Latinx Visions

In this episode we feature projects by LTS 3012 students Edith Valerio, Roxanna Escamilla, and Nina Rodas and LTS 1003 student Michelle Kozinets.

First we will hear from Edith who speaks about the struggles of being both a full time student and a full time worker. Edith herself identifies as both of these things and wanted to explore the effects of doing both on the mental, emotional, and physical health of students who are also full time employees. 

This will be followed by Michelle’s exploration of mental health awareness and treatment for women in Latin America. She considers how physical issues such as gender-based violence and varying degrees of abortion access can lead to mental health issues. 

The third segment features Roxanna Escamilla who discusses issues related to Latina body image. She investigates the struggles and pressure that Latinas face to live up to certain body image standards and the effects of the family and media on those insecurities. 

We will wrap up this episode with Nina’s exploration of Latinas who do not speak Spanish. She argues that just because someone does not speak Spanish, it doesn’t make them any less Latina. She elaborates on some of the other ways in which people can participate in culture beyond language.

Transcript

Follow the podcast:

Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

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Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois

In this episode we introduce you to two fantastic New York-based Puerto Rican playwrights who are at different stages of their careers: Javier Antonio González and Daniela Gonzalez y Perez. We were able to sit down with them and discuss their experiences as queer Boricua-Latinx creators and will be sharing our full conversation with them in this episode. After the conversation concludes, we will come back and provide you with a couple of queer Latinx plays or playwrights that you might wish to check out after you have looked into Javier and Daniela’s works.

Transcript

Follow the podcast:

Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

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Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois

On Thursday October 20th, the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program held a reading and conversation with best-selling and award winning author Carmen Maria Machado and invited us to interview her as part of that event.

This episode includes a brief background Machado, the author of In the Dream House, The Low, Low Woods, and Her Body and Other Stories along with numerous essays and short stories. Then we include an abridged version of the reading that Machado shared that evening called “The Tour.” This was recently published in McSweeney’s Magazine and will be included in Machado’s upcoming book project.

This is followed by our interview with Machado in which we discuss Machado’s writing style, the appeal of the horror genre, collaborating with others, and writing queerness into her works. After our interview, there was a brief Q&A with audience members which we will include in the episode as well. 

Follow the podcast:

Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

Transcript

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Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois

In this episode, featuring Dr. Keisha Allan, we discuss Jean-Michel Baquiat, a Black American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican ancestry who grew up in New York. We provide background on the artist and discuss a current (as of 2022) exhibition of his art, King Pleasure. Then we look at some of the connections he had with other artists and some of the theories related to his art. Most importantly, to the theme of our season on queer latinidades, we consider Basquiat through a queer lens. Finally we wrap up with some recommendations of other LGBTQIA+ Latinx artists.

Dr. Keisha Allan recently joined the Black and Latinx Studies faculty with us at Baruch and we were thrilled to have her on the podcast. She is co-host of the podcast Conversations in Atlantic Theory which can be found wherever you get your podcasts.

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/show/1ZeVJKEE5aq4A6kJvb0A52

Apple Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conversations-in-atlantic-theory/id1611898947

Follow the podcast:

Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

Transcript

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Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois

In this episode, Rebecca discusses the ways in which Love, Victor (2020-2022) provides a necessary and relatively positive (but sometimes overly safe) coming out/coming of age story for a gay Latino teen.

Rojo considers the 2019 independent film The Garden Left Behind. This film follows Tina, a Mexican trans woman who moved to New York City when she was a child and as an adult lives with her grandmother, Eliana.

Follow the podcast:

Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

Transcript 

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Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois

In this week's Student Special we feature projects by LTS 1003 student Roxanna Escamilla, LTS 3100 student Diego Gonzalez, LTS 3085 students Matthew Queme and Emma Rose, and IDC 3001 students Tasia Muskan and Allyson Triana. 

Roxanna’s research focuses on Latinx identities, in particular that feeling of living in between cultures and not feeling as though you truly belong as an American or as a Latino. She uses the character of Chris from the Netflix series Gentefied  to expand on this concept.

Diego Gonzalez’s work considers the changes that have taken place over the last several decades to the New York neighborhoods of the Lower East Side and Washington Heights due to gentrification. He uses “The Obelisk of Loisaida” by Marcos Gonzalez and “The Ladder Up” by Carina de Valle Schorske as a jumping off point for this discussion. 

This is followed by Matthew and Emma’s project which looks at the documentary, Clinica de migrantes by Maxim Pozdorovkin and the book chapter, “Ground Zero” from Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s book, The Undocumented Americans to discuss the connection between healthcare and labor issues faced by undocumented Latin Americans on the east coast of the United States.

The final segment, by Tasia and Allyson, also addresses Cornejo Villavicencio’s chapter “Ground Zero.” They will explore the struggles of exploitation faced by undocumented migrants during 9/11.

Follow the podcast:

Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

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Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois

Over the next two weeks we will be sharing podcast episodes that feature recordings our students created over the past year.

In this episode we feature projects by LTS 3110 student Jacqueline Ortiz and LTS 1003 students Abigail Garcia Vazquez, Arleth Robles, and Nina Rodas

First up is Jacqueline’s episode which considers, in her words, “blackness and whiteness and their role in creating and permeating through the Afro-diasporic ecology.” She analyzes Achille Membe’s book Critique of Black Reason and Arecelis Girmay’s essay “From Woe to Wonder” as part of her project.

This is followed by Abigail, Arleth, and Nina’s study on La Regla de Ocha, or Santeria. In particular they discuss how this Afro-Caribbean religion is represented in the media by looking at the song Aguanile, and season 2, episode 7 of the show She’s Gotta Have It.

Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

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Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois

In this episode we bring you an interview we recorded with Black Latinas Know Collective scholar and member, Dr. Omaris Zamora. We provide a bit of background on the Collective and Dr. Zamora before we get into the interview itself. You will then hear our previously recorded interview with Omaris where we ask about her research and publications, her experiences with the Collective, and how the organization came to be. Finally, we wrap up with a few additional Afro-Latinx-centric groups and organizations that you might reach out to if you are looking for other ways in which to be involved in community activism that supports the Afro-Latinx communities throughout the country and the Americas.

Transcript

In this episode we discuss Latinx and, more specifically, Afro-Latinx representation in comic books in general, share some examples of Afro-Latinx superheroes, and introduce the hero of this episode: Miles Morales, Spider-Man.

Since this episode focuses on Afro-Latinx art, we then discuss the creation of Miles Morales as Spider-Man as a comic book figure as well as the storifying and geometrizing of his Afro-Latinidad. We’ll further the conversation with a brief discussion of the novelization of his story and an essay written about the importance of his Afro-Latinidad. Next we move on to the animated film featuring Miles Morales, Into the Spiderverse which was released in 2018. Here we consider the changes made to his story from the comic books and the ways in which the creators pushed boundaries in the world of animation. We wrap up the main segment of our episode with a brief chat about the 2020 video game, Miles Morales: Spider-Man and the art of the narrative in video games. 

As usual, we close out with a few comic book and graphic novel recommendations as well as a handful of additional Latinx superheroes worth checking out.

Transcript

Follow the podcast:

Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

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Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois

In This Episode we introduce you to three poetry collections: Love Is Hard Work: Memorias de Loisaida, by Miguel Algarín, black/Maybe by Roberto Carlos Garcia, and We Are Owed., by Ariana Brown. In the main segment of our episode today we share a little bit of the history of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and discuss Algarín’s role as one of its founding poets. Then we analyze Brown’s inclusion of Gaspar Yanga as a subject of some of her poems. After that we move on to discuss the Spanish casta system as seen by Garcia and systemic anti-blackness along with US imperialism in regards to how Blackness is perceived. This ties directly into our final topic on confronting anti-blackness and how these poets do so with their words. As usual, we will wrap up the episode with a few recommendations of literary works, both poetry and prose, by other Afro-Latinx authors.

Nuyorican Poets Cafe

Transcript

Follow the podcast:

Twitter and Instagram: @LatinxVisions

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hosts: Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois

Logo Design: Marcos Toledo

Music: Shawn P. Russell

Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell

Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois