Remember Icons/Memory and Media

My apologies for the delay in posting a new entry in this blog. Since the last time I posted an entry, there has been quite a lot remembering. The passing of icons such as Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett and Patrick Swayze has reminded us about the necessity of keeping their images and/or recordings within our collective memory in order to keep them with us in spirit. I have been amazed at the outpouring of remembrance for Michael Jackson and how his videos are now immortalized for generations to come. These videos demonstrate how much of technology assists human memory in sustaining our collective history, which includes pop culture. We create pop culture and we sustain it through technology.

I've been at work on Ch. 4 of my dissertation, which examines the context for remembering along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Some of the topics I explore here include cultural memory, spatial memory, and subjective/communal memory. I hope to be finished with this chapter by the end of this month.

Today, I ran into Andrea Lunsford's bibliography titled "Memory and Media," which I highly recommend if you want to further study the relationship between memory and technology. The bibliography is also useful if you are constructing a course with the same theme.

I welcome my new followers and I encourage you to stay tuned for my upcoming announcement of a special website that features everything about rhetorical memory.

R.I.P. Isaac Hayes (1942-2008)

R.I.P. Bernie Mac (1957-2008)

Thanks for making us all laugh, Mac Daddy!

Visit the Bernie Mac Tribute page here ------>>>>> Bernie Mac Memorial

Ruben Salazar Remembered

On April 22, 2008, the U.S. Postal System unveiled a new addition to those remembered in a U.S. postage stamp.



Ruben Salazar, also known as "La Voz de la Raza," was a groundbreaking Chicano journalist for the Los Angeles Times. He was killed at the age of 42 during a Chicano anti-war protest by an East Los Angeles sheriff's deputy.

Salazar is remembered by nuestra gente for devoting all of his work to demand equal rights for Mexicanos and Chicanos alike.

For more information about the stamp, click here.

For more about Ruben Salazar, click here.



Photos Courtesy of the U.S. Postal System and the "Remembering Ruben Salazar" photo gallery featured by the Los Angeles Times

Remembering Sin Fronteras/Without Borders

Frederick Douglass and Gloria E. Anzaldua are two rhetors whose rhetorical works will receive much attention in my dissertation on memory.

To date, Andrea Lunsford has provided scholars within our field an illuminating interview with Anzaldua wheareas Patricia Bizzell has written articles about the works of Frederick Douglass, as well as writing an introduction to the rhetorical works by Douglass and Anzaldua in The Rhetorical Tradition with Bruce Herzberg.

In talking about and remembering Gloria Anzaldua, I'm always searching for the ways in which scholars, activists, and writers remember her presence in their lives and the impression her work made on up and coming scholars in various fields/disciplines.

Shortly after the death of Anzaldua, Chicana historian Yolanda Chavez Leyva wrote a memorial tribute to Anzaldua as a way to remember someone who inspired Chavez Leyva to become an activist. Here, "activist" refers to the commitment to giving back to one's community instead of only thinking of the self in isolation.

There can be no doubt that this article further reinforced the argument that Anzaldua remains a critical figure in the Mexicana/Chicana rhetorical tradition, which has been eloquently advocated by rhetoric scholar Jessica Enoch in her article "Para La Mujer: Defining a Chicana Feminist Rhetoric at the Turn of the Century".

In remembering Anzaldua, Chavez Leyva writes:

"She loved words. She loved learning. She loved teaching. She became an avid reader as a child and a prolific writer as an adult. She worked with migrant farm worker children in the 1960s and university students from then on." (21)

There can be no doubt that Anzaldua gave back and, to date, continues to exemplify the term "activist" for the rest of us engaged in writing/escritura.

The aspects of Anzaldua's writing that I wish to explore at this point is how she used new age concepts and brought them to the act of writing. I am also interested in learning how she fused the spiritual with the act of using words in writing. I'm also drawn to the way that Anzaldua blended the spiritual and the political. All of these interests are driving my research and is the basis of a new collection of essays I am collecting on the impression that her work has had on my thinking as a citizen of El Mundo Zurdo.

(article above courtesy of "The Progressive")

R.I.P. -- Raul Salinas (1935-2008)

After devoting all of his life to writing and fighting for human rights, activist and "Pinto Poet" Raul Salinas entered the spiritual world at age 73. In addition to writing "East of the Freeway: Reflections de Mi Pueblo" and "Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excusions," he fought with all his corazon and mind in the American Indian Movement and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Moreover, he founded La Resistencia Bookstore.

Please read literary historian Louis Mendoza's article about Salinas titled "The Re-education of a Xicanindio: Raul Salinas and the Poetics of Pinto Transformation," which appeared in MELUS in 2003.

You can read more about Salinas' significant works in the following articles:

"Teacher, poet activist Raul Salinas Dies" by Michael Lithgow in Art Threat

"Poetry as Activism" by Phil West in The Austin Chronicle

"Out of the Ashes, the Pínto Poet Arises" by Raymond R. Beltran

R.I.P. -- Heath Ledger (1979 - 2008)

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

R.I.P. Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

Activists around the world mourn the loss of former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, 57, who was assassinated in Rawalpindi on Thursday. Que en pas descanse.

(Photo courtesy of "Historische Portraits" at portrait.kaar.at)

R.I.P. --- Maria Isabel Aguilera (1922-2007)

On November 15, 2007, my grandmother entered the spiritual world after a painful struggle with cancer. My beautiful mother took wonderful care of her until her last day. My grandmother was a hard working woman who represented strength and persistence to me. Thank you for being part of my life, abuelita. I will never forget you.

We will miss you this Christmas.

Remembering Gil Cuadros (1962-1996)

I found the following photograph of the brilliant gay Chicano escritor Gil Cuadros, who left this world too soon. Cuadros' debut "City of God" is a masterpiece in Chicano literature. He has joined the ranks of other important gay Chicano escritores such as John Rechy, Michael Nava, Luis Alfaro and Richard Rodriguez. However, there will never be another voice like his. Te recordamos siempre, Gil.

(Photo by Laura Aguilar and courtesy of UCLA LGBTS)

En Memoria: Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007)

Remembering Frida Kahlo (1907-54)

On Friday, a museum in Mexico City will feature a collection of photographs, letters and personal items belonging to Mexicana painter & icon Frida Kahlo, which is part of a 100th anniversary celebration of Kahlo's birth. These items, along with those belonging to her husband Diego Rivera, Mexicano muralist, will be on public display after 50 years of being kept private.

No doubt that Frida will always be remembered.

For those of you intersted in Frida's writings, check out:



"Escrituras de Frida Kahlo" Raquel Tibol, ed.

R.I.P.-- Nazik al-Malaika, exiled Iraqi poet

Nazik al-Malaika, an exiled Iraqi poet, died in Cairo on June 27. Read the article by The New York Times and some of her poems in translation.

Que en paz descanse.

En Memoria -- Joel E. Siegel, Film Critic

R.I.P. -- (1943-2007)

Remembering Antonio Aguilar

R.I.P. -- Antonio Aguilar (1919-2007)

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

En Memoria: Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon . . . My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."

~ Kurt Vonnegut (qtd. in 2005)

Ingenious writer and humorist Kurt Vonnegut entered immortality on Wednesday. His best known work is the controversial "Slaughterhouse Five," a novel which blended social commentary with science fiction.

Que en paz descanse/requiescat in pace

Remembering "Lola, La Grande"

Currently listening (and weeping) to:

Lola "La Grande" Beltran (1932-1996)

Recordando a Cesar

Cesar Chavez (March 31, 1927 -- April 23, 1993)