My Humanties Story

One of the books we read in class

    When going back to the first week of this class, my expectation going in was that I would get to learn about the human experience in Latin America. I expected to learn all there is to know about the culture of Latin America and its people's values. My goal at the beginning of this class was to absorb all that I could to receive an A and learn more about the religious side of Latin America. Now that I am at the end of this class, I now have a deeper meaning of the human experience of those from Latin America. My definition of humanities is ever-expanding. I do not know yet if I have completed my goal of receiving an A, but even if I don't, the knowledge that I have gained does not need a letter grade to validate itself. 

    Since I am majoring in Humanities, I am interested in any humanities so enroll in all that I can. I love culture, and any humanities class focuses on culture and religion. I learned many things in this class, including the Olmec and Maya civilizations, the experience of immigrant farmworkers, how colonialism affected Mexico, and how border policies are separating families. Before this class, I knew little about these subjects to the point where I wouldn't be confident in a discussion about these topics. However, now I can say that I am very confident in sharing my learning with others. 

A video about the book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, by Seth Holmes.

    In our final project for this class, I focused on the theme of religion. From the Olmec civilization all the way to the contemporary issues of what the people of Latin America face, my presentation tells the story of how religion plays a role in the lives of many. What I liked best about the project was being able to see the impact that religion has at the end of it. Each slide tells its own story of how religion influences art, ideas, skills, and institutions. In all,  spent around fifteen hours plus on this project, as I went solo. Here is my presentation which focuses on religion. 

Works Cited:

Christenson, Allen J. Popol Vuh. O Books, 2003. 

Holmes, Seth M. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. Univ. of California Press, 2014.

Books I Have Read in 2022

Aciman, Andre. Call Me by Your Name. Atlantic Books, 2007. 

• This is about a teenager, Elio, who falls in love with his father's intern, Oliver. It is a story about longing, peaches, and healing from heartbreak. I recommend this book if one loves Italy in the 80s.

Christenson, Allen J. Popol Vuh. O Books, 2003.

• This book holds the stories of the ancient Maya which have been translated from the original Maya text. It focuses on many stories including twin brothers, maize, and a rubber ball. It shows us what the Maya civilization believed thousands of years ago. 

Colum, Padraic. The Children of Odin: Nordic Gods and Heroes. Barnes & Noble, 2006. 

• This book is a collection of ancient Nordic myths. It is a lyrical retelling of the epic tales of Nordic gods and Nordic heroes. If you like Thor and Loki from the Marvel movies, then you can read the mythology that inspired these Marvel characters.

Holmes, Seth M. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. Univ. of California Press, 2014. 

• Holmes provides us with information about the everyday lives and suffering of migrant farmworkers. This book includes the horrors of border control and the illegal acts that border control agents commit on people trying to cross the border. I highly recommend this book as it opens your eyes to the reality of the embedded racism our policies contain.

Rubenstein, James M. Contemporary Human Geography. Pearson Education, Inc., 2019.

• One of the branches of geography is human geography. This book is associated and deals with humans and their relationship with communities, cultures, economies, and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across locations. It is a great book if you want to learn about our relationship with the landscape around us.

The Need to Connect

     While doing a virtual tour at the Museum of Latin American Art, I came across the exhibition called "Victor Hugo Zayas: The River Paintings." This solo exhibition portrays the art piece called Grid Series 16 by Victor Hugo Zayas. The Museum gives a short introduction to Zayas and his work as it states:

"The Museum of Latin American Art presents a solo exhibition of new work by Los Angeles artist Victor Hugo Zayas. This survey presentation features a recent, soulful body of work born from the artist’s industrial studio on the bank of the L.A. River. These extraordinary works constitute a time-lapse portrait of Los Angeles’s infrastructural heart, capturing its movement, moods and light through changing seasons, smog, fires, riots, night, and fog."

Victor Hugo Zayas, Grid Series 16 (2015)

    Zayas states that one of the reasons he decided to use the rivers as his focus in paintings is because they give us life. He explains that we have always made civilizations by rivers because they give us a vital source to survive. He also explains that there is a lot of concrete in the world and that we don’t take out time to appreciate the river and its way of calming us. He was inspired to paint the Grid Series when he was on a plane and looked out of the window. There he saw the whole city interconnected with one another, which looks like a grid. The same grid can be found on the surface of a river as the body moves and ripples. 

    The article titled "Above the Grid" by Susan Greenberg talks about an artist who also paints grids, Yvonne Jacquette. At the beginning of the article, it goes into how Jacquette started painting aerial views after she did some sketches looking out of a plane's window. She does aerials of Manhattan where she painted the art shown in the picture to the left. It also talks about other artists and their use of the grid style of painting. But, it mainly focuses on Jacquette and how each of her paintings is her own interpretation of the landscape. And similar to Zayas, Jacquette also paints in a modernist way. It states, “Their appearance recalls the long history of the grid as a central modernist trope throughout much of the twentieth century” (Greenberg 91). Grids created by modern artists envoke not order, but poetry throughout their art. As Zayas states, "let the art speak for itself." To search this article, I use the terms "(grids in art)(river)."

Southwest View from the World Trade Center II

    The reason I chose this article is that both Zayas and Jacquette were inspired to paint in a grid style because they were up in planes looking down at the landscape below. Both also paint in a style that is modern, meaning that they have cast aside traditional methods of painting to include their own. Also, the way they interconnect concrete with water is also shown in the article as it states, “Nature and city alternate as we move up the vertiginous canvas” (Greenberg 90). Zayas's art, like Jacquette's, intertwines the river with the grid of a city. In the art shown to the left, we can see the intertwining of the skyscrapers with the body of water above. Both of these artists' art show the connection between the city and water. My class theme of religion does not really fit into the connection of city and river, but I can say that Zayas stating that throughout history we humans have made civilizations along the river because it is a life source, reminded me of how these waters were so important, that they were made into gods. In plenty of mythology, there would be river gods or goddesses who, if angered, would cause droughts or floods. Either way, the river has been an important factor in our survival, and its importance is beautifully portrayed in both Zayas and Jacquette's artwork.

Here is a video of Victor Hugo Zayas explaining why he paints grids and what inspired him to do so:

Works Cited:

Greenberg, Susan. "Above the Grid." Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, 2004, pp. 84-91, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40514643. Accessed 11 May 2022.

“Victor Hugo Zayas: The River Paintings - Molaa: Museum of Latin American Art.” MOLAA, molaa.org/victor-hugo-zayas-the-river-paintings.

Injustice In Court

    In the Latino USA podcast, the episode titled “A Child Lost in Translation” describes a story where someone’s nightmare turns into reality. Originally broadcasted on May 31st, 2019, and published in Latino USA on April 29th, 2022, this episode is about Teresa Matias and her five children. Listening to this episode on May 3rd, 2022, I find out how cracked our justice system truly is. Hosts Janice Llamoca and Ashley Cleek tell the story of how a woman named M, for privacy issues, stole Matias’s child right in front of her.

A Child and Mother

    At the only Catholic Church in Huntsville, Alabama, that provides a service in Spanish is where she ends up meeting M, as the church members hear that a woman of five children might need help, so they go over and bring diapers. M then shows up on Matias’s doorstep a week later, where she then takes an interest in Matias’s youngest child. It is well known throughout the Church and community that M and J.P. cannot have children because of infertility. M and J.P., again for privacy issues, then tell Matias that they can look after the child while she is away at work. The child, only being around 1 at the time, is hard to take care of while working. So, Matias agrees. M and J.P. then tell Matias about an open adoption which means that Matias can still see her child and will have the same rights she has now, but that M and J.P. will also be taking care of him. She agrees but wants to talk to a lawyer. So, M and J.P. get a lawyer and at each of their meetings with the lawyer and Matias, only English is spoken. This is a problem, as Matias's first language is a Mayan language called Qʼanjobʼal, while her second language is Spanish. Matias is given no interpreter, the only ones interpreting what the lawyer is saying and what Matias is saying is M and J.P. It says, “Teresa says the lawyer spoke mostly to J.P., M’s husband. They spoke in English" (Latino, 18:09 - 18:13). After weeks of "talking" to the lawyer, M and J.P. tell Matias that they have one more meeting to go to. This meeting was held in court. With no interpreter given to Matias, she knows nothing of what is going on. Shaking the Judge's hand at the end, Matias leaves and it is over. M and J.P. tell her that she can't come to visit her child anymore and in a couple of months, M, J.P., and Matias's little boy are gone. What Matias thought an open adoption was, was a lie, as it merely means that the birth mother and child know each other's names. Matias's youngest child's birth certificate is now changed, and Matias has no rights to her child. What I loved about this story was the fact that the host's tried so hard to interview M and J.P. As the audience, we can tell how passionate the hosts were in telling Matias's story and the injustice she received in court for not providing her an interpreter. What I disliked about this story was the end, as Matias is still without her fifth child. She is too poor to hire a lawyer, and I wish that the hosts could have provided a way to help Matias and her family.

    The article titled “TOWARD NEW UNDERSTANDINGS OF ADOPTION: INDIVIDUALS AND RELATIONSHIPS IN TRANSRACIAL AND OPEN ADOPTION" by Mary Lyndon Shanley, goes over the history of adoption and the controversial questions that it surfaces. It analyzes questions such as should black children be adopted by black parents? Should white children be adopted by white parents? I selected this article because t dived deeper into the problem of adoption. Yes, there are plenty of great outcomes. But like all things, adoption can be used as a tool. In this article, Shanley states, “E. Wayne Carp has argued that what he calls the shift from confidentiality (records closed to all but "the parties of interest": i.e., birth parents, adoptive parents, and child) to secrecy (records inaccessible to everyone except by a court order) arose from a complex set of factors, including social workers' desire "to defend the adoptive parents, protect the privacy of unwed mothers, increase their own influence and power, and bolster social work professionalism." Adoptive parents tried to avoid the stigma of infertility and the fear that the birth parents might reappear by pushing for secrecy” (Shanley 23-24). This quote explains what has happened in the justice system for Matias. Adoptions can be secretive, not for the benefit of the child, but for the benefit of the adoptive parents.

    My theme of religion plays a part in both the episode and article. In the article, the question of “Should a Catholic child be placed only with Catholic parents and a Muslim child only with Muslim parents?” (Shanley 1) is stated as a controversial question. This question alone shows how important we believe religion is in the lives of others. In the episode, before Matias's child is taken away from her, she gets all five of her children baptized. It states, “Her children were part of the religion she grew up with. And Teresa finally had a community” (Latino, 11:15 - 11:21). Having her children connected to her by the religion that she grew up with made her happy. It again goes to show how others give importance to religion. This story of Matias and the article by Shanle both show us faults in the justice system, one more than the other.

Here it shows that the constitution states that we have the right to an interpreter in court and how the need for them is growing:

Works Cited:

Latino USA, 13 Mar. 2022, www.latinousa.org/. 

SHANLEY, MARY LYNDON. “TOWARD NEW UNDERSTANDINGS OF ADOPTION: INDIVIDUALS AND RELATIONSHIPS IN TRANSRACIAL AND OPEN ADOPTION.” Nomos, vol. 44, 2003, pp. 15–57, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24220070. Accessed 4 May 2022.