Writer’s Choice
Write a well-developed essay that addresses the following prompt:
The performances/texts from del Carmen (Shero’s Journey), Gamboa (Brujos), Gómez (the way she spoke), Hudes (Water by the Spoonful) and Díaz (Chad Deity) ask audiences to consider 21st century Latinx experience as a product of intersecting histories of colonization, enslavement and heteropatriarchy, at the same time that they demonstrate how Latinidad—a fluid and complex formulation that groups together disparate identities—exists relationally with other non-Latinx people. Using the assigned critical texts (the various Keywords and Patricia Ybarra’s How to Read a Latinx Play), discuss how these artists invoke storytelling, relational networks and the power of magic/conjure and nature as strategies for centering alternative non-Western knowledge systems. In doing so, demonstrate how these performances/texts work to offer redemptive interventions that re-signify and reclaim bodies long contained and erased both through state violence and Latinx stereotypes in popular culture. Pay particular attention to how these interventions go beyond a corrective gesture of “representing” Latinx people and instead ask us to consider new ways of looking and experiencing.
Directions for writing:
Please address all five of the performance/texts indicated in the prompt.
Be sure to use specific examples from each of the performances/texts to support your argument. Quotes are encouraged, especially when used in a meaningful way.
You will be able to learn a lot about non-Western knowledge systems/worldviews represented in the performance/texts by attending to the themes and content in each of the texts, however, be sure to also attend to how the form (the structure, or how the story is being told) also brings Latinx knowledges into being.
