (if any) props will be included in the scene? What actions and interactions will the characters engage in? What will the conversation entail? (Suggestion: images might work well here!)

• Option 3: In the article, “(Re)considering the Role ‘Familismo’ Plays in Latina/o High School Students’ College Choices” the author researches the dynamics within families that determine where, how, and why students choose one college over another. Why is familismo an important concept to consider when analyzing data on Latina/o/e/x students’ school selections? What approaches did Martinez take in gathering her data? What were some key results of her research? How does your own experience with choosing a college parallel or differ from the examples provided in this article? (Suggestion: if writing your post, be sure to organize your ideas into separate paragraphs!)

• Option 1: In Road’s graphic memoir, she centers her coming of age experience around Green Day, a band that became central to her identity at that time. Not only did their music express the thoughts and feelings she had, but they became a comfort to her as well. They became, in essence, like a religion to her (54). Do you have comfort content or something you would consider your pop-culture “religion”? What is that content, or what comes closest to it? It could be a band or type of music, but it also might be a television show, a book series, a hobby, or something else. What can you share with us about your connection to this content? Did you ever feel like an outsider for your relationship to this content? How might your different identities have affected/influenced this feeling?  

• Option 2: Road mentions a number of songs throughout her graphic memoir. She even chose her pen name based on a Green Day song. Take some time to listen to a few of these songs, especially those you might not be familiar with. What is it about the Green Day songs that you think resonated with the author? How does their music and lyrics suit the mood and themes of the book? How does this music correlate with Road’s drawing style? How do the other songs or artists mentioned reinforce these elements/aspects of the text? If you were to write a coming-of-age memoir centered around your experiences with music (or film, television, books, etc.) what are some of the titles you would include and why? What do these works say about who you were (and what identities you wished to reinforce) at that point in your life?

• Option 1: At the end of Hijas Americanas, Molinary includes the interview questionnaire that she used with the women she spoke with for this project (Appendix B, pp. 301-302). Choose between 1-3 of the questions included on this list and answer them with as much detail as you are willing/able to do. As an introduction to your answers, please explain why you chose these questions to answer and how you think your answers might benefit readers of your blog post.

• Option 2: In the Resource Guide on pages 303-308, Molinary includes a list of books, movies, websites, and organizations that the women she interviewed shared with her. Has Latina/o/e-centric media (books, movies, tv shows, music, podcasts, websites, content creators, organizations, and more) been helpful in your own development, and if so, how? What recommendations do you have for other Latinas/os/es? How and why do you think the access to this media has changed over the years/generations? What would you like to see more of in terms of Latina/o/e media representation?

• Option 3: Using the book to support your answer, what does it mean to be Latina?

• Option 1: Using examples both from the short story within the reading by Yomaira Figueroa (“Story: Your Lips”) and one of the short stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (“Sugar Babies” or “Sabrina & Corina), what do you see as the role of family in accepting and embracing one’s racial and/or ethnic identities? How does communication (or lack thereof) play into the understanding one has of who they are and how they are seen by others? How do family expectations influence how the narrators see themselves?

• Option 2: In Yomaira Figueroa’s Globus Talk, she addressed several topics including erasure of the archives, the importance of images, alternative archives and cultural production, and diasporic displacement. Focusing on two of these topics, what did Figueroa say on these subjects? How can you see confronting these issues as helpful beyond one individual project?  Why might this type of archival record be more valuable to certain groups than others?

• Option 3: In both of the short stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, we see characters who defy the expectations set forth by their cultures. But we also see consequences for this defiance. How and why might the intersectionality of culture, gender, race, and ethnicity influence the choices that these characters make? How might the intersectionally oppressive experiences of previous generations shape the choices that that we make in our own lives?

• Option 1: What was the experience of reading the text, La Gringa? To what extent were you able to envision the scenes? How did what you imagined compare to what you saw in the staged performance (live or streaming)? What things were exactly how you saw them in your mind? What things were different? How did seeing the play performed change how you understood the written script?

• Option 2: Read over the two epigraphs at the beginning of the play (“Ode to the Diasporican” and “Apologia to the Last Cacique”). Why do you think Rivera chose to include these poems? What insight do they give us to the events of the play? What is the value of using both English and Spanish in “Ode to the Diasporican”? What is the impact of using the letter X in “Apologia to the Last Cacique”?

• Option 3: During the conversation with Carmen Rivera, she mentioned that there was once a director who changed the way in which she envisioned the performance to the point where she had to speak up and say no. But she also stated that there have been several performances of the play that took creative approaches that she was excited to see. Choose any one scene from the play and describe how you would stage it. What props would you include? How would the characters dress or style themselves? What would the stage look like? How would the actors navigate the stage? And why would you make these choices?