First: I found out that Edwidge Danticat wrote a children’s book about Anacaona, Taino Princess of Hayti.

Last night i was thinking about Aurora Levins Morales and Guanina, and the children’s book written about La Malinche, and Danticat’s book,

and then I was thinking about Alma Lopez’s version of Legend of the Volcanoes…and how she was trying to imagine the real story of Popo and Ixta and maybe she wasn’t that into him, and maybe she was pretending to be dead in the hopes that he would go away…

And I came up with this whole scenario, where the Ixta/Popo story was made up after the fact. That the first representation was the pictorial, and what it’s really about is the murder of Coyolxauhqui, but that Rather than showing the horrible gory mess (a la murdered women in Juarez, mutilated and killed) it instead represents Coyo as beautiful and desirable

Because, every single woman is beautiful and desirable. that’s why we have all those lovely virgin saints. that’s why the portraits of Sor Juana are so different from the portraits of Catalina de Erauso…
(Catalina de Erauso is historically a man and so doesn’t have to be beautiful but can be strong)
So it’s really an image of Huitzilopochtli laying his sister’s body to rest.

It’s not really the grande romance but rather the recasting of it as a romance is part of the heterosexualization of violence. That is, that we normalize male violence against women by casting it as heterosexual romance.

And that furthermore, in this representation—male subject, dead female object—we once again make Huitzilopochtli the Hero and Coyolxauhqui merely incidental to his story.

I haven’t figured this all out yet. In particular, there seems to be an element of the volcano Ixtaccihuatl and the the re-membering of Coyolxauhqui, which is really a forgetting. But am I then “getting rid of Ixta” as Keta said about Terrill’s La Historia de Amor?

When I told my students that Keta didn’t like Terrill’s piece because he “got rid of Ixta” (the figure with whom she identified) Brieanna asked if Keta like Alma Lopez’s piece…and of course I didn’t know the answer. Right now, I can’t even remember the name of Lopez’s piece! How weird is that?!?

Okay, I ended up really disliking this novel I read, Nichola Griffith’s Ammonite. (Tribal women!) but one part that I liked was that there was a certain kind of berry that prevented a serious illness. And the berries were bitter. And one girl refused to eat her berries. And then she got very ill and sent for the curandera, and the curandera refused to come because she hadn’t eaten her berries. (Why should I do for you when you won’t do for yourself?)

Thenike smiled. “Torren was a young girl who thought she knew best and did not always eat her nitta seeds, or wear her cap in the middle of winter. One day she got sick and went to the healer. The healer turned her away, saying, why should she help Torren when Torren always refused to help herself?”
“So what happened?” “It depends. Sometimes Torren repents, sometimes the healer relents, sometimes Torren dies.”

Griffith, Nicola (2002-04-10). Ammonite (p. 189). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Editio
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OMG, I made it to 700 words! Hurray hurray calloo callay!

I have a faculty meeting before class this morning (of all things!!!!)

My laundry just beeped so I’m going to pop it in the dryer and start getting ready.