Spic'ing Into Existence: Epitaph, Epithet, and Ethnopoetic Imagination
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López 1 Spic’ing Into Existence: Epitaph, Epithet, and Ethnopoetic Imagination Baligh ibn Antonio De Jesús López López 2 “We do this because the world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning in it” – Sandra Cisneros, “On writing,” The House on Mango Street “[He] was beaten, from morning until night. He lived in a shack, in a hut. He wore cast-off clothes…[He] was intelligent…When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try to put it out. [He] prayed for a wind, for a breeze.” – Malcolm X, The House Negro and the Field Negro “Tomorrow, I’ll be at the Table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare say to me, “Eat in the Kitchen,” Then.” – Langston Hughes, “I, Too” “Echale ganas mi’jo, pa’que no salgas como yo” – My high school’s janitor López 3 Table of (Dis)contents Agradecimientos - 4 Epa-logue: Desde el punto de mi legua natal – 6 Cuerpo Cero: The Ethnopoet’s Social Contract: An Introduction to Terms and (Pre)Conditions - 8 1. Between the Hunger and Me: Chicano Cartographies and the Ethnopoetics of Deferral – 16 2. Blood in My Corpse: Aesthetics of Coercion and Radical Black Tradition - 34 2.5 Spic’ing into Existence: Epitaph, Epithet, and the Ethno-Poetic Imagination – 53 3. Que haremos con el cuerpo: Pathologies and the Native Autospy - 66 4. Cross-Examinations: Baldwin’s Pulpit and the Ethnopoet’s Prophecy – 82 5. From Split Personality to Spliced Intersectionality: Lamar, Queen Bey, and the Ethnopoetic Artistry - 98 6. Spic’ing in Silence, From Dais to Die-In: Black Power Salute and the Brown Boycott - 114 Code-Switched CODA: Masking paysasiadas in the Mexican Sitcom Tradition – 142 Works Cited - 157 López 4 Agradecimientos Primero doy gracias a mis padres, cuyas energías incansables me permitieron alcanzar a rasca cielos. Mis sueños de un mejor mañana fueron una vez heñidos por sus callos. Su amor es pan recibida, el cual me sostengo en esta dimensión desconocida. Mi hermana lupenín, the Sherly no-mates to my Dr. Watson, midnight oil burning fanfictions, Disney References, post- Fajr breakfast at Baji’s, coffee runs and book-sniffing adventures, I love you bruh. Angela, la tuchi, the impromptu guessing games, her trademark phrases, moments of papá jalando sus greñas con el sepillo and her whining ‘bout it. Aaron, my lil Hermanito, regretting being away in his formative years…regresaré pronto, so we can go to all the parks. He lines up his jugetes as if they’re going to battle—Power Ranger next to Godzilla, next to Stegosaurus—you are a general cooped up in our garage, defending your imagination. To my thesis advisers, ustedes tienen my deepest thanks. Antonio Viego: es un milagro que terminé este tesis, what with la brujería de aquella tía hechizando cada junta de nosotros. As the sole male Latino profesor que conozco, me inspiras en refugiar un lenguaje que adecuadamente dirige la crisis universitaria. Wahneema Lubiano, an intellectual powerhouse whose eager listening helped me hold the eclecticism necessary for inaugurating the ethnopoet. Both faced hard times indeed this semester, and Viego expressed how I ended up picking the more difficult year to have them help out. Then again, perhaps writing within their respective tragedies actualizes the ethnopoetics of underserved scholars. Thank you to the kin transposed on my skin, the familial structures we Latinxs must make to survive in this peroxide marfil. To La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, Inc., that brotherhood I’ve carved out here. Walter Solórzano, my role model for so López 5 long, Erick Hernandez, who taught me true manhood blossoms from restless understanding, Sydney Sarmiento helping me leave my eggshell. I love you brothers so much, and would not be the man I’d be today without you. You all help me make sense of being a Latino man, an endangered species, in this elite space. To Elizabeth Barahona, hermana de mi alma y joya en las parades de mi ser, compañera en la lucha, que inshallah nos acompoñemos hasta que podamos. To all my hispanohablantes bajo el diablo azul, all the homies of the Global South, my darker skinned black sisters and brothers who’ve nurtured dual consciousness for so long, paving the road pa’ los dos. To our own Muslim Student Association who’ve fostered my inner qibla, a compass guiding me to two-step oppression, a prescience that re-calibrates both where we pray, and where I thrive. To all those I’ve omitted, perdoname, I’m eternally grateful. López 6 Epa-Logue: Desde del punto del non-native lengua. I understand that this manuscript streams between English and Spanish. No es accidente. But before pigeonholing my shit as novel-gazing, or say that I indulge in dewy-eyed self- rhapsodizing, suspend that for a second. Think instead, how in English, we inhabit Latin, Greek, and French origin languages, and not only is this condoned, it registers as high discourse. De facto, habeas corpus, de jure, a la carte, a propo, a la fregada con sus palabras preciosas, etc. Juxtapose that with the poverty of hearing ourselves. We’re practically an endangered species out here. Por ejemplo, el otro día, me contó un amigo: your work reminds me of Junot Díaz. Now, I’m gonna give the brother credit, and not mark this as a -- “there are two and half Latinos authors nationally recognized in this country, and so he’s categorizing me with the only Spanglish author he knows” trope-- and give him the benefit of the doubt. Let me take that compliment and work with it. Díaz said, “Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over.” Díaz succinctly captures an explicit contradiction in Eurocentric book lovers of fan-fiction. Reminds me of my alma mater: how to architect this university as a southern Hogwarts, that’s a Gothic reality. But for Latinidad to be taken seriously as a token enterprise, to demand systemic change for a marginalized people, to stop witnessing the disproportion of funds towards everyone but you, that’s the fantasy. And yet, as Diaz says, bibilophiles would privilege an invented language—one lacking complete lexical relevance—before ever taking mine as an intellectual enterprise. Así que les pregunto, sinceramente, “What do you find threatening of my mosaic lips?” Déjenme ofrecer una sugeriencia: in The Latino Threat, Leo Chavez argues that xenophobia—particularly against Latinx immigrants—stem from the fear that their presence López 7 would radically tailor the fabric of this country. En un sentido, this Latino Threat traces to a genealogy dating back to Catholics, Chinese, Japanese, and southern and eastern European migrations (3). Somos partes de un “grand tradition of alarmist discourse,” (3) con la diferencia que Mexicans have resided in this territory since the 16th century, not this mito que vinimos ayer. Regresando to Diaz’s quote, some may find the “we’re taking over,” merely the sensationalized language of a caffeinated writer. This is far from the case. In Chavez’s “Cultural Contradictions of Citizenship and Belonging,” the author interrogates the narrative that Mexicans are unwilling into integrate to U.S. society. Supposed rationale stems from a linguistic and social insularity, to an outright conspiracy to take over the southwestern United States. On a theoretical level, puede ser this gatekeeping stems from a fear of linguistic invasion, that my (re)command of idioma violates the purist conceptions of academic scholarship. Using direct testimonies, Chavez demonstrates the overwhelming desire Latinxs have to be accepted into mainstream society. But the minute we ask for some reciprocity, that pinche frase that Duke loves to laminate, we fall on (socially) deaf ears. Therefore, this epa-logue pragmatically serves as a challenge to the prompt for the Bascom Palmer Prize for Best Thesis in Literature. Lest folks think I take the guidelines out of context, here they are in full: Please note that the theses nominated for the Bascom Palmer Literary Prize must be written in the English language. We have recently developed another prize, the James Rolleston Prize for best thesis in literature written in language other than English by non-native speaker With all undue respect, these words make insane assumptions. Never mind the undetermined language of “non-native speaker.” Returning to the earlier point, where is the line drawn for non- English terms (let’s call them linguistic expatriates) that have been adopted into the English López 8 canon? The implicit mentality is that the non-Anglo-Saxon other cannot speak as effectively, and therefore, should apply somewhere else. Moreover, I find unsettling that an award quintessentially lumping together all languages besides English is named after a Professor of German Studies. If the aim of this ‘foreign language’ award is to level the playing field, to defer once again the entitlement back to a white body does a disservice to subaltern voices. But I digress. Fellow Anglophonic colleagues, if you all can endure the “high-level” thinking necessary to read Lacan, Zijek, Deleuze, Soussaire, Derrida, Butler—we can go for days—then how hard can it be to pull up a dictionary to study these phrases? My words aren’t splinter cell narcos, hiding under tunnels of abridged misunderstanding—contrary to ciertos politicos que me denuncian como un criminal o peor, un violador. My words aren’t cryptic, but those of a demographic rapidly increasing, predicted as 1/3 of this country by 2050. Try it, en serio, it’s gorgeous. Somos boxeadores linguísticos, bobbing and weaving through language to duck—agachar, swerve, whatever you want to call it—to avoid a direct assault.