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Final Project- Tai Thi

Artwork of Execution Of The Inca by Pizzaro

Engraving From 1869 Featuring The Execution Of The Inca Of Peru By Pizarro. A Priest Is Shown Holding Up A Cross In Front Of An Incan Man Before The Spanish Conquistadors Burn Him.

I chose this art piece as me and my groups did vide-blog #1. I am reminded of the team work we had. We were learning and discussing about how the colonizers came to the new world and took advantage of the native people for their own benefit. I relate to this art as in my country Vietnam, the country has experienced colonization from France and learning the similar topic was very interesting.

La Guera by Cherrie Moraga: Personal Connection

Spotify Playlist: Based on Kimberle”, by Achy Obejas.

  1. Before Our Spring- IU
  2. You’re Somebody Else- Flora Cash
  3. Remember that night- Sara Kays
  4. Out Of Love- Alessia Cara
  5. Lose You Love Me- Selena Gomez

I know this sounds foolish

The Spotify playlist I created consists of five songs that is connected with the topic of being confused to love another due to complicated relationship. And also the feeling of not knowing if the person you love is the same. Kimberle and the narrator have this complicated relationship which I think in the song is also reflected. The first song I chose was Before Our Spring by IU. The song includes the lyrics:

But I’m afraid to go to you
Even if you don’t understand
It’s alright, it’s alright

The lyrics and the song talks about how it feels to be not understood and frustrated to see someone you love not understand the other individual.

The second song I chose is You’re Somebody Else- Flora Cash. In the story, the narrator  is confronted with the possibility that Kimberle is the serial killer. I think the song relates to the part of loving someone who is unknown in the character. The song lyrics says:

“Well you look like yourself
But you’re somebody else
Only it ain’t on the surface
Well you talk like yourself
No, I hear someone else though
Now you’re making me nervous

Pandora’s Box, by Arturo Arias

News Article: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-nepali-has-her-big-moment-indian-catwalk-n716351

I chose this article because it talks about the struggle of transgender and the problems she faced coming from a small village of Nepal. In Pandora’s Box, by Arturo Arias, his story also shows the challenges Juan faces during and before his new life. In the news article, Anjali Lama, a transgender model from Nepal states how the years she lived in the village in Nepal were hard. She says that people in school made fun of her and struggled with confusion and depression.

Dulce Pinzón and Graciela Iturbide (images)

Roma by Graciela Iturbide
The real story of superheroes by Dulce Pinzón

Analyzation:

“Mexican Heaven” José Olivaraz

“they dream
of another heaven, one they might be allowed in
if only they work hard enough.”

Jose Olivaraz

I chose to include this part of the poem in my blog as it connects to the photograph by Dulce Pinzón, The real story of superheroes. The jobs and roles which are plays in the society by immigrant workers are above and beyond than white people. The credit and risk people take to built a nation to just be merely looked as if they are not part of society is saddening. But, as the photograph states, they are the real superheroes.

Porcupine Love by Tatiana de la Tierra (Colombia)

Alternative ending:

After getting home, thousands of thoughts were running across my mind. The thought of seeing Antenna, the thought of getting to see her and travel until our bodies will be tired. But, my other half of my thoughts were more concerned of my life here, the job I get so much from and place where I can go find anyone, does not have to be Antenna. I had to put those thoughts somewhere so I could see them and realize what is right and wrong. I took out diary and started writing, on one page I stated writing about things I love about my life right now and on one page, things I love my life with Antenna in it. Starting on my first topic, there were a few things which I loved but when I started writing about Antenna, my pen did not stop. It was if I had transformed into this writer with obsession. I did realize it was a obsession but for love and only love for Antenna.

With all those thoughts and reflection, I had ordered a e-ticket to go to Australia. The flight was in the morning and I stayed up the whole night thinking about what we will be doing in Australia right after I land. I was as excited as a child would be if they were going to a wonderland. And once it was 7 am, I packed all my bags and before leaving I dropped a resignation letter to my job and, left for the airport.

Group 3: LOWER EAST SIDE POEM DRAWING

Tai Thi

Group 3: Taino Project 1

Tai Thi,  Christopher Gonzalez, Jocelyn Gomez

The colonizers from Spain on Taino have brought nothing but pain and have left them behind education wise. From when Columbus had taken his first steps into the Taino territory, he took advantage of their abilities because of their bodies and appearances. Mostly taken advantage of
the colonizers had brought their own intentions into making the Taino people their slaves to do their labor. The indigenous community couldn’t really do nor say anything for themselves as they didn’t have a developed language and were still part of the Old world that has yet to gain
more knowledge of growing technology. Colonization brought many diseases that caused many deaths amongst their people thus living and working in such horrible conditions. The Taino community made it past while still keeping their heritage and traditions intact.

Colonizers came to the new world to do multiple things; take all the natural resources from the native people for their own benefit, spread disease and new ways of thinking. A lot of Natives died because of the disease the colonizers carried when voyaging and because native people have
never experienced those things a huge part of them died. Forcing Catholicism on the natives was also a negative impact. Natives had to hide their beliefs and culture because the new comers didn’t think that way and considered it as “savage”. The image above is a good way to represent
the forcing of a new religion. Colonizers believed that discovering the new world and forcing natives to be slaves was the calling of God. They justified the killing of millions of natives with their religion. Catholicism also influenced natives in the way they portrayed their Gods but it still
wasn’t the same. Not only did colonizers take what was valuable to them but they also took their lives and their culture

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    A gift wrap that does not match the gift.By Loredana Militello And so, it’s time to reflect of the screenings I was able to watch at the Reelabilities Festival, held in New York City, from April 3rd to the 9th. I was so looking forward to being able to participate in person to this event, I even imagined going to multiple locations with different companions…but the reality was, instead, a tight work schedule, and a series of duties that just did not allow me to go in person. I was very happy to have the option to watch some of the movies from home, so I did not have to embark on a journey of multiple metro trains and or buses to get to the destination. I wish the streaming option was available for all the programmed movies and documentaries, but it was not. So, with my “festival companion”, who was also very interested in this festival (I am not sure if he genuinely was or was just exhausted from my multiple reminders to attend…), we watched a whole load of trailers to decide to which dedicate our time. After filtering for streaming availability, we ended up picking the documentary “Blind A.F.”, even though we were somehow unsure because of the too enthusiastic trailer (we make a bittersweet companionship at times). “Blind A.F” is an 87-minute documentary directed by Gina LeVay and starred by Shawn Cheshire, a woman who is many things: a veteran, a retired paramedic, an athlete, a paralympic champion, and a blind person. The documentary though follows her in 2021 during an incredible journey as a blind biker, going for a 3,600-mile cross-country bike journey on a single, non-tandem bicycle. As I mentioned before, after watching the trailer, we were cynical about this cinematic product: there was this constant accent on her immense courage and resilience as a person that became blind at the age of 36 and did not accept to live her life with limitations of any sort. We turned our heads at each other, and we raised our eyebrows: a clear signal of skepticism. But nonetheless we decided to watch the whole film. And that was a good decision: it was a case of “gift wrap not matching the gift itself” (yes, I came up with it). What we were exposed to was much more than “simply” another story of overcoming for a blind person; it was not the usual “if you want it, you get it”. Shawn starts telling her story, the part that is intuitive about her blindness: she was a veteran, and she decided to go back to school to become a paramedic. During a paramedical intervention, while dealing with an agitated patient in the ambulance, she is kicked out and she suffers a brain injury that results in her complete vision loss. After that, she goes into months of physical rehabilitation, adaptation sports learning and PTSD informed healing. She then starts to compete, on high levels, and she participates in the Rio Paralympics in 2016, where she wins multiple medals biking in tandem. But she keeps saying this phrase “I didn’t want to feel stuck”. So, because of that, she embarks in this hard to imagine journey to cross the U.S. on a single bike. Sure, she has a whole team helping her, biking by her side, but ultimately it is her and her bike, relying heavily on sounds and the voice of her guide-biker. While the journey unfolds, we discover many other details of Shawn’s life, and we start to understand that this is not about overcoming blindness. Shawn is an abuse “survivor”: she was completely and heavily neglected by her mother, and, because of that, she went to live with her grandmother from the age of 13. She then ended up establishing a very abusing relationship with a guy that she married and had two kids with and who was constantly abusing and threatening her. Until she felt that she could not bear it anymore and she left. But, as we dived even deeper, we found her having a conversation with her half-sister, who was abused by her father and Shawn remembers that the same thing happened to her. This part was extremely dramatic, and I could not believe such an intimate space was shared with no filters. But I don’t want to judge this: maybe it was somehow cathartic for the protagonist, maybe it is helpful for some of the victims of domestic abuse, but it certainly hit me right in my guts. This is when we understand that blindness is not the whole story: she is trying to overcome something else that has more to do with trauma due to her abuse as a child. The documentary was somewhat different than we expected by only watching the trailer and it proved to be a “gift that did not match the wrapping paper”. It also promoted a conversation between me and my “watching partner” (for convenience we will call him S.). He said that “sometimes the thing that is the source of torment for someone, becomes an inspiration for someone else”. I found this true: probably many people have felt inspired by this documentary, but what we are really watching is Shawn’s attempt to silence her interior torment, that is not due to her newly acquired blindness more than the abuses she suffered in her childhood and young adulthood. In fact, S., as a blind person himself, acutely noticed that for him watching a blind person biking all the way across the U.S is not a replacement for the experience that he is losing. For him, he explained to me, biking is to relax to enjoy the panorama while on two wheels. But for Shawn, biking meant a constant sense of fear and terror and a necessity to constantly concentrate on the goal of not getting hit by a car passing by. “For herself it is a freakshow”. So, it may not be necessarily inspiring for other blind people, but maybe for sighted people that do not question their beliefs. While watching the trailer, we could not help but think of “Code of the freaks” and how it criticizes the overcoming urgency that many movies with a disabled character have. But then, the documentary was not necessarily pushing that idea of overcoming at any cost, and that let S.’s and mine eyebrows down. We also get to watch a short movie, “Millstone”, directed by Peter Hoffman Kimball long only 15 minutes. The movie features a cast of three actors, all of whom are deaf. The first thing I want to say (and in this I must admit my ableism) is that, for the whole 15 minutes I was expecting something that had to do with deafness. All actors are not only talking in sign language, but it is a couple therapy session. Intense talk. So, my mind decided that the movie had to do with something related to deafness…but it is not. I think this was my biggest lesson learned during this festival. The movie is not about deafness, it is a thriller where a deaf psychotherapist plays the evil character, “even if he is blond and deaf”. I think the unease that I felt was due to my expectations mixed with a scary plot. I really enjoyed this one. Works cited: Code of the Freaks. Directed by Salome Chasnoff, performances by AlysonPatsavas, Mike Ervin, and Ann Finger, Kartemquin Films, 2020. “Blind A.F.” Directed by Gina LeVay, starring Shawn Cheshire, 2024. ReelAbilities Streaming, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0uoH_aqKvQ “Millstone”. Directed by Peter Hoffman Kimball, starring Bellamie Bachleda, Eddie Buck, Daniel Durant, Dont’ M […] “A gift wrap that does not match the gift.”

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