I grew up in a household filled with self righteous spite towards any inkling of anti-Semitism my grandfather could put his finger on. "It all comes back to the Jews, and hatred of the Jews. The Jews have endured more pain than anyone". My grandfather, his brother and his mother were the only survivors from their family of early years of the holocaust. They escaped to America from Poland, and my grandmother and her parents came from Russia. My grandfather’s family was dirt poor and his mother used to make him and his brother stand on the breadlines because she was too ashamed. This was before my grandfather went to fight in World War II. But we don’t talk about that.

given the paper i’m considering for anne, the use of breaks in a text, especially breaks to insert art, is a concept of which i’m currently hyperaware.

menchú's chapters could definitely speak for themselves alone. each section is given a heading to shape our understandings of the sections as readers.

so what, then, is the purpose of the quotation interjections at the beginning of each chapter? and how do these quotations shape the “silence” that accompanies a chapter break?

I, Rigoberta Menchú has me thinking a lot about voice and language. I can’t help but think that because this book has been translated so many times, its original emotional power has been diluted. I am sure her tone must have been musical and her language colorful, despite and perhaps because of the anguish that she has faced in life, but so much of that is out of our reach because of the repeated translation. I was also thinking a lot about the protagonist/writer’s constant ache to tell her story in the dominant language. She says to her father that she “[wants] to read or speak or write Spanish…perhaps things were different if you could read” (105). This becomes her main reason for leaving her home to go to Guatemala City to work as a maid.

“Sometimes it’s something we do, not because we understand it, but because that’s the way it has to be. Because I remember that at first the prayers weren’t even in Spanish but in Latin or something like that. So although it’s something we say and express with all our faith, we don’t always understand what it means. Since the priests don’t know our language and they say the prayers in Spanish, our job is to memorize the prayers, and the chants. But we didn’t understand exactly what it meant, it was just a channel for our self-expression. It’s very important for us, but we don’t understand it” (Menchú 95).

Learning about Rigoberta Menchú has made me think about language, and the obligations we may or may not have to speak on our experiences due to our privileged positions. Menchú's first language is Quiché, yet she tells her story (and the story of her people) in Spanish, her second language. In the words of translator Ann Wright, Menchú "has learned the language of the culture which oppresses her in order to fight it -- to fight for her people -- and to help us understand her own world" (vii). And further elucidated by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, Menchú "is a privileged witness: she has survived the genocide that destroyed her family and community and is stubbornly determined to break the silence and to confront the systematic extermination of her people.

I currently have a three-pronged approach toward my research project. My interest lies in the education and incarceration of the indigenous peoples of America, more specifically those entrenched in the systems of the US government. For the purposes of this reflection, I will be referring to them as Indians. The three-pronged approach begins chronologically, with the founding of the Carlisle boarding schools for the forced assimilation of Indians. I would like to paint an accurate picture of what happened within these boarding schools, comparing and contrasting them with the current prison system, and reflecting on whether these schools were meant to be for reform or rehabilitation, or perhaps even punishment.

I. 

We had a great conversation reflecting on the past seven days: Tocqueville, research proposals, our work in the prison, the Mural Arts Tour, Eastern State, etc. I was struck by a few themes:

1. Which bodies deserve humanization and on whose terms? Here we were thinking about the potential for a #blacklivesmatter mural or the 9/11 Memorial.

2. More generally: Who is deemed deserving of art and by whom? How do these structures of deserving come into being and how can they be changed? Here we talked about the separation between "art" and "graffiti" presented on the Mural Arts Tour and questions of community, property, ownership, and legitimacy.

Everyone I know has been sending me a link to the October edition of The Atlantic,
which focuses on ""The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration":
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/
I haven't had a chance, yet, to read all the essays included here, but wanted to call your attention now, and especially, to

See link below, and attached file, to access a new report (forwarded to us by Sheila) from The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and Research Action Design, in collaboration with Essie Justice Group and other community organizations.

Bottom line: women bear the brunt of the costs of their incarcerated loved ones.

http://whopaysreport.org/