What was great about this piece, the meandering blogs of one blogofile

What was great about this piece was that it had a lot of names that I recognized, much of which became recognizable because of my work with Critical Inquiry. Other sites of interest are:

 - any time Friedman spoke on diaspora or borderlands

 - another mention of "transculturation"

 - the bit on memory

Diasporas

This is either the first time I have ever heard this word, or the first time I ever understood what it meant (assuming I now, in fact, understand what it means). The displacement with a sense of loss adds a different tension to the lives and narratives of those who enter cultures as the "other." Have any of you read The Tortilla Curtain. I wish this concept would have been explained to me then. Also, I know I have dealt with diaspora in other literary discussions before, but somehow naming it makes it so much more meaningful.

Borderlands

I just keep thinking that the English department has a course about Anzaldua next quarter, and how convenient this little piece is to market the class to us. Also, the term does not mean only the actual physical places where conflicts of border occur, but also the theoretical, political, and psychological conflicts: gender, race, religion, etc. 

Transculturation

This made me think of a conversation that Isabel and I had during class today, about the punishment of school children for speaking a language other than English during class time. Is it a problem to allow cultures to blend? I am baffled by the big mystery of whether or not a melting pot is good, or if resting in a salad like pose is better. Or, whether or not assimilation denies one their culture. Or, is it how Friedman put it, "[i]mages of diversity - the mosaic, stir-fry, salad, stew, callaloo, rainbow, quilt, and so on - have developed as a rhetoric of resistance to mainstream groups determined to exclude the foreign, racial, or otherwise subordinate groups who do not want to lose their distinctive cultures" (276); is it possible to belong to one culture with many different lenses with which to view it?

Memory

The interesting spin on this was the positive part. Nostalgia being sad, and desire signifying something that is not currently had, I find it hard to locate a niche within which one can be positive. Friedman discusses this optimism in that of borderlands, when "the longing for mixing with others in creative interplay, stimulating fusions, and the hope for understanding across difference, for reconciliation, coexistence, or peace" occurs (276). These are indeed utopic notions, and the only example Friedman offers comes from a playwright and actor. It is in the poetic and the creative that peace is found. I suppose our hope, then, lay in the belief that these pieces of literary work and art form can persuade the hearts and minds of a nation and a globe.