This online writing environment digitally archives the embodied rhetoric, issues and projects that relate to me as Associate Professor at Santa Clara University and Bread Loaf School of English faculty. E-mail me at: cnmedina AT SCU DOT edu.
From the Press Release:
" Music, recipes, poetry, art, cinema, theater and history make up the rich cornucopia of Latino culture showcased on www.Latinopia.com a new website set for launch March 19, 2011.
The brainchild of veteran Los Angeles television director and documentary filmmaker Jesús Salvador Treviño, the video-driven website is designed as a one-stop web destination for all things Latino.
"As U.S. Latinos enter the digital age, we need a website that can offer videos about all aspects of our history culture and life," explains Jesus Treviño, whose television credits include programs like Law and Order-Criminal Intent, The Unit, Criminal Minds and Resurrection Blvd and who shot and edited much of the video footage on Latinopia.com.
"We're starting with five-minute videos in seven subject areas--interviews, music performances, short films, theater plays and authors reading from their works," Trevino explains. "We are excited that top Latino writers, artists and musicians from around the U.S. have seen the value of Latinopia.com and are enthusiastically sharing their time, stories and creativity.
My blog, like many projects/ideas, has multiple origins. First, I hated writing: it was hard, stressful, and rarely pleasant. I read as many books about writing as I could manage. I gained some confidence, but was still unable to place my readers in a particular time and place. I started reading journalism with more attention to word usage and started a daily writing practice….Second, my pocho-ass was far from home. I was Mexican, kinda, sometimes, but it was experienced/thought about in drastically different ways. In Mexico City, my conversations with Froylan Enciso , Daniel Hernandez, Diego Flores Magon, Guillermo Osorno, my sis, Carri, and others were particularly enjoyable and often over beer.
As I experienced Mexico City I wanted to convey to friends back home what the city felt like: the archives, belonging to an intellectual circle, the appropriation/adoption of American and pocho/chicana cultural production, the yummy tacos chupacabras. In short being both a “cousin and stranger.” This sense, to quote a friend from Mexico City, of between in/out of space was felt in New York City. A city with a more recent migration, particularly from central and southern Mexico, Mexicanos who aren’t short and pale (like my ass). Not being recognized as Mexican was really odd, but seeing how more recent migration happened “on the ground” was/is a lesson in history. Yet, a ton of blogs were simply about experiencing aspects of Mexico City and NYC: graffiti in Neza, day of the Virgen in Manhattan, pink floyd being played by a banda, watching Mexico beat the US in Mexico City, radiohead being played at a graduation in a Mexican school…
The more I wrote, the more enjoyable it became, though you all can decide on the quality. More importantly, it became a way to share my intellectual ideas and pursuits with los primos/as, my siblings, my tios/as, and parents. It provided needed breaks from long academic papers and made academia less alienating. Along the way friends and family encouraged me to continue writing the blog, in some cases suggesting to publish a post or two (Thank YOU). I submitted the eulogy I wrote for my gramps to acentos review. It was accepted and Cruz Medina and I started a cyperspace friendship: we learned that we are both pochos from so cal and that we both find studying poch@ productive. Cruz suggested we guest blog as a means to build pocho community in greater Mexico. An important beginning. The images on his two blogs are pretty dope, his fiction is really moving, so I was more than pleasant to partake in this collaborative pochismo.
I this sense I am interested in hearing how folks think we can continue to build community on the net. I am currently involved in helping found a cultural, intellectual, and archival space in Mexico City. Mainly, I’m trying to get as many pocho/a artists, intellectuals, writers, etc down to Mexico City to engage Mexicans and as many Mexicans up here to engage Chicanos/pochos/etc. You can follow its progress here and more importantly can email me for more information/to propose projects, to talk shit, etc. As I sit in an archive in DC with my friend Israel Pastrana and research South El Monte it seems appropriate to conclude with what we feel is the most pressing question of our generation: how do we build a politics that reflects our transnational/undocumented/documented communities?
Check out my guest blogging at Pocho in Greater Mexico. It's a great performance of pocho community, digital mestizaje and collaboration. Please check it out as a sign of encouragement for these kinds of collaborative projects in the future!
Cross Blog Posting Collaborative Digital Pocho Locura
In a pochos across America practice of collaborative action, Romeo Guzman of Pocho in Greater Mexico blog fame will be guest blogging on this very blog (and also my new poch[o]tec@ blog).
Pochismo genealogy is going to hit the fan with this digital mestizaje. This will be more anticipated than the Jay-Z/Kanye collaboration in the back alleyways where pochos gather to plot the next academic revolution.
(Bad ass art from: http://elfiodor.deviantart.com/art/Che-Pocho-63711160)
Free Showing of Precious Knowledge March 24 at Fox Theatre in Tucson
I posted the trailer to this film about a year ago and I'm excited to see that it's getting its release later this month.
This documentary deals with the Mexican American Studies program at Tucson High school that is currently being targeted by the pura mierda Arizona State legislation HB 2281.
I've tried to find material online having to do with the elementary school where I taught in Costa Rica other than the schools site: http://www.angelfire.com/home/saintpatrickschoolcr/ ,where one could apply if they so chose. I ran across some photo albums others have done and came to the conclusion that I had to upload my own photos into an album.
As a first time teacher, teaching abroad, in my first real job out of college, I didn't know what to expect. There's so much more I could write, and I did use some of the experiences in a presentation for Jerry Farber's Teaching Literature course, which I called "I am a Bad Teacher," but of the lessons I came away with is the understanding that good teaching comes about through preparation and repetition.
This past summer, one of my students, Alan Gamez wrote, directed, edited and produced the "Batman vs. Parents" video.
(image from i09.com)
He's got a youtube channel with a couple shorts he's put together with his brother who played the concerned parent in the Batman video.
Check out their channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Galandelax
Here is a video from one of my students last summer. I ran into him today and he has another that he's going to share with me soon. Until then, enjoy an oldie but goodie.
As the photo below proclaims, a new blog of mine lives. It brings together the Aztec traveling merchant of the pochteca with a (re)imagining of the pejorative 'pocho' in order to enunciate an academic identity.
2011 Cs ATL Program
It's always a good idea to search the online program before going to Cs. It cuts down on the overwhelming sense of there always being too much to see, too many great speakers to meet and events to attend. (Cruz Medina on pages 8, 67 and 248!)
I was told that I needed to see the *Sleep Dealer* because it deals with technology, migrant laborers and the disposable bodies of factory workers in the borderlands. The story is sci-fi and has a satirical agenda that exposes a dark "American Dream" that asks for and utilizes a migrant labor force, but then wants it to disappear.
In undergrad, I took a course that looked at sci-fi as psychological fiction in that many of these outlandish ideas we see represented in films like Stepford Wives play on deeper psychological desires. Looking at Sleep Dealer in this same psychological context, I think the effectiveness of this film hinges on technology erasing racial markers, a concept that could be grounded in some of the tangible legislation that puts into place systems of control for racially marked bodies.
