Reading Anzaldua's essay made me think of some of the poetry I have been reading for my Chicano Lit class; the way the languages are infused and juxtaposed to bond and separate two drastically different cultures. It is a unique art and burden for the Latino writer to illustrate the pressures of being trapped between two worlds. The crafting of language has always seemed to be such a powerful tool to me. Teachers in high school always lecture about the importance of being able to write out an argument in the professional world, but it is so much more than that. The way you organize your thoughts and communicate, to anyone: co-workers, family members, strangers, even yourself, structures your relationships, how you view the world and how the world views you.
As I was contemplating this I came across a poem called "Elena"by Pat Mora that I remember reading years ago:
My Spanish isn't enough.
I remember how I'd smile
listening to my little ones,
understanding every word they'd say,
their jokes, their songs, their plots.
Vamos a pedirle dulces a mama. Vamos.
But that was in Mexico.
Now my children go to American high schools.
They speak English. At night they sit around
the kitchen table, laugh with one another.
I stand by the stove and feel dumb, alone.
I bought a book to learn English.
My husband forwned, drank more beer.
My oldest said, "Mama, he doesn't want you to be smarter than he is." I'm forty,
embarrassed at mispronouncing words,
embarrassed at the laughter of my children,
the grocer, the mailman. Sometimes I take my English book and lock myself in the bathroom,
say the thick words softly,
for if I stop trying, I will be deaf
when my children need my help.
Though I immediately recalled reading this before, I could not help but have the same emotional reaction. I think most people can relate in some form to feeling simultaneously caged in and locked out, trapped in our own finite bubble of understanding.
Anzaldua's essay explained the dilemna of language in a much more technical fashion, but what I grasped from her writing was the intricate and varying inclusion/exclusion that the numerous dialects carry in all her different roles. It is hard enough to figure out who we are and put it into words without the world scrutinizing every syllable.
Thanks for sharing Mora's poem Niki! We all live in separate and shared realities that continuously merge as well as drift apart. The poem reached a place within myself. I do not pretend to understand Mora's vision, but I can relate to the cross-cultural and linguistic boundaries of existence. Powerful!
ReplyDeletebeautiful nicole...just beautiful.
ReplyDeleteLanguage is seen as a means of communicating with others...yet, how ironic is it that one is judged by how one speaks, by what one says, and how one says it.
How is it that words strung together become simultaneously power and defeat? Something that brings people together while at the same time dividing?
If the words one uses comes from a dominant culture and are thus already rich with connotations/meanings/values ...Anzaldua seems to be asking the question of how one expresses one's identity in the dominant culture's language if the dominant culture sees that person as less than, as a "lack"....
...to be "corrected" by her teachers seems to suggest that her identity is deficit/lacking/incorrect/improper/inappropriate...
But not surprising, historically language has been used as a means of social control: to civilize for example...but by civilizing they presumption is that they were not civilized before? by using a language as a means to civilize presumes that the language used before was wrong?deficit? insufficient?
interesting? disturbing?
Interesting and disturbing...
ReplyDeleteIt is a contradiction I am starting to see in the field I want to go into. I am transferring this fall and hoping to study art history and archeology, but I am beginning to wonder how I can study the beauty and wonder of other cultures without viewing them as exotic, or "the other," and further, how I can possibly communicate the importance of distant art in my own language, so far removed from that of its creators.... Do you have any thoughts on this as an art historian?
yes...yes...yes. I was absolutely educated and interested in Western European and American Art when I did my many, many, many years of undergrad and graduate...then I encountered a mentor who was the premiere and pioneer female scholar in Afrocuban and Cuban art. I had absolutely no interest in that field but I was always interested in gender issues. She opened my eyes to problems we don't even know are problems because it is embedded in the way we see the world...something that many theorists I had already studied were focusing on in one way or another: Derrida, Foucault, Levinas, Kristeva, Bhabha, Jameson.
ReplyDeleteWhat I realized is that awareness and an intrinsic curiosity are central to your work. What I mean by that
is you must first be conscious of and understand the values embedded in our Western European/Anglo worldviews. That is the most important battle, because then you can consciously check your "lens" --philosophical and visual--as you encounter other art from other cultures.
Can we ever rid ourselves of our ethnocentrism? of course not--Gauguin tried to by moving to rustic, "primitive" countries but demonstrated only the impossibility of such a thing--the question must become how can we put what we know in the service of other cultures?
1) Suspend your judgments, 2) analyse your initial likes and dislikes(why do i gravitate towards one type of art and not another) and 3) really think of yourself as the "other" of that culture .....Doris Salcedo in an interview once said this and I found it mind boggling to me about how we approach the Other...
In other words: (this is how I related it to my own life) When we go to a shelter or when he help disenfranchised kids learn to read, we go to those places thinking we are helping: helping the homeless eat, helping economically disadvantaged kids read - which we are--but embedded in this act of kindness is again, a hierarchical relationship: we believe we have something to give them, we have something to teach them...what Salcedo wants us to do is to stop thinking in those terms - when we encounter another realize that we aren't helping them, BUT RATHER--in many ways they are helping US. Those people we are feeding may, in fact, give us a bit of knowledge we know nothing about, the children may in fact change our lives in a manner we don't even realize...but we wouldn't even realize it unless we allow ourselves to be open, to be "students" that need to be taught, to "listen" - and listening entails many different things that we can miss if we are not ready or able to hear.
And yes, distant art passes itself forward through individuals...and you feel the voices and/or the messages of its creators and all those in between them and you-- when it's right. Believe me, you'll know.