Recent ucb_es_nsn items

Masthead

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Masthead

Old racisms, New masks: On the Continuing Discontinuities of Racism and the Erasure of Race in European Contexts

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Discourses on racism in Europe have largely been dominated by a US-centric lens that serves to universalize the North American experience of racism. This decenters the different historical and geographical experiences European contexts have had with continuing racist legacies as well as the multiple ways in which anti-racism can challenge such legacies. It also allows European societies to continue to construct a self-image that displaces racism onto other geographical contexts or isolates it as a purely historical phenomenon. In order to reveal and counter the mechanisms of this displacement and isolation, we want to argue that three specific socio-historical developments have produced distinctive articulations of racism that differ significantly from North American understandings of both race and anti-racism. Whereas in the US context, where the post-race discourse is constituted by a speaking through race, dominant European socialities either detach from race as a social...

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Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Something entirely fictions and true, that creeps across your path hallowing your evil ways. –Amiri Baraka

My art is an investigation of my cultural identity through the exploration of power as it relates to social stratification. My desire is to create art pieces that serve as a backdrop for a mythology on which I question the ecology of low income communities of color and their relation with other social classes as well as the perception of the people within those communities. My work is heavily influenced by sci-fi literature such as Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. I believe themes in science fiction are analogous to the contemporary Black experience in America. Being the descendants of a people who were stolen from their home- taken to a new distant world and over generations evolved to survive their extreme circumstances. Therefore, I have created a world of mythical beings in a number of different mediums that personify the complexity...

Crop Forecast Down . . . Still No $eeds to Sow

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

My art is personal and humanistic, encompassing social, political and spiritual approaches to my life experience. I am intent on dispensing information as an underlying part of my artistic expression. My collages and assemblages directly confront my audience, immediately and holistically engaging them in a visual discourse.

My draftsmanship of narrative figurative realism is influenced by master draftsmen Charles White and John Biggers, while my use of assemblage and collage is influenced by German photomontage artist John Heartfield, Romare Bearden, Benny Andrews, and the Los Angeles assemblage movement of the 1960s and 70s of which Black artists were at the center.

I also incorporate digital art in my compositions. In combining these genres, I have created a singular style, which defies categorization, yet is both cutting-edge and traditional. I seek to evolve traditional art forms with a digital collaboration by creating compositions that visually change perceptions...

Chubby Thighs & Short Skirts: On Race, the Fat Body and the Feminine

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Chubby Thighs & Short Skirts: On Race, the Fat Body and the Feminine

Hoot and Holler

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

My work straddles non-objectivist and abstractionist approaches to art production. Abstraction uses the real to interpret and reinterpret the known world, while a non-objective method refuses the real and instead uses the elements of art to make art, disregarding the actual. This construct is similar to the relationship between popular, classical music, and jazz. Difference here is presented through these forms. Why is abstraction misunderstood and jazz so readily understood? I suggest that because African Americans invented jazz its non-objectivity and abstraction are taken for granted and abstraction is presumed a European construction Abstraction in the visual and plastic arts is misrecognized as incomprehensible when in fact, abstraction in the visual is imbued with similar elements as jazz; elements such as call and response, movement,, and color create, and orchestrate a compositional whole that results in a musical composition or a two dimensional composition of color,...

Be A Crossroads

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Be A Crossroads

Bear my shame

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I was born and raised in Japan to Chinese parents and have immigrated to U.S. when I was ten years old. I have since moved and resided all over the states. However, because of my travels I have forgotten the majority of my old tradition as what may be called my “old culture.” However, one thing that I have dearly hung onto from my past was a hideous Godzilla toy I owned since I was three years old. Growing up, I was fascinated by the campy and terrible giant monster films, but I couldn't help but notice that wherever Godzilla traveled, he was always attacked by the locals. Relating to the feelings of being attacked and lonely, I painted Godzilla to speak of my struggles with stereotypes and racism, which in turn became a metaphor for my life. These paintings represent my observation of our various cultures across America.

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Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

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They are a Hmong us

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Critical Race Insights from the Corazon/Heart: Pedagogy and Practice toward Healing in Ethnic Studies

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Critical Race Insights from the Corazon/Heart: Pedagogy and Practice toward Healing in Ethnic Studies

n/a

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

My art practice is informed by reverse ethnography, explores themes from my own personal biography, and is explicitly political. It utilizes my personal experience as a lens onto the persistent effects of social institutions and cultural practices on the individual. Immigration, AIDS, and queer identity are at the forefront of my work. Through my practice, I aim not only able to reclaim my personal narrative, but to creatively reconstruct history. I do this through the reassembly of imagery: colonial propaganda, indigenous codexes, consumer print media. Additionally, I create new iconography presenting alternative and relevant understandings of colonialism, culture, and sex.Using printmaking I recreated religious imagery, mimicking the same process of documentation through printmaking originally used by the Catholic Church to disseminate their religious ideas. Using these same tools, my work proposed a critique of religious institutions and social control. I highlighted the condemned...

pulling

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

pulling

Critical Race Feminism at Home

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Critical Race Feminism at Home

A Conversation Across Difference

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Reflecting on this special issue’s critical questions, NSN’s assistant editor Kristen Sun conducts a brief interview with executive editors Kim Tran and Maria Faini about Ethnic Studies today.

5

Tue, 17 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

3

Tue, 17 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

2

Tue, 17 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

4

Tue, 17 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

n/a

Tue, 17 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

My work is about the distance created by compounded loss and the opacity of language. Using photography and video, I explore moments of pause that are filled with vulnerability, silence and contradiction.

Moving from Iran to the U.S. revealed an in-between state about distance; I never fully arrived and never fully left. There is always something in between which is dysfunctional and paralyzing. Something is always missing. To show this void, I use cutout letters and self-portraits to focus on paradoxical emotions in dealing with distance and loss. I am fascinated by the human face and the silence in portraiture because the face has complicated our idea of identity and rootedness.

Often my portraits are captured in a mundane domestic setting with confronting gaze, exploring personal and communal loss. Language is another distance, especially when it comes to translation. Translation makes you nauseous and numb; you become a different person in another culture;...

Gente Brava/Y se Hacen Pendejos

Sun, 20 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Gente Brava/Y se Hacen Pendejos

A Revolution Capable of Healing Our Wounds

Thu, 3 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A Revolution Capable of Healing Our Wounds

Outro: A Healing Justice Retrospective

Thu, 3 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Outro: A Healing Justice Retrospective

Healing The Future (Writing From My Bed, My Garden)

Wed, 2 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Healing The Future (Writing From My Bed, My Garden)

Teaching A Son The Moon: Five Lessons

Wed, 2 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Teaching A Son The Moon: Five Lessons

Decolonize Your Diet

Wed, 2 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Decolonize Your Diet

Reading Between the Lines: Searching for Epistemologies of Healing

Wed, 2 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Reading Between the Lines: Searching for Epistemologies of Healing

Book Review

Wed, 2 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review

A Babe-ilicious Healing Justice Statement

Wed, 2 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A Babe-ilicious Healing Justice Statement

Poems To Heal My Motherland

Wed, 2 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Poems To Heal My Motherland

Guanakan

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Guanakan

Milk Thistle

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Milk Thistle

Wings of Resistance

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Wings of Resistance

This Too Shall Pass and Be Still Empty Moon

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This Too Shall Pass and Be Still Empty Moon

Apsidal Precession

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Apsidal Precession

The Pinay Scholar-Activist Stretches

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Pinay Scholar-Activist Stretches

Mutual Care Mutual Aid

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Mutual Care Mutual Aid

Untitled

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Untitled

Natural Reflexes and Cuauhtli y Abuela

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Natural Reflexes and Cuauhtli y Abuela

Peace

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Peace

Book Review

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review

Poem for Huda Ghalia

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Poem for Huda Ghalia

Acknowledgments

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Acknowledgments

On the Way to Meditation

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On the Way to Meditation

Front Matter

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Front Matter

Derelict Visions: An Introduction

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In writing this introduction, I echo Fanon’s opening remarks in Black Skin White Masks. Fanon begins Black Skin White Masks with a critique of the tradition of introducing academic works. He writes, “It is good form to introduce a work in psychology with a statement of its methodological point of view. I shall be derelict. I leave methods to the botanists and the mathematicians. There is a point at which methods devour themselves.” It is important here to not take the sentiment expressed by Fanon in these opening lines as being anti-intellectual or even anti-method in intention. Rather, Fanon continues his introduction with an impassioned overview of his decolonial methodology, providing the reader with the tools necessary to understand the critical truth that is to follow.Likewise, we will also be derelict in this introduction.

Contributors

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Contributors

Visual Media

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Visual Media

Snapshots of a Movement

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Snapshots of a Movement

Interview with Bo

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Interview conducted with NSN Cover Art Competition runner-up.

Drift No.1

Wed, 2 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

My work imagines the emergent shapes and forms of futurity. Through critical and courageous engagement with the conditions of the present, knowledge and cultural production must ensure the futures rife with hope, transformation, and resistance.

Artwork Information

Drift No.1, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”

Untitled (Unknown)

Tue, 1 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Artwork Information

Untitled (Unknown), 2006, linocut print, 7 ½” x 10”

Drift No.2

Tue, 1 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Artwork Information

Drift No.2, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”

The Future(s) of Ethnic Studies is in its Past(s)…and in the Surrounding Possibilities

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

According to Walter D. Mignolo, unlike the speakers of modern European languages where the future is "in front" of the person, for the Quichua or Aymara people of Ecuador the future is "behind" as it cannot be seen. That is, because the past can be remembered and therefore "seen," it is for this reason that it is "in front" of you.[i] From this perspective, it's imperative—if we are to consider the future(s) of Ethnic Studies—to look, carefully examine, and reflect on the field's past(s). Moreover, if the past can be remembered and therefore "seen in front" of you, them it should follow that the "present" is always already a surrounding portal of infinite possibilities and opportunities. By fusing these perspectives, this article has two goals. The first one is to call attention to the activist origins of Ethnic Studies. Having its foundation in a decolonizing praxis, I argue that activism and community organizing always should be central to the field. ...

From My Home to Yours, From Your Home to Mine

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

"From My Home to Yours, From Your Home to Mine" is a meditation about the relationship between the authors of the piece as women of color in academia. Using U.S. Third World Women of Color feminisms as their starting point, the authors bridge their similarities and differences to elucidate the personal and the political simultaneously. Through multiple forms of speaking and listening, they create a synergistic affect that actively engages the reader in a healing and necessarily painful journey of individual and collective transformation.

Badass, Motherfucker, and Meat-Eater: Kit Yan’s Trans of Color Slammin’ Critique and the Archives of Possibilities

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, I examine Badass, a spoken word performance by Chinese American female-to-male transgender slam poet Kit Yan. Performed live on stage across the country and disseminated online via YouTube, Yan’s intense, fast-paced articulation of contradictory masculinities in Badass provides a powerful insight into the construction of gender, identity, and community through a trans of color perspective. As a collage of divergent masculine identities—such as rebellious adolescent, consumerist middle-class, racialized, mainstream gay, and punk-rock—Badass highlights the male anxiety around cultivating normative masculinity due to the presence of multiple masculine standards. I argue that Yan’s performance brings to attention the impossibility for male-identified people, in general, and Asian American men, in particular, to simply reclaim maleness in order to be recognized as legitimate citizen-subjects, since there is no such a thing as a singular,...

Stories of Identity, Race, and Transnational Experience in the Lives of Asian Latinos in the United States

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This research project is an investigation into the lives of Asians and Asian Latinos who came to the United States after living in Latin America. It focuses on the questions of experience and identity for these individuals and their families, at an intersection of places and cultures. In particular, this project attempts to compare the relative experiences of Asian Latinos as an ethnic minority in two different social situations: the Latin American country to which their family emigrated from Asia, and the United States (all participants moved to California). Also, this research seeks to better understand the ways in which these various experiences impact the racial self-identification process for each individual. After interviews with participants with varying experiences and opinions, the themes of language, childhood experience, racial misidentification and self-identification, and a sense of unchangeable racial identity come to light. It is hoped that this research may be...

The Americanization of a Filipina U.S. Navy Wife

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This story places a biography in the context of history. It describes the life of a Filipina immigrant to the United States during the Civil Rights movement and the Cold War in the context of U.S.-Philippine international relations and the boom of the aerospace industry.

Ethnicity in Wounded Spaces: Instrumentalism and the Making of Africa in Brazil

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The shaping of ethnic citizenry is embedded in complicated processes of engagement with ancestry, self and group formation, metaphors for belonging and cultural shift. I argue that at the core of all ethnic citizenry is a complicated relationship with social memory. This manifests in an artful encounter with aspects of one’s ancestry in order to facilitate the ongoing construction of self, moving forward into an aspirational future. Socially defined kinship is a powerful referent for belonging in moments where ethnic identities are claimed, challenged, or reconfigured for present day political, social and economic purposes. Ethnic loyalties are formed amidst complicated conditions for remembering and forgetting, thus they often manifest most creatively and powerfully in those instances where they affect the personal and the political dimensions of difficult lives. In this discussion I engage with primordialist, constructionist and instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity in...

From Past to Present

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I survey the life of Alice Yang, a thirty year-old second generation Chinese-American woman. I begin with Alice's parents – their time in China, their immigration to the United States, and their initial experiences living in America. I then go into detail about Alice's life specifically, describing her childhood and her time growing up until reaching present day. I attempt to place these experiences within the broader contexts of the various social and historical conditions affecting Chinese-Americans at the time, such as the various immigration educational policies in place. Particularly, I analyze how these factors have affected Alice and her family’s lives in their decisions and actions. Furthermore, I discuss the ways in which Alice and her family have either strayed away from the common trends seen with Chinese-Americans, or have helped shaped the observed trends themselves. In other words, I shed some light on how independent Alice’s life was from her...

The smiles of the Bay, 2009, digital photography

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The smiles of the Bay, 2009, digital photography

These walls don’t lie, 2009, digital photography

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

These walls don’t lie, 2009, digital photography

We Care Too, 2010, digital photography

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

We Care Too, 2010, digital photography

Warrior women in East Oakland, 2009, photography

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Warrior women in East Oakland, 2009, photography

Seeds of Resistances,2010, digital photography

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Seeds of Resistances,2010, digital photography

Tejida Nostalgia

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

My focus as a photographer is to try and capture the mundane moments of Latin America. I like to showcase the beauty of my culture, the vibrant colors of my people, and the rhythm of its landscape. For me, every photograph is like a poem and the titles of my pieces help compliment my vision. This series titled, “The Rhythm of Landscape,” focuses on the women of Central and South America. My main goal in this series is to highlight the importance of preserving indigenous cultures in the face of popular culture.

The Jaguar Moon Has Risen

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Reviews:

“His poetic vision is unerring, as much when he deals with the daily and ordinary as when he addresses the larger socially and politically relevant subjects. His unique voice derives substance and sustenance from three confluent linguistic streams and the cultures that provide their diversely essential and fundamental elements. These vital elements blend and mix to form, inform and shape a new reality. This is the place where José’s poetry originates and out of which he “seek(s) no exit,” embracing instead “what is broken.”

- Lucha Corpi; Poet/ Author.

“José Hernández Díaz is a disciplined, self-starting, and a very ambitious young poet. I've

also received notices of his frequent public readings of his poetry. I highly recommend

him to the MFA in Creative Writing program, Poetry, at Antioch University in Los

Angeles, where I've taught for...

Kim Ayu (Come Over Here)

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

"Her work in poetry, fiction and non-fiction, short story writing and children’s literature demonstrate a passionate commitment to the pursuit of social justice. Ms. Hernandez has a gift for using her art as an inspirational medium and political activism to reach out and speak to the experiences of other women, immigrants, mothers, and children who have had to overcome tremendous obstacles. Her work encompasses the rare talent of making highly complex ideas and intellectual concepts accessible through a unique point of view with an empathetic and loving voice that is politically engaged in raising consciousness of feminist, working class, immigrant, gender and sexuality cultural-political issues"

Manuel Gonzalez

New York University

Department of Comparative Literature