Category: School

Books · School · Stream of Consciousness

Dear Gloria

GuillermoLeave a comment

What follows is a slight rewrite of a class assignment. The assignment was to write a response letter to “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers” by Gloria Anzaldúa which can be found in the pages of A Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, an anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. Because I am a creature of habit, I did deviate from just responding to Gloria’s piece.

Photo by Kamaji Ogino

Dear Gloria,

I tried writing this letter in parts, hoping that it would sound more like a conversation. There was this urge to stitch your words with those of Cherríe Moraga as there moments in both that opened memories, conversations I had with others and those I overheard. 

I tried writing this in parts, subsections (more like fragments) that were laced together with an intention of making sense in the end. This is normally how I write these blog posts; they are written as stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes they stay a disorganized mess which aligns with the scatter-brain methods of my thinking. Other times, I make an attempt to put order to the chaos. My brain, much like your floor, is lined with fragments—sentences wanting to become paragraphs wanting to become stories. 

Maybe I write because I need the world around me to make sense. Or maybe because if I don’t, I may go mad with the voices that echo throughout my thoughts. 

Continue reading “Dear Gloria” →
Doldrums · School

End of Semester, Annotations, & Other Concerns

GuillermoLeave a comment

Eminem Approach

Part of my anxiety about grad school stemmed from my fear of academic writing. Having been away from the classroom since my graduation in 2007, I haven’t written anything academic in a long time. Most of my writing dealt with reviews, blogging my day-to-day, and some press releases for my old job. And, of course, the occasional poem. 

However, I managed to complete the semester without losing my mind. I did this by using the Eminem approach to writing (you think I’m joking, but I’m not). 

While on set for the 8 Mile movie, it has been reported that Eminem would take time during breaks in filming to pen the lyrics to “Lose Yourself.” You can even see this process in the movie when Jimmy rides the public transit. 

I wrote a little something every chance I got, jotted down the quotes I wanted to use to make my case, etc. 

Annotations as Art

Like so many people, I have fallen down the rabbit  hole that is Booktok/Bookstagram. I don’t aspire to become a book influencer. My brain is too chaotic to be that focused. I applaud those who can. 

However, I began to question the book annotation aesthetics featured in videos and photographs. At a glance, I paid them no mind. But as my feed began to be saturated with annotations, a question began to nag at me:

Are people really finding that many interesting things within the two page spread?

While I don’t want to discredit anyone’s reason for “over” annotating a book, I’m beginning to see these as less a way to create marginalia (though it still exists), but as a way of creating art from an existing work. And this is not a bad thing–though a different, older me would have been aghast at the idea of writing in a book so liberally; I enjoy the style and feel of the photograph.

Am I alone in this?

Gluttony of Stress

At the encouragement of my professor (and the chair of the program I am in) I have applied for my school’s Gender & Women’s Studies Program (GWSP). The graduate program is a graduate certificate program which will work alongside my MA in Interdisciplinary Studies program in Mexican American Studies. 

I toyed with the idea of one of my focuses (I get two) to be GWSP, but she encouraged me to go for both. I think she wants me to have an endgame where I teach, which wasn’t in my cards, but I am heavily considering it now.

That said, I may wind up writing a thesis so this is something I should look into now just in case. 

Onward and Forward

Several months ago, I wrote a piece that I had every intent on publishing here. It’s a stream-of-consciousness piece, but I want to look into it again and maybe make it into something more autobiographical than fictional. While the autobiographical nature was in the piece, it wasn’t honest.

There’s this (anti) methodological approach that I learned about this semester: Nepantlando. 

“Gloria Anzaldúa defines and conceptually marks the border as an ideological site she calls nepantla—a Nahuatl word that refers to a space existing in-between worlds. […] We situate Anzaldúa’s Borderland theory to the crossings in nepantla and identify ourselves as intentional border crossers, visionaries, as nepantleras. […] As nepantleras, we activate new processes for decolonizing our minds and bodies. As we traverse nepantla spaces, we seek opportunities for initiating what we call nepantlando. Nepantlando = nepantla (existing in-between worlds) + Spanish gerund (ando). We define nepantlando as an activated in-between space where within the gap, la rajdura, it is no longer a place of teetering precariously on the edge or straddling the in-between; but rather, a bridge is created, envisioned, summoned, and embodied by nepantleras as new possibilities through intentional acts that lead to transformation” (Sotomayor and García 292).

And I want to practice this form approach within my nonfictional, journal-writing especially on this blog. Stay tuned, I suppose.

Works Cited:

Piacquadio, Andrea. “Woman in Red Long Sleeve Writing on Chalk Board.” Pexels, 19 Feb. 2020.

Sotomayor, L. C., & García, C. S. (2023). “Nepantlando: A Borderlands Approach to Curating, Art Practice, and Teaching”. In The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art, Craft, and Visual Culture Education (1st ed., pp. 292–307). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003190530-37

Doldrums · School

Occupied Mind

GuillermoLeave a comment
Cottonbro studio. “Person in White Shirt with Brown Wooden Frame.” 2020, https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-in-white-shirt-with-brown-wooden-frame-4769486/.

I can’t even say that I’m not motivated to write. There’s so  much clogging my brain that it’s impossible to sit still and map something out. There are review notes floating about, journal-esque entries, poetry to share, and a research paper that will probably never get written because the annotated bibliography assignment I’ve been mulling over isn’t going to lead to anything significant. At least, not yet. 

Earlier in the month, I did something outside my comfort zone. And I haven’t written about it. I’ve also watched so many movies and listened to so many audiobooks. And not a single thing has been noted about them. 

I promised myself that the blog wouldn’t suffer, but suffer it has. 

I keep telling myself I’ll get around to updating this, but with readings and writings and class and parenthood and work, carving out a little bit of time when I’m not exhausted seems almost impossible. I hope to get better at it. I will. This was an adjustment semester. I swear.

Doldrums · School

Autumnal Update

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I made a promise not to lose focus on my blog/reviews once school started, but obviously I haven’t kept that promise. There’s still two reviews I haven’t worked on (one for Babel by R. F. Kuang, and one for Elliot Page’s memoir). There’s also some poetry breaks that I’ve been meaning to post, and I’ll get around to those as well. 

Reacclimating myself into academia wasn’t as easy as I hoped. A lot has changed since my undergrad years. I’m forty now with a full time job and I’m a parent. These aren’t easy things to juggle so it’s obvious one thing had to suffer, and that is my free time reading what I want. That said, I worked my way through some of Ruan Willow’s The Mardi Gras Unmasking (where the word sloshing comes up more than once causing me to – as Booktok says – DNF it). I’m still (re)reading Innocents by Cathy Coote, and I’m wondering how I even managed to get through that novel the first time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not poorly written. It’s not even a bad story. And that’s what makes it so disturbing.

One thing that came from this time, however, is the Latinx discussion/essay (lyric essay?) that I started writing and hope to post on this blog in sections. That stemmed from a discussion in class over two pieces we had to read and I got a little passionate about the subject and how the argument for or against shouldn’t be made by people who aren’t truly affected by the label – in other words, when you’re a cisgender person, it’s hard not to center yourself when it comes to non-cis terminology (see: J. K. Rowling, every internet-”English major” crying about the plural used as singular). And I know this is ironic for me to even argue because I don’t identify as Latinx, but as Latine, nor do I consider myself trans in any sense (well, any sense of my own). 

There’s so much that is pouring through my head right now even as I mentioned that. But I need to focus on my homework and class readings. I honestly don’t know how I can even begin to imagine taking more than one (that’s right, one) class a semester with this semi-burnout brain. 

Here’s hoping.

Personal · School · Work

Just a few updates

GuillermoLeave a comment

There is a lot on my mind as of late, which is why my activity has slowed to a crawl here. First of all, writing reviews isn’t my forte no matter how much I wish it was. I have drafts and notes, but the writing is the part that gets me. Secondly, the book ennui bug has hit me bad. I’m reading multiple books at once, but they’re all failing to hold my attention. And thirdly, there’s school. 

Photo by Wallace Chuck

Yesterday – 29 August 2023 – was my first class, an introduction to the graduate world in the form of Research Methods Theories (cue canned applause here). While exciting, it’s been almost twenty years since I’ve strolled into a classroom. And given that it’s an online class, it’ll probably be another twenty years before I do so. 

While my passion for Mexican American Studies is more a personal one than a professional one, I think it will help me out in that sphere as well. While everyone who introduced themselves last night seemed to already have their path figured out, I also have to remember that I’m in a classroom with people almost half my age. They’re building careers, not supplementing one.

There is some anxiety here, which was somewhat eased by the book required for the course – The Latinx Guide to Graduate School – but there are somethings that may always hang over my head. And while I know it’s never too late to go back to school, that dread of being well into adulthood sitting alongside those who are just entering makes me feel, well, old. Not that I know more than they do – my 11-year-old  probably knows more than I do. It’s just the feeling of not belonging somewhere. 

That said, this is my one and only class this year because being away from school this long has to have some effect on me. Maybe Fall ‘24 I’ll find that bravery and enlist for 6 hours!

Aside from that, I am also taking the reins of an abandoned book blog at work – The Rare Book Club, which highlights the department’s rare book collections. While I haven’t started posting yet, I am trying to cook up an idea that makes the blog feel more like me (minus the profanity). 

My current inspirations for this plan are:

Alongside all this, I’m also trying to re-find my voice. I started writing poetry, loosely within the pages of my bullet journal. So here’s looking forward to new material.