Semana I: la tierra y el corazón

la tierra y el corazón

        Thinking through the themes of this week alongside the question we're asking of ourselves and one another throughout the semestre- quienes fueron los abuelitos de tus abuelitos- has brought me, first, not to land but to sea. My familial roots do not yet dig deep in North American soil. My mother arrived in 1969, fifteen years old and with no hold on the English language, to the cornfields of Indiana. She, along with my eleven-year-old uncle, and my Oma and Opa, left behind their home of The Netherlands, where their humble trades of tailoring and welding could not support a livelihood. The siren of the American Dream called across the Atlantic. My aunt would be born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and her U.S. birth certificate would hang proudly on the wall.

        As an infant in 1927, my paternal grandmother was taken by carrier ship to the United States from Germany. My leftist great-grandparents were fleeing the rising tides of Hitler, and made tentative mercantile home on the port of Chicago. Both my great-grandfather, Alfred, and great-grandmother, Clara, would become organizers in the IWW, fervent in their rebuke of Hitler’s unfathomable legacy, hearts breaking as any sense of pride in their homeland became untenable.

        Both these lineages clung tightly to the hope of a more livable life elsewhere, leaving home and tierra and senses of self behind. It is the prototypical immigrant story, of ships and dreams and yearning and melting pots. The hull of this ship, however, the untouched and unrecognized dankness of the American Dream, is that is not equally available to all. It follows, necessitates, and propagates the dispossession of indigenous inhabitants who have claimed home long before eager immigrants. It favors and reifies and supports those with white skin- las caras blancas como mis abuelitos de mis abuelitos y como yo- and goes on to deny the existence of this privileging. For this week, I drew a ship baring four colonial flags- one of which is the Dutch imperialist flag- in recognition/conversation/admittance to the fact that finding my feet (literally and otherwise) on California soil is always, and only, possible through the genocide and dispossession of others. The dreams that carried my ancestors all these nautical miles did not arrive unaccompanied, but are always already bound to these violences. Un barco lleva más que sueños.




and as a post script: I have never created art in any regular, consistent, or frequent form... so your patience and graciousness is appreciated as I learn my hand. Similarly, my Spanish has atrophied so much... your patience and graciousness is appreciated as I re-learn those neural connections, too. poco a poco...