"Every Ghetto, Every City" Lauryn Hill

Check out Lauryn Hill's autobiographical song "Every Ghetto, Every City," my favorite hip hop track from "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill":

"I was just a little girl
Skinny legs, a press and curl
My mother always thought I'd be a star
But way before the record deals
Streets that nurtured Lauryn Hill
made sure that I'd never go too far

Every ghetto, every city
and suburban place I been
Make me recall my days, in New Jerusalem

Story starts in Hootaville
Grew up next to Ivy Hill
When kids were stealing quartervilles for fun
"Kill the Guy" in Carter Park
Rode a Mongoose til it's dark
Watching kids show off the stolen ones

Every ghetto, every city
and suburban place I been
Make me recall my days, in the New Jerusalem

You know it's hot
Don't forget, what you got
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
You know it's hot
Don't forget, what you got
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back

Bag of Bontons, twenty cents and a nickel (well that's a quarter)
Springfield Ave. had the best popsicles
Saturday morning cartoons and Kung-Fu (wuh-TAH!)
Main street roots tonic with the dreds
A beef patty and some coco bread
Move the patch from my Lee's to the tongue of my shoes
'Member, FreLng-Huysen used to have the bomb leather
Back when Doug Fresh and Slick Rick was together
Looking at the crew, we thought we'd all live forever

You know it's hot
Don't forget, what you got
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
You know it's hot
Don't forget, what you got
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back

Drill teams on Munn street
'Member when Hawthorne and Chancellor had beef
Moving Records was on Central Ave.
I was there at dancing school
South Orange Ave. at Borlin pool
Unaware of what we didn't have
Writing my friends' names on my jeans with a marker
July 4th races outside Parker
Fireworks at Martin Stadium
The Untouchable P.S.P.
where all them crazy be
And car thieves got away through Irvington
Hillside brings beef with the cops
Self Destruction record drops
And everybody's name was Muslim (children playing, women producing)
Sensations and eighty-eight
attracted kids from out of state
And everybody used to do the wop (wop it out, wop it out, wop it out)
Jack ya jack ya jack ya body
Nah, the BizMark used to amp up the party
I wish those days, they didn't stop

Every ghetto, every city
and suburban place I been
Make me recall my days, in New Jerusalem

You know it's hot
Don't forget, what you got
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
You know it's hot
Don't forget, what you got
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
You know it's hot
Don't forget, what you got

Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
Lookin back.. lookin back, lookin back, lookin back"

Lauryn Hill, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"

Remembering Los Veteranos

Today we remember and pay tribute to our Chicano veteranos who fought in World War II and Vietnam. To read more about their vidas and struggles, I suggest the following books & DVDs:



"Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam" by Charley Trujillo (available through Chusma House Press and featured in PBS' POV Series)

& "Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam" (DVD) by Charley Trujillo and Sonya Rhee

* * *
A Legacy Greater Than Words: Stories of U.S. Latinos and Latinas of the WWII Generation (Paperback) by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez


***
Vietnam Veteranos: Chicanos Recall the War (Paperback) by Lea Ybarra (Author), Edward James Olmos (Foreword)



***
Mexican Americans and World War II (Paperback) by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez (Editor)



Check out this 2003 article about Chicanos remembering Vietnam by News Media America titled: "Latinos' Vietnam Stories: From Fieldworkers to Warriors"

Also, History.com has a great tribute page for all veteranos: Memorial Day.

We will always remember your struggles...

h

MIT Press Features Books on Memory

MIT Press is currently featuring some very interesting books/libros on memory.

Check 'em out:

"Speak, Memory"

Hasta la proxima,

h

P.S.

Thanks to Anita August for the info about these books. Yow!

"Bury My Heart" in American Film Memory

Last night, HBO Films premiered the film adaptation of Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," a history of Native American displacement during the late nineteenth century. The film's cast includes:

Adam Beach as "Charles Eastman"



August Schellenberg as "Sitting Bull"



Aiden Quinn as "Henry Dawes"


Check out the film's site: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Also, check out a very interesting interview with Canadian actor Adam Beach--who starred in "Smoke Signals"--about the film: Interview with Adam Beach

All photos courtesy of hbo.com.

U 'Member? G-Lo Visits "El Chuco"

If you want to mix memory and comedy, no one else does it better than da man himself--George Lopez, (aka "El Mas Chingon") whose currently on his "America's Mexican" tour, which hits our town--El Chuco--on Saturday, June 23, 7:30PM @ the Don Haskins Center. Tickets are avail at the UTEP Ticket Center. Yow!

Also, check out Lopez's autobiography "Why You Crying?" which locates the humor in the most depressing of memorias. The book was published in 2004...u 'member? u member!

Yow!

Promotional photo above courtesy of Creative Commons Attribution & PRWeb Photowire.

RSA 2008 Call for Papers

RSA 2008: Call for Proposals

"'The Responsibilities of Rhetoric'

Seattle, the location of RSA 2008, by virtue of its identity and its imagery compels us to meditate together on the macroforces that are currently shaping our discipline and our democracy.

Seattle means coffee and Boeing and the Port--all of them symbols of the international, globalized market economy and its attendant perils. Seattle means Microsoft and Amazon.com --megacorporations produced by and producing new (and sometimes vexing) communications technologies and practices. Seattle means "metronatural" life: REI (Recreation Equipment Inc.) and bicycles, eco-consciousness and the just-launched Puget Sound Partnership, urban spaces surrounded by Elliott Bay and Mt. Rainier--all of it a reminder of ecological challenges that must be negotiated through rhetoric. And Seattle means multiculturalism: the polyglot citizens who gather at Pike Place Market or Starbucks are African American and native American, Anglo and Asian, Latino and mestizo, native and immigrant.

Let us come together in Seattle, therefore, to consider The Responsibilities of Rhetoric. How can the study and practice of rhetoric contribute to social progress? What does rhetoric offer as means of understanding and coping with globalization, particularly at a time when "global" is associated with "terror" and "exploitation"? What do rhetorical studies have to offer in a presidential election year when political discourses and popular fundamentalisms are polarizing, confrontational, divisive? How do new media affect civic participation and the conduct of argument half a century after The New Rhetoric, The Uses of Argument, and The Rhetoric of Motives? How can rhetorical studies contribute to scientific exchange, technology transfer, and risk management--all in the interest of public and disciplinary good, and particularly on environmental issues? In a nation suspicious of difference, concerned with security, and newly armed with snooping technologies, can rhetorical pedagogies nevertheless protect civil liberties, sustain civic cooperation, and promote understanding and identification? And how can our professional society be sure that our scholarly methodologies and assumptions are themselves highly ethical?

While participants are invited to present their current research on all the topics that fall within the domain of rhetorical studies, the Program Committee will especially appreciate proposals that engage with The Responsibilities of Rhetoric.

Proposals for sessions and individual presentations – due by September 15, 2007 – must be submitted electronically: directions will be posted here shortly. There you will also find information (and regular updates) on housing, registration, special features, and other aspects of RSA 2008."

Rhetoric Society of America

Altars as Memory/Memoria

Right now, I'm still thinking of Chicana artista Amalia Mesa-Bains' comment about how nature facilitates the ritual of memory when building an altar to pay tribute to loved ones who have crossed unto the next world.

Considering what she said, I've been motivated to research the significance of altars and their central role in memory, especially in Mexican folklore.

PBS' "The New Americans" features an engaging introduction about altars in Mexican culture, which should draw an audience interested in exploring the link between the physical and spiritual through altar-making. Azcentral.com presents a concise explanation about the significance of each key element/feature in a traditional altar. For example, they explain the significance of the bread placed alongside candles, photographs and flores. Artista Ladislao Loera's "Dia de Los Muertos," an art website, features another segment about the key features of altares and some fun stuff to fuse the artistic with altar-making. My favorite website, however, is Hollywood Forever's "Dia de los Muertos" which features a contest where constestants build their own altars for premios!

Also, some very interesting journal articles have appeared in Ethnohistory & African Arts about altars, cemeteries, and El Dia de los Muertos. Stay tuned as I list them next time. Also, next time, I'll briefly comment about the online altar for Gloria E. Anzaldua.

For now, I'm still thinking about how much story is woven to each act of building an altar and to what degree this act represents the critical use of memory through nature and storytelling.

Hasta la proxima,

h

Quote of the Day

"All things we remember are in our memory--and since we must remember forgetting, or we would not know what the word means when we hear it, then forgetting must be in our memory. It is there for us to remember, but its being there means we forget. Or should we say that forgetting is not there itself when we remember it, but only some representation of it, since its being present itself would make us lack memory? Who can fathom such a thing, or make any sense of it?"

~ St. Augustine, Confessions

Rhetoric & Memory Diss/Thesis Projects

So I've been currently researching dissertations and thesis projects on rhetoric and memory and found some very interesting ones, which I'm sharing with you here:

Carolin A. Metzger, M.A., "Poems as Mnemonic Devices to Aid Grammar Recall," University of Texas-Pan American, 2000

Daniel John Fitzmier, PhD, "The Role of Maxims and Memory in Isocrates' Pedagogy," Northwestern University, 2005

Donna Allard Halford, PhD, "A Rhetorical Legacy: The Art of Memory's Place in Literature and Semiotics," Texas Woman's University, 1990.

Janine Rider, PhD, "Memory as Muse: Recomposing Memory in Rhetoric and Composition," Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1992.

Kathleen J. Ryan, PhD, "Rememoried Knowing: A Feminist Interpretation of the Canon of Memory," University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2001

Linda Theresa Calendrillo, PhD, "The Art of Memory and Rhetoric," Purdue University, 1988

Richard Edward Smyth,"Renaissance Mnemonics, Poststructuralism, and the Rhetoric of Hypertext Composition," University of Florida, 1994

Interesting, verdad?

I'm currently reading Hayden White's "Supression of Rhetoric in the Nineteenth Century," which revisits the ways in which rhetoric was demoted in an effort to elevate the invention and proliferation of literature.

In the essay, I've been particularly drawn to the way White defines rhetoric:

"Rhetoric...represents a kind of knowledge with a distinct social value insofar as it yields insights into the relation between political power and the control of language, speech, and discourse, which political elites always have recognized as a necessary basis for effective rule" (27).

White states that rhetoric was born as a "science" (as opposed to an "art") of speech, language and representation which "purports to explain not only the principles of literary-artistic discourse but also those of all nonartistic, practical discourse, such as those of politics and the law, not to mention philosophy and history, and, more importantly, the relation of these to power--political, social, and economic" (27).

I'm drawn to this definition because it proves useful for students of rhetoric attempting to map out the evolution of rhetoric from a historical context. Mapping the rise and fall of rhetoric continues critical in history courses on rhetoric.

White has written extensively about rhetoric and history, specifically about issues relative to historiography. Check out his bibliography here.



This particular essay is featured in The Rhetoric Canon (Brenda Deen Schildgen, ed., 1997). Check it out!

Hasta la proxima.

h

PS.

Currently listening to:

Maroon 5's "It Won't Be Soon Before Long" (released today)

Quote of the Day

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it."

~ Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Quote of the Day

"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not."

~ Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Quote of the Day

"Nature also plays a different role in our practice of remembering. For example, we leave flowers and fruit for the dead, this is how we mark our tragedies. And events which haunt a family--the death of a young man in war, the death of a newborn child--are articulated in the home altar, and then sometimes in prayers, and always in storytelling. Every family has stories, and that records the struggles and losses, as well as instances of resistance and triumph."

~ Amalia Mesa-Bains, "Homegrown"

Quote of the Day

"Life without memory is no life at all. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our actions."

~ bell hooks

Quote of the Day

"Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others."

-- Rosa Parks

Congratulations to Victor Barajas, M.A.!

THESIS PRESENTATION

Tuesday, May 15^th

Geology Bldg. Rm. 308 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon

"LOS MIGRANTES: A VISUAL AND ORAL NARRATIVE OF THE UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE"

By

VICTOR BARAJAS

Graduate Student, Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, UTEP

This research study was conducted in an attempt to present a different perspective on the issue of undocumented immigration. It focuses on the visual and oral aspect of the border crossing experience originating from the perspective of those who transgress the international boundary: the undocumented Mexican migrants. Three key locations along the U.S.-Mexico border where selected to conduct the field research for this project: Las Chepas, Chihuahua, Nogales, and El Sásabe, Sonora.

These areas are characterized by the influx of migrants they receive throughout the year, and they exemplify the inhospitable locations being used by migrants to transgress the border. These areas account for more than 60% of all the migrant deaths along the 2000-mile U.S. - Mexico border. Interviews were conducted with migrants before crossing the border and after they had been repatriated back to México. The focus was to gather their perspectives, motivations, and experiences when crossing the border. Photography of all of these locations accompanies this project to further contextualize the migrant experience. The perspective of the other, in this case the undocumented immigrant, is important to understand and enact feasible immigration reform. This project attempts to contribute to the discussion and understanding of the undocumented immigrant experience.

For more information, please contact Sandra Aguirre-Covarrubias at the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies at 747-5196 or via e-mail at sandraac@utep.edu
Seating is limited. Please arrive early.

Memory Bloggers of the Wor(l)d Unite

I just submitted grades, which means that the spring semester is now over! It's time to party!

Well, not exactly...

I will now begin studying for quals and resume writing my article on Jose Vasconcelos, the Mexican philosopher who created a vision of "la raza cosmica".

Last summer, I took a course on Latin American philosophy, which introduced me to Samuel Ramos and Leopoldo Zea, two of many key philosophers who created and defined the corpus of Latin American philosophy, which is now widely taught at American universities. Vasconcelos is not necessarily my idol; his ideas and works, especially his autobiograhy Mexican Ulysses, speak to me within a rhetorical context. I'm thinking of posting a tribute to "La Raza Cosmica" with some excerpts from the essay, followed by a series of photographs that will present Vasconcelos at differing times during his life. Think of it as a memorial to his ideas.

On the topic of memory, I'm currently enjoying "The Forgotten Canon," Kathie Gossett's blog which features lots of great information on memory. Gossett is a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in the Center for Writing Studies.

At this year's 4 Cs, she presented "Illuminating Memory: Imagines Agentes and Image Texts," which you can listen to as an audio on her blog, along with audio from the other presentations, which include:

***

Angela Haas, Michigan State U, "On Material Rhetorics and the Canon of Memoria: Rethinking the History (and Future) of Rhetoric"

Matt Weiss, Penn State U, "Ephemeral Monuments: The Physicality of Memory Technology"

John Walter, Saint Louis U, "Social Memory Studies and The Canon of Memory"

Julia Romberger, Old Dominion U, "Teaching Students to Leave Breadcrumbs: The Canon of Memory Recaptured for Digital Rhetoric"

Stewart Whittemore, Michigan State U, "Mnemonics as mediating texts: What the ars memoria can tell us about complex knowledge work"

***

I listened to John's presentation, which I encourage you to lend an ear. I like what he says in terms of ethos, pathos and logos being governed by social memory! John's blog is equally engaging--check it out "Machina Memorialis".

It's great to know that there are other scholars in Rhet/Comp that are keeping the scholarship on memory alive!

So before I dive into studying for the quals, I'm going to keep enjoying Machina Memorialis, Mixing Memory, Sites of Memory, as well as Gossett's "The Forgotten Canon".


Hasta la proxima...


PS.


Currently listening to:


"Black Celebration", Depeche Mode

&

"Speak and Spell," Depeche Mode

Both albums remind me of high school. (Is that good or bad?)