Raquel Cepeda's Blog, page 6

The Film Grant Gods Have Blessed Us!

 

The Film Grant gods have blessed us! It was an awesome moment finding out we’ve received grant support from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) to move our documentary Deconstructing Latina (working title) forward! You can read the full press release here.

Black Ethnics: Covering the New African Diaspora Panel

Playing catchup folks! Have been busy (re)writing a book proposal (so excited about the subject and cannot wait to share it with you all!!!), training for a forthcoming fight (as a master’s division amateur boxer), and applying for a handful of grants.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, moderated by my homegirl Farai Chideya, and featuring political scientist and professor Christina Greer, professor Lonnie Isabel, and me. Here is the panel, below, for your perusal.

 

Black Ethnics: Covering the New African Diaspora from NYU Journalism on Vimeo.

What I’m Reading: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color

In between writing another round of a section for a new book proposal—wo/man, writing book proposals are tedious, especially when you have to justify your mere existence to editors, explain your language, your culture, your self, your…—I found myself in dire need of inspiration. So, after about two decades, I decided to pick up an anthology I had not visited in almost two decades: This Bridge Called My Back.

Reading the pages were kismet, somewhat sad, and an illustration of just how little things have changed despite the best efforts of those women who came before us to explain us. Twenty years. In this span of time, I birthed two children, embarked on a writing and filmmaking career of my own, married my best friend, gotten a miseducation, spent a good deal of time unlearning things, unteaching my daughter the same things, talking to people, traveling, finding my self, reconciling with my father, learning about motherhood by not having my own be a present figure in my life. I learned how to have pride in the potential of where I come from as a dominiyorkian, and at once, be okay with hating that our potential has yet to be realized. I’ve met people of all races—those that Viktor Frankl identifies as belonging to the “decent” and “indecent” categories—I can go on.

As I read the book, I suffered a momentary bout of despondency because, well, the walls many of these Sheroes—Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Mitsuye Yamada, Audre Lorde—have devoted their lives in knocking down, are well, still mostly impenetrable. Communities of color are still suffering from an identity crisis, one that, until we overcome it, will keep us divided and unengaged with each other and society. Until we learn to love, to make peace, with who we face in the mirror, I think that another two decades will pass with little spiritual progress.

So many passages felt as if someone were reading me, if you will, from another dimension. I felt as if I were having a conversation with women I knew well, with mothers I’ve not known and with friends struggling with the same issues. Anzaldua herself, a child of Yemaya and now, posthumously, a spirit guide for women who refuse to live in a box, read me with the following passage:

The mixture of bloods and affinities rather than confusing or unbalancing me, has forced me to achieve a kind of equilibrium. Both cultures deny me a place in their universe. Between them and among others, I build my own universe, El Mundo Zurdo. I belong to myself and not to any one people.

“Here and Now” on WABC-TV with Dr. Brenda Greene

Earlier today, Dr. Brenda Greene (hip-hop artist Talib Kweli has inherited his mother’s brilliant oratory genes) and I were guests on Here and Now on WABC-TV, hosted by Sandra Bookman. We were there to promote the forthcoming 12th bi-annual National Black Writers Conference, going down at Medgar Evers college in Brooklyn, where I’ll be sitting on a panel titled Shifting Identities in Africa and the African Diaspora. I took a precious minute to talk about the paperback release of my book, too, and to talk about what I think it means to be Latina, or as I identify, a dominiyorkian, today.

There are so many cool things happening at the conference this year. For details on all the events, visit the Center for Black Literature’s website.

Come Check Me Out @ Word Up Bookstore in Washington Heights This Thursday!

President Barack Obama on Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis

I‘m a huge fan of Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. My husband and I are obsessed with the retro cable access format and have watched each episode quite a few times. Galifianakis’ timing is crazy and his guests have a great sense of humor. (Have you seen his Happy Holiday’s Edition? It’s crack.) Bill O’Reilly’s panties are in a bunch because President Barack Obama appeared on the show to promote Obamacare.

O’Reilly doesn’t like anything the president does. I don’t support every single thing he does but I do give him props for using social media to make the message accessible. O’Reilly claims that President Lincoln would have neeeeever debased himself that way but, yo, isn’t that like saying, “President Barack Obama would have neeeeever owned slaves,” today, like Lincoln did not-so-way-back then? I wish O’Reilly would stop evoking Lincoln so much: we have been miseducated on who he really was and what the motives were behind the Emancipation Proclamation. And besides, if social networking were around back then, he may have been promoting something like, colonization as a way to confront the issue of slavery:

For much of his career, Lincoln believed that colonization—or the idea that a majority of the African-American population should leave the United States and settle in Africa or Central America—was the best way to confront the problem of slavery. — History Channel, read the rest of it here.

Now that’s an interview I wouldn’t have tuned into.

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama from President Barack Obama

Please Don’t Call Me “Spanish” & Other Problematic Descriptors

Recently, I’ve had the privilege of talking to a variety of high school, community college, and university students from two regions in the United States. Most, but not all, of the students were women and many were of Latino/Hispanic descent. The majority of the folks I met had expressed an intense desire to lead and heal their communities in the future as teachers, mental health professionals, activists, politicians, and through the arts.

During most of my conversations with these students (and a couple of faculty members), I noticed a theme crystallize I found problematic: the use of descriptors like “Spanish,” “nappy,” “bad hair,” and other loaded identifiers with negative connotations. While I hear those same heavy words and phrases on the train, from my neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and activists/politicos, I felt the sting with these students because my community and our society’s future depends on younger generations to succeed, that is, as grounded individuals. One shouldn’t think of leading anyone else before they confront their own internal schisms.

I’ll share one example: I was Skyping with a diverse group of students from a leadership class last week about my book, hip-hop, gentrification, leadership, and negotiating our respective hyphenated identities on a national and global context. A young woman, trying to illustrate how diverse the phenotypes are within her own family and, subsequently, how the difference create borders, described her kin as having “you know, nappy hair, big thick lips, like African features, while I look like this…”

I decided to challenge her. I don’t believe in admonishing people but meeting them where they’re at. We all make mistakes and should take the time to think and rethink how we describe people and ourselves, and, more importantly, why we use certain descriptors. Our characters are like pewter: we must take the time, periodically, to polish the surface and bring out its shine. And while we’re refining our characters we may want to think about where these words, or code words, come from?

I asked the young lady to stop think about why she chose those words and if she felt that they contributed to the borders she felt were obstructing her relationships. I could see a glint in her eye through my computer screen. She said, “Yes, yes. I didn’t think about it like that before.” Words have energy, I said, overtones, and can be both liberating and equally oppressive: or something like that.

And then there’s that most vexing descriptor of all, aside from the pervasive n-word: Spanish. As a Latina-American, I don’t care if you use Latino/Hispanic/your country of origin—I identify as a dominiyorkian—but it irks me when people in and outside of our demographic call themselves and/or us “Spanish.” While we descend from territories that were once colonized by Spain, we as Spanish as Angolans are Portuguese and Haitians are French. Don’t get me wrong: Spain is a magical place to visit. Andalusia almost felt sacred to me as I walked through her winding streets. I feel strongly connected to the region, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am not Spanish. I won’t carry the weight of imperialism, colonialism, and all the ‘isms that are borne out of our history, on my shoulders. It’s challenging enough to reconcile who we are, on a personal, political and societal plane, to burden ourselves any further with heavy words.

There’s no time like the present to emancipate ourselves.

Hey Young World: Some Practical Advice For Our Future Leaders

Students from Northern Essex Community College

This morning, at Lawrence High School in Massachusetts, I was honored give a lecture as part of the White Fund Enlightenment series, to an auditorium filled with seventh and eight graders, mostly high school students, and a small group of adult learners. It’s always challenging to talk to younger people—you can’t skate along by throwing college words around but rather—because you have to translate sometimes complex ideas down in a way that’s palatable.

This is the other thing: many of these kids, all from Lawrence (or “Little Santo Domingo”), have been dealing with issues that many Americans haven’t had the burdened to lug around: poverty, high drop-out rates, depression, negotiating their hyphenated identities, and that’s just scratching the surface.

I decided to approach the time I had with them like this: sharing the tools I believe they need for a successful life. The tools I’m referring to isn’t of the material kind but of spiritual transformation, you know, practical advise.

I wasn’t there to encourage them to chase the so-called American Dream: that dream is a nightmare. If the American Dream means that you have to sell your own soul in order to completely assimilate to what people believe is the ideal of being America, that’s problematic.

I was thinking about what advise my older self would give my younger self if that kind of time travel were possible, in order to prepare me to negotiate my way through the next several years, and I came up with this:

Move every single day. A body that stops moving becomes still and sluggish. And that eventually leads to an inactive mind. An inactive mind stops thinking for itself, fueling itself. Soon, you’ll be looking for validation and acceptance from others, which for many young people leads to making a shit-load of wrong choices like premature sex, teen pregnancy, promiscuity, drug abuse—not to mention—obesity. Get it?

Learn about your history: you may find out that you’re the embodiment of what it means to be American. You are the genetic circumstance of Columbus’ arrival in the New World. You carry this New World’s history books within your DNA, your very beings, and these are the oldest books in the Americas. Don’t take that for granted.

Becoming American doesn’t mean that you have to completely turn your back on where you came from. Take what you like from your parents homeland and culture, and the things you like about Americanism, and make them work for you. The academic word for this process is selective acculturation. Do it. It’s good for you.

Observe and/or say something positive about yourself every single day. I don’t care if you’re in detention for something you did or didn’t do, or staring at an “F” on an English paper or science project in front of you. We all have bad days. Still, give yourself props for being an individual—for example—not caving in to joining gangs or giving up your virginity to the first guy or girl who paid you a compliment, or for making it through another day in one piece.

Learn how to like yourself. By doing this, you will learn how to like others in your community and, as a result, will be inspired to mobilize and effect real and long-lasting change.

AND

When you really start digging what you see in the mirror, you will find another way to articulate your feelings, to express yourselves, other than hurt reach other or yourselves. Trust me, I’ve been there. I was a violent adolescent unable to put my feelings of anguish into words.

Don’t buy everything you read and learn in school—or necessarily what the adults in your life feed you—as absolute truths. We’ve been systematically miseducated. Ask questions, and when something doesn’t sound right, well, ask questions and debate: develop your brainpower and your vocabulary will follow.

Don’t worry about fitting into any checkboxes right now, regardless of what society dictates. Identity is always shifting and only you can do the work of defining yourselves.

And finally, learn how to be a gracious loser. Only then, will you become a first-rate winner. Life is mostly about rejection, especially if you decide to dedicate your lives to the arts and creative fields. If I listened to the scores of people who’ve told me throughout my life that I couldn’t and shouldn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to receive the blessings the universe has bestowed on me via writing and filmmaking.

My word is bond.

Below, 7th and 8th graders, pictured at Lawrence High School.

Lawrence, MA Events: El Taller Bookstore & White Fund Enlightenment Series!

AND

Advance FREE Companion Curriculum to “Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina,” Now Out in Paperback!

ATTENTION EDUCATORS: We’re in the process of updating my site to include a FREE PDF download of the companion curriculum to Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina, now available in paperback, in the upcoming weeks. Please contact me HERE with your email/affiliation if you want to receive a copy beforehand.

The curriculum is intended for mid-high school to mid-college/university level students, and adult learners.