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Yes indeed, folks.  I passed my doctoral comprehensive exams.  Many profound thanks to those who supported me, prayed for me, and cheered me on in the homestretch.  Special thanks to La Familia Flores and La Familia ACHTUS, whose daily Facebook messages of wisdom and encouragement helped me stay calm, focused, and cheerful during the entire ordeal.  Also, a special shout out to my beloved, Daryn Henry, whose unyielding love and support is “constant and true.”

As promised, I am officially launching Flores y Canto at http://floresycanto.wordpress.com. Update your bookmarks. Tell your friends.

I have complied entries from my several blogging projects and reposted them here.  None of the comments were able to come along, but feel free to revisit old posts with new insights.

Now, it’s time to put the fingers to the keys and start telling you about some of the cool stuff I learned over the past six months.  Stay tuned.

gracia y paz, 

nmfh

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Welcome to Flores y Canto, theological reflections on beauty, goodness, and truth through engagement with God’s revelation in creation. I am in the process of moving flores y canto from http://nicholemflores.wordpress.com/ to the more appropriately addressed http://floresycanto.wordpress.com/.

Same author. Same content. New web address.

The purpose of this move are threefold:
1. To provide a more direct route for readers to access floresycanto.wordpress.
2. To integrate posts substantial posts from my efforts at inappropriate dinner conversations, women in theology, and flores y canto into one site.
3. To allow me to convert nicholemflores.wordpress into a site for my impeding ABD professional life.

The transition will take place over the next several weeks, culminating in a post-comprehensive exam launch of floresycanto.wordpress.  Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

gracia y paz, 

nmfh

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Greg White addresses climate change and migration

Greg White, Professor of Government and Faculty Director of the Global Studies Center at Smith College, discusses the relationship between climate change, migration, and the securitization of borders.  He argues that warnings about massive, cross-border, climate-motivated migrations are overstated, that most people displaced by the negative effects of climate change remain in their country of origin, and that policy ought to emphasize helping climate refugees preserve and adapt to new circumstances within their countries of origin.

Watch at smith.edu.  Part of the Scholars in Studio video series.

gracia y paz, 

nmfh

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From a photo shoot for Seeking Common Ground – Building Bridges for Peace, an organization committed to fostering dialogue among Palestinian, Israeli, and American women from various social, political, and economic backgrounds. I was a participant in this camp from the time from 1997-2001. This series of photos was taken during my first year as a camp participant. The photos with a dark border were taken before we attended the three-week camp dedicated to dialogue across difference. The photos with light borders were taken at the end of the camp.

 

Shalom. Salaam. Paz. Peace.

gracia y paz, 

nmfh

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My experience of 11 September 2001, like so many others, begins with a memory of that gorgeous September morning.  It was the beginning of my Sophomore year at Smith College in Northampton, MA.  After my morning French class, I strolled from Hatfield Hall to the Hellen Hills Hills Chapel, breathing in the cool morning air, marveling at the brilliance of the azure sky.  The serenity of my morning was shattered by the news delivered to me by my stunned friends working at the chapel:  ”A plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.”  At first I thought they were joking, then I thought they were exaggerating the severity of the crash.  It wasn’t until I saw the black smoke billowing from the crater left by American Airlines Flight 11 that my mind was able to register what was probably happening.  But even then, I just couldn’t have imagined the extent of the violence and loss of human life that day, or in the many years to follow.

The rest of the day was a blur.  I remember watching the towers fall to the ground in the company of native New Yorkers, whose absolute disbelief and sadness resonates with me to this day.  I remember my friends frantically trying to account for family and friends working in or near the buildings.  I remember trying to call my mother, but the phone lines at Smith College were overloaded with calls to and from loved ones, everyone looking for stability in the midst of chaos.  I remember the immediate grounding of all air transportation.  I remember wondering how I would get home to my family in Colorado.  I wept, longing to be with my family during this frightening time.  I wept, thinking of all the people who had lost members of their own families that terrible day.

The next day, Government Professor Donald Baumer started our Politics and Public Policy class with a somewhat self-evident statement: “Everything has Changed.”  Indeed, many things had or eventually did change.  But, from where I stood, some things sadly and unfortunately remained the same.  The anti-Muslim rhetoric, discrimination, and violence that ensued was disgustingly predictable.  The visceral fear that engulfed the act of traveling reflected our national apprehension about security in general.  The subsequent violence of years of war was also not a surprise.  War is a national habit, our response in the face of threat, our knee-jerk reaction to hatred and violence.  What else could we have expected from national leaders in this instance?  Everything had changed, but nothing had changed.

In the days after the attacks, a Christian friend of mine dared to ask a ridiculous question, “What if we were to hang a banner over our shores that reads, ‘WE FORGIVE YOU!’”  As a young political scientist, I scoffed at her suggestion, citing the obviously complex questions of national security, protection of innocents, and the threat of terror in allied countries.  But, ten years later, I find myself revisiting her suggestion.  How would the world have been different if we would have followed a Jesus ethic of resistance?  What if we had not gone to war (even if many thoughtful and earnest Christians have defended this course of action in various iterations of just war theory)?  What if we would have draped our shores in love and forgiveness? Were these ideas so fantastic that they ought not impact the delicate political equations at play?  Or were they just crazy enough to change things, even if only to hold our nation back from the brink of bitterness that has, in so many ways, consumed us?  Would our present-day national discourse be any better if our response to this particular trial had not been anger and revenge, but steadfast resistance rooted in charitable love?

These thoughts are all very “airy.”  These questions are admittedly counterfactual and rooted in the fairly unsystematic ruminations of a Christian believer and U.S. Citizen who is emotionally raw from weeping all morning in remembrance of the heartbreaking violence perpetrated in her country that day.  But in the blur of tears and memories, I find my imagination wandering to places that it could not have gone that day.  I want to imagine a world where, truly, “Everything has Changed.”  And I wonder how we could change the world if, through God’s unyielding grace, we could just change.

gracia y paz, 

nmfh

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La Comida del Barrio by Aarón Sanchez

I am a bit obsessed with Mexican food.  Raised amid the intoxicating fragrance of my mom’s homemade flour tortillas, I have always known the infinite superiority of a fresh, warm, butter-drenched tortilla to the store bought kind.  When I was in High School, my mom would sell breakfast burritos  - chorizo and egg, green chile, etc. – to raise money for all of my extracurricular activities.  She would wake at 4am to make several dozen tortillas.  I remember waking to the smell of flour wafting into my room.  I remember helping my mom roll and wrap the burritos in tin foil.  Most of all, I remember the sensation of the soft, sweet masa melting in my mouth, a perfect canvas for the flavors of the chorizo and chile.  Memories of my mother’s love, expressed through rich food, define my childhood.

In my mid-twenties, after a half decade of surviving on fast food and ramen noodles and my first real crisis of conscience over the injustices of the global food system, I decided to learn how to execute my mom’s recipe.  After a few batches that were too dry, and a couple of burns from la placa, I eventually mastered the art of making a gorgeous flour tortilla.  While my version was inevitably derided for not being quite as tasty as mom’s, she couldn’t have been more proud of me for learning this tradition.

Once I learned how to make great tortillas, the next step was to learn how to make yummy stuff to fill them with.  I am always on the lookout for recipes and cookbooks that keep me connected to my Mexican food heritage. While it is easy to find cookbooks, cooking shows, and online recipes that can teach you how to make tortillas, these sources tend to gloss over the specific cultural context that make tortillas so special.  They miss the rich contextual background that, frankly, makes our food so damn good.

Today I received my copy of Aarón Sanchez’s La Comida del Barrio: Latin American Cooking in the U.S.A.  Educated in his mother’s kitchen and restaurant before attending culinary college at Johnson and Wales in Providence, RI, Sanchez is truly a master of Latin cuisine.  You may recognize his from The Food Network’s Chopped,The Next Iron Chef, and Heat Seekers, where he shows off his culinary chops… and, let’s be honest, his dashing good looks.  In La Comida, Sanchez aims to add depth to our understanding of Latino cuisine in the U.S.A. by exploring the vibrant diversity among Latino communities and cultures across the United States.  Sanchez’s thesis, if a cookbook can have a thesis, is that Latin food is defined as much by place and culture as by the meal.  Tortillas, tamales, and pan dulce have stories that are as fundamental as their ingredients.  Sanchez’s objective is to unearth some of the narratival context that makes our food so beautiful.

In La Comida, Sanchez takes the reader on a journey across the country’s Latino communities, highlighting the food, venues, and cultural context that make each place unique.  He includes gorgeous photographs and narratives that reveal the emotional and experiential richness of our food.  Further, By situating his culinary exploration inlos barrios de los Estados Unidos, Sanchez gestures to the social, economic, and political realities of our communities.  In this way, La Comida del Barrio accomplishes something that I have seen in very few Latin cookbooks: sharing the richness of Latino food and social life without commodifying it. 

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  I had a hard time finding a new copy for a reasonable price ($70.77 USD online), but I did find a former library copy for $2.54 USD (Seriously).  My copy still has the library bar codes and a bit of water damage, but those imperfections make me love it even more:

Sanchez’s next effort, Simple Food, Big Flavor: Unforgettable Mexican-Inspired Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours, is due out in a couple of months.  If La Comida is any indicator, we can expect Sanchez to continue to reveal the beauty of nuestra cultura through his passion and knowledge for food.

In the meantime, does anyone want to take me to Sanchez’s Paladar for my birthday?

gracia y paz, 

nmfh

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I was truly humbled my the amount of constructive engagement and earnest responses offered in light of my thoughts on The Help.  In the spirit of ongoing conversation and conversion (see this outstanding reflection by Amanda Osheim on Daily Theology), I would like to highlight a couple of critical points from some of my interlocutors that are worthy of thought.  It would be dishonest to pretend that I know how to answer any of these issues at this time, but I think they are worthy of mention and earnest consideration, especially for those of us still thinking about this debate:

1. The Issue of History: In a conversation with my husband, who is trained in both history and systematic theology, I realized that my first point may have stated the stagnation of social progress too strongly.  It is incorrect to claim that there has not been any social change since the early 1960′s.  The Civil Rights movements and other social movements have changed our national identity, even if some citizens resist those changes.  And there is yet a long way yet to travel.  Barack Obama’s election and presidency did not signal a post-racial society, but has brought some of the lingering and fundamental problems of racism in the United States to the forefront of academic, political, and economic discourse.  I maintain my critique of the ongoing exploitation of socially marginalized persons and groups, but I also think it is appropriate to acknowledge the historical nuances in leveling this critique.

2. The Issue of Authorship and Agency: The second point I would like to raise was brought to my attention by Neomi Rosenau DeAnda, who holds a Ph.D. in systematic theology, and Katie, a friend and colleague in BC ethics who commented here yesterday – What ought we make of the fact that Kathryn Stockett, author of the novel, and Tate Taylor, film director, are white?  This is a complicated issue, to be sure.  As Neomi pointed out to me, while Skeeter’s character assists Aibileen and Minny in telling their stories in a time when it was dangerous for them to do so themselves, this kind of intervention from white women is not necessary for black women who write their own stories, poetry, and history that convey the depth of their own experience.  And Stockett is no Morrison.  So why this story? Why now?

The questions of the relationship between identity and artistic production are manifold.  I affirm the necessity of historically and presently oppressed people and groups to voice their own narratives, especially the importance of political, moral, and artistic agency in this process.  For example, I think it is necessary for scholars of underrepresented groups to take a clear lead in the conversations arising from our own communities.  Still, I wonder whether or when it is morally acceptable for white people to engage in the intellectual and cultural forms and conversations of socially marginalized groups.  The question has been raised in regard to white scholars writing black, Latina/o, and Asian theologies, men writing womanist and feminist theologies, and even in terms of white congregations singing cultural hymns (see posts by Sonja and Katie of WIT).  Recognizing the challenges of power dynamics of white people participating in the very conversations intended to resist white intellectual and cultural hegemony, I am not convinced that the nature of these conversations is necessarily exclusive of white people who are open to conversion and the righting of relationship (Again, see Amanda Osheim’s great post).  Also, I think it is necessary for white people to try to figure out their relationship to U.S. racial narratives in the cultural sphere.  As in the case of Stockett and Tate’s efforts on The Help, this kind of engagement will likely reveal even greater tensions and misunderstandings between the groups.  Still, I think it is necessary for white artists and intellectuals to be held accountable for their work (just as Daryn, Neomi, and Katie hold me accountable for mine).  In The Responsible Self, H. Richard Niebuhr argues for the necessity of reception, accountability, critique and solidarity in moral discourse.  It might be of great use for us to enter this structure as we converse with the other on issues as intellectually, morally, politically, and artistically tricky as these.

Enough walking on eggshells.  Deep gratitude to the conversation partners who continue to challenge my own perspective.  As always, comment away!

gracia y paz,

nmfh

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Advertisement for The Help

Bloggers are well aware of the firestorm of praise and critique of the The Help.  In a glowing review of the movie as a personally transformative event, one blogger writes,“Shame on you if you don’t cry.”  Contrarily, J. Kameron Carter argues: “It Ain’t About Black Women – It’s About White Women,” a position that others have supported by pointing out that the movie is the white character Skeeter’s “coming of age story,” in which the black characters, Aibileen and Minny, serve as tributaries to her conversion of conscience and praxis. Others, includingRosetta E. Ross of Spelman College’s Religious Studies Department, are boycotting the movie as a protest against the use, once again, of black women in the advancement of white womanhood.

I saw the film this past Friday, so I have had a couple of days to mull it over.  I am on the fence between life-changing come-to-Jesus moment and yet another example of the subordination of the black experience to white fulfillment.  Honestly, I think the film is a little from column A, a litte from column B.  I would like to offer a couple of insights:

• This film ought not make anyone “feel good” about “how far we’ve come.”  The condition of racially, socially, and economically marginalized workers today is strong evidence that we have not come very far at all.  Aibileen and Minny are still working among us, toiling in homes, agricultural fields, hotels, and restaurant kitchens.  Indeed, there are thousands of workers who are still enslaved and forced to work against their will and without pay in the United States and throughout the world.  Our global economy is fueled by this kind of economic exploitation. Fictional Skeeter may have found her voice, but our racial history leaves us with few reasons to celebrate.
• I would also like to address the claim that the narrative is about white womanhood.  Skeeter is clearly the narratival and experiential center of the film, the young woman who discovers the spirit of resistance in the midst of the mid-20^th-century white power structure (although, to be fair, the realization that black women are people, too, is not radical).   But Aibileen and Minny are clearly main characters, as well.  Aibileen narrates the film, and through the subtleties of the story, emerges as the source of strength, wisdom, and perseverance for the entire community.  She is not a passive character, but the agent of transformation for Skeeter, Minny, and the other women who share their stories in the book.  For Minny’s part, her experience of voicing her narrative gives her the strength to resist her husband’s abuse, tapping into the pluck that drove her to resist her boss through, one could say, creative measures.  Her story in the film ends with her being served, for just one meal, by her white employers who seem to recognize Minny’s humanity.  Rather than framing the story in terms of a zero-sum game in which only the white women or the black women are the subject, I interpreted the film as a story of an encounter between these women, which ultimately transforms them all and, even if tentatively and minutely, transforms their social reality.  That being said, the film certainly pays less attention to the nuances of Black womanhood than white womanhood, which is certainly worthy of critique.
• Finally, I would encourage anyone who is able to watch and engage the film.  I do not blame professor Ross for boycotting, as the content of the film is certainly upsetting if engaged below the shiny veneer of structured dresses, scrumptious food, and race redemption.  At the same time, it is difficult (if not impossible) to effectively critique cultural material that one has not actually engaged.  This movie has the capacity to prick our consciences.  Despite the boisterous laughter among the primarily white audience with which I watched the film, I do not think it was very funny.  In my analysis, the film is best approached with sobriety, attentiveness, and humility that acknowledges our ongoing societal participation in racial, social, and economic injustice, with an awareness of the absolute necessity of our cooperation with God’s grace to continue work towards the good.

I welcome your engagement and feedback.

gracia y paz, 

nmfh

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This week, my studies lead me to the theological and political writings of John Courtney Murray, S.J.  Murray is well known for his attempt to make sense of the Catholic faith in relation to the American liberal democratic tradition, as well as his efforts to think clearly about religious pluralism and religious freedom.  In We Hold These Truths, Murray poses a fundamental question that ought to be pursued in the contemporary United States context: Do we have a national identity?  If so, what is our national identity?  As a nation, what “truths” do we “hold”?  For Murray, this was a question of basic national unity.  He asks his contemporaries: “Today what is the goal, the victory to be won? Surely it has no such simple symbol.  So baffling has the problem of our national purpose become that it is now the fashion to say that our purpose is simple ‘survival.’ The statement, I think, indicates the depth of our political bankruptcy.” (WHTT, 94)  Murray’s challenge to his era comes crashing down on our own.  Of late, our body politic and elected representatives have shown meager commitment to any shared goal.  This has been most dramatically evidenced by the unwavering refusal to compromise by certain conservatives during the debt ceiling debate, but is certainly not limited to any party or faction.  We are a selfish nation, interested in what serves our own ends, even at the expense of human lives and livelihood, national credit and credibility, and as Murray would have duly noted, our very nationhood.

As an American of Mexican and Chicana/o culture, Murray’s question provokes another one for me: Whatever this national identity is, does it include me?  While many of my well-intentioned fellow-citizens would answer in the affirmative, I can’t help but notice that many other of my fellow-citizens have attempted to shore up flagging U.S. identity by distancing from the racial, ethnic, and religious “others.” Groups that do not resemble American cultural norms[1] are framed as the villains of United States identity.  Samuel Huntington illustrates this political attitude in his article about the threat of Hispanic culture to American identity:

“The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrant threatens to divine the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages.  Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves – from Los Angeles to Miami – and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream.  The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.”[2]

It is not just Hispanic immigrants, but Hispanic culture, that threatens to eviscerate the United States. Huntington names a list of “key values” that are under threat by the heavy influx of Latin American immigrants:

“English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, including the responsibility of rulers and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a ‘city on a hill.’”[3]

Our Latino values, which as far as I can deduce from Huntington include the Spanish language; a religion other than Christianity (Catholicism?); lack of religious commitment (?!); poor work ethic (?!); and frail personal and social ethics (?!?!),[4]threaten to burst asunder Anglo-Protestant culture and thus U.S. national purpose.  While I balk at Huntington’s claims, I do not mean to demonize him.  Liberal Catholic hero John Courtney Murray also evaluated non-white cultures as “less advanced” than his own (white) culture: “…racial discrimination cannot be defended on moral grounds.  Nonetheless, the doctrine could once have been defended from a sociological point of view as necessary in the circumstances – in view of the unenlightened state of the public conscience, the temporary inferior cultural status of the Negro, etc.” (141) Murray hoped for greater and genuine social equality but, at least in this instance, appears to expect that non-white cultures will conform to his own.

Despite my dissatisfaction with Murray’s evaluation of “negro culture” of his particular time, I am compelled by his argument that the United States ought to have a common goal towards which we are pressing as a civil and political society.  I would thus like to offer a modest thought about the state of U.S. identity.  Have the defenders of Anglo-Protestant culture as U.S. identity ever entertained the idea that the problem is NOT Hispanics, and other groups, not being willing to assimilate?  Indeed, there is ample evidence to suggest the opposite. Perhaps a major factor to our identity crisis is the refusal/inability of U.S. culture to receive the gifts of these cultures to national identity and political unity.  For example, while Huntington elevates the value of individuality over the value of community exhibited in many Latino/a manifestations of culture, might a more robust philosophy of community help us through the partisan log-jam during this time of global and national economic strife?  Instead of defending hegemonic social and political mores, is it possible for national political discourse to embrace new “values” or seriously entertain critiques arising from communities and cultures that have often been misunderstood, feared, and alienated?  How might cultural engagement transform the “truths” that we “hold”?  Politically, I am not too optimistic.  But as a God-loving, hard working, responsible Mexican-American United States Citizen, I hope still for God’s graceful transformation of our seemingly unprecedented cultural and political obstinacy into a political and civil society working side by side for the common good.

gracia y paz,

nmfh

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[1] I acknowledge the ambiguity, and even imprecision, of this term. Obviously, there is lots of variation among white cultures across the United States.  Some of my white interlocutors have raised important questions about the usefulness of glossing over the difference between white people in the New England, “The South,” “The Midwest,” etc.  Through a series of marathon Socratic discourses, we have been able to agree that while these cultures vary from one another, they generally exercise cultural hegemony in their various localities, effectively marginalizing other cultures.  To be sure, the dominant cultures often enjoy various aspects of the marginal cultures – food, style of dress, tourism, “exotic” objects, and even language study.  Yet, this superficial engagement and commodification of marginalized cultures ought not be mistaken for cultural equality.  Thus, I do not harbor much intellectual guilt for claiming that some version of white culture is still dominant throughout the United States.

[2] Samuel P. Huntington, “The Hispanic Challenge.” Foreign Policy (March/April 2004): 1.http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/gems/culturalagency1/SamuelHuntingtonTheHispanicC.pdf

[3] Ibid., 1.

[4] To be clear, Huntington does not list the values that Latinos bring, besides Spanish language (which is not a value), that are so harmful to national unity.  My list here is a (facetious) attempt to question what is  implied by his analysis.

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Woman at Work: Please Pardon Our (Lack of) Appearance During Construction

If you have been interested in the modest posts here on flores y canto, you may have noticed that I disappeared for a number of months.  There is a reason for this cyber-absconding, one that I think is quite acceptable.  I am currently preparing for my comprehensive exams, which are scheduled to commence on October 31st.  Thus, I have spent the past several months – and will spend the next several months – reading, studying, and reflecting on the ample amount of material covered by the test.  My exam bibliographies have guided me (and sometimes dragged me) from the moral arguments of the early church to medieval Christianity to modernism (barf!) and now into Vatican II.  This reading is excellent grist for future blog posts, but makes it tough to keep up with posting right now.  As my fellow writers and bloggers can attest, writing is HARD.  Especially when you are a student-wife-intern-teaching assistant-church member-daughter-friend.  Especially when you are an INFJ.

I do, however, love sharing with the small group of you who take a moment to read and dialogue about these ideas.  So, while I am still traversing the wilderness, I am nearly back and ready to share once again.

Many thanks for understanding, and as always, prayers are very much appreciated!

gracia y paz, 

nmfh