Re-EYE-stablishing Art, Poetry, Literatura de la Frontera
Alexandria Speier
Professor William Nericcio
ENGL 157/Eyegasm
November 17, 2022
Attending the Re:Border 2022 lectures was engaging because of the many connections I was able to tie to our class discussions. Learning about different aspects of the border through a multitude of media including art, poetry, and literature helped expand my vision of what I believed the border to be.
The first connections I made to our class discussions was during Dr. Kristal Bivona’s lecture about Salvador Elizondo’s Elsinore. To start off, this novel is a bildungsroman – a tool kit word we have studied in class. We have read multiple coming of age stories in class this semester, of which my favorite has been Haruki Murakami’s After Dark. Dr. Bivona described the character of Salvador as struggling with his cultural identity of being both Mexican but living in California. I was able to relate this to After Dark’s main character Mari, who also struggled with cultural identity because though she was Japanese she preferred to speak Chinese. Additionally, another time during class when we have studied a character struggling with cultural identity was in David Mairowitz’s Kafka. Through Dr. Bivona’s analysis of Salvador’s struggles and what we have discussed in class, I have become more aware of the type of setbacks people from the border face when living here in America, such as having to “code switch”.
Moving forward, Angela Mendoza brought to light how life at the border can be observed through poetry. She specifically mentioned how poetry is a “transfer of emotions” that blurs genres, similarly to how “the borderlands are blurred”. I inferred that Mendoza meant the identities at and around the border blend and collide together. This part of the lecture I connected to when we read Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer and how she was non-binary. Both of these forms of literature included themes that have no singular answer that is yes or no and instead focus on themes of fluidity. Next, Mendoza shared a line from a poem that stuck out to me. It read, “In solitude she thrives.” To me, this line symbolized how women are powerful, independent, and do not need men in their life to be fulfilled. It resonated with me because my grandmother grew up as a single mother to my mom, and I think this quote symbolizes her character perfectly.
Finally, when Professor Nerriccio presented his part of the lecture I (predictably) found many connections to our in class discussions. Professor Nerricio presented the word “misoneist”, which means “hatred of novelty or innovation”. This can perfectly be used as a label for the people in America who are racist and scared of the stereotypes that come with helping the border and Mexicans in America. I think this word is also applicable to describe characters we have faced in other works we have discussed in class, such as the men in Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries who were afraid of women developing power against the patriarchy. Finally, I learned about how the painter Izel Vargas connected to our reading of Haruki Murakami’s After Dark and the movie Poltergeist because both works have scenes of characters being stuck within a television. Additionally, Professor Nerriccio described Vargas’s work as “uncanny”, another tool kit word from class.
I can say that by going to the Re:Border 2022 lectures, I further strengthened my knowledge and understanding of themes we have talked about in class while also learning an abundance of new information about the border.
:)
