Elenamary

I read an article and was subtly offended by it but I didn’t have a way to articulate why. I’ve been thinking about the article since I read it on Thursday. Then today while driving to pick-up a friend of mine who hangs out with a lot of hipsters, it hit me. What would it be like if I picked up a Spanish language newspaper written by some Latinos who wrote of hipsters moving into their neighborhood and what they were like, and how they viewed their new neighbors and asked them what they thought of racism?

The article is about a photographer Alexandra Copley (her Taqueria blog), who currently has a photography exhibit of taco trailers around Columbus, Ohio. I want to make it clear, I am not offended by Alexandra Copley’s work. It is more that I have a sense of my people being displayed as other worldly as entertainment like zoo animals.

It reminds me of a night when I was hanging out with a bunch of international students from Latin America who were attending OSU, when some sorority girls stopped and seemed entertained at watching us play dominoes, share food, and speak in Spanish. One of the girls said excitedly “I feel like it’s Culture awareness night!” She didn’t mean it as offensive and she was a sweet enough person but it made me uncomfortable. This article gives me a similar feeling, as does the idea of the exhibit. What are the true thoughts of hipsters and yuppies who go that gallery? How do they actually view people of color? What do they gain from the exhibit?

I went to the grocery store in the suburb of Grandview, Ohio, tonight. I saw two things that left me somewhere between puzzled, slightly offended, and amused.

I was looking to buy some tea which was right next to the Hot Chocolate. I noticed, that Hershey’s has what they call their “Cacao Reserve” line that includes both the “Spiced Aztec Blend” and “Classic Mayan Blend”. Great, Abuelita got bought by Nestle a few years ago. And now everyone is getting in on this Mexican Hot Chocolate. I can’t articulate why I dislike it so much. It isn’t just that since Nestle bought Abuelita the tablets don’t taste as good and are smaller. Part of it is that with time we get further and further away from Xocolatl and more owned and re-appropriated by the white dominate culture where it becomes bastaredized and cheap and no longer smells or tastes like mornings before school. And even if it did still stimulated the same senses, it is no longer ours.

After looking for my tea, I went by the “bakery” and saw something that made me burst out laughing. There were bags of white rolls and above them a sign that read: Bolillos - a typical Hispanic bread.

Hilarious! A definition for the mainstream dominant white culture of Grandview of a bread that we use as a moniker to define them…bolillos.

I had read  the book Steppenwolf and Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, when I picked up his book Strange News From Another Star.  It was one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.  The imagrey was so amazingly beautiful that I began to sob with the realization that if it was this beautiful in translation what was it like in the original?  How much was I missing.  So I put the book down and swore I would never read Hesse again until I learned how to read him in German.  Needless to say I haven’t read him since.

I was trying to explain to someone last night the difficulty in both translation (written word) and interpretation (spoken word).   The person I was speaking to was a native Spanish speaker and I gave him this example; a young woman had a miscarriage and explained that with the miscarriage it had looked as if  “se me habia salido todo mole”.  The man grimaced and I explained, see you knew immediately what that image looked like you can almost feel it can’t you?  How would you in a literature piece translate “mole”?  Unless you really know mole and its consistency, its texture, its vibrant color, unless mole is commonly familiar to you, you can’t translate that without losing something in the translation.

Fairfield County contains the suburbs of the city of Columbus, including Pickerington and Canal Winchester.

School districts changing to accommodate increasing Hispanic Population
Lancaster Eagle Gazette - Lancaster,OH,USA
There were 136 Hispanic students in the district during the 2003-04 school year, according to statistics from the Ohio Department of Education…

Multi-cultural festival held at Springfield ( Ohio ) USA
PunjabNewsline.com - Mohali-Chandigarh,Punjab,India
At Culture Fest the choices included Mexican, Greek and Italian foods; bluegrass, jazz and Andean music; and African, Indian and Celtic dancers…

Ohio students get solid marks in ‘nation’s report card’
The Plain Dealer - cleveland.com - Cleveland,OH,USA
Ohio’s public school students were near the top of the class in national reading and math scores released Tuesday. In addition, black and Latino students posted the largest gains in the state and significantly narrowed the gap between their test scores and those of white students.

Good test scores not good as ‘gold’
Columbus Dispatch - Columbus,OH,USA
“In eighth-grade reading and math, Ohio is one of the highest-performing states for Latinos,” Hall said.
However, the average score for Latino eighth-graders still ranked below NAEP’s definition of “proficient.”

Hispanics still low in leadership roles
Youngstown Vindicator - Youngstown,OH,USA
YOUNGSTOWN — Hispanics have made great strides when it comes to graduating from high school, but more needs to be done to help reverse a 45-percent dropout rate among Ohio’s Hispanic students.

Bad News: Hispanic Teens Hurt Least by Parents’ Marital Woes
Newswise (press release) - USA
New research suggests that Hispanic teens aren’t as affected by their parents’ marital disruption – including divorce and separation — only because they already face a host of difficulties and disadvantages before the breakup.

Divorce affects Hispanic teens less
United Press International - USA
COLUMBUS, Ohio, 18 (UPI) — Many Hispanic adolescents in the United States aren’t as affected by the divorce of their parents, because their life situation is already poor, a study found.

Ohio: Inappropriate E-Mails Probed
Forbes - NY,USA
“Would he give a female or a Hispanic a fair shake in his current position?” Evans asked during a June 5 interview with ODOT investigators. “I don’t know and I think this is why it is an ODOT issue.”

I hate it when local Police think their job is to investigate and enforce federal immigration laws, and I hate it even more that they decided to do it because someone didn’t speak English.

Police Arrest Three Illegal Aliens in Wheeling
WTRF - Wheeling,WV,USA
WHEELING — Wheeling police said they picked up three illegal aliens Saturday night at Wheeling Island Racetrack and Gaming Center. Authorities were called to the track about 10:30 p.m. on a report of a woman who could not speak English.

A friend of mine learning English, asked me this evening:  “What is the difference between ‘pee’ and ‘piss’?”.  Zero responded that “When you pee on someone it’s consensual, when you piss on them it’s rude.”

I love my friends.