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#Afro Latine
writingwithcolor · 7 months
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Afro-Latine Jewish woman maintaining cultural connection in an isekai comic
Anonymous asked:
Hello! Mixed Latin American nonbinary Jew here. I'm working on a, relatively light-hearted, isekai-style fantasy comic concept of an afro-latine Jewish lady who gets sent through a portal to a colorful scifi/fantasy land, inhabitated by various imaginary creatures sorta like in Alice in Wonderland. She gains magic powers and goes on adventures, working as a scientist researching the land's magical energy. (some of the local creatures she befriends are entirely original species, and some are inspired by my local folklore, but otherwise I try to avoid culturally coding the creatures since they're mostly nonhuman looking). The story isn't supposed to touch any heavy topics like antisemitism or racism, but I've read about the cultural problems in ""normie protagonist finds a new home in a funky fantasy world"" stories, f.ex. how Harry Potter's narrative basically implies that Muggleborns have to abandon their original cultures in order to successfully integrate into the very prejudiced but ""cooler"" Wizarding World. My original goal was to break the mold that escapism fantasy usually revolves around white protagonists adventuring in heavily Western-inspired fantasy worlds, and poc-coded characters are usually nonhuman creatures or racial stereotypes. However the protagonist girl in my story comes from a loving, latine-jewish human family, and while she regularly visits them on Earth instead of just staying in the fantasy land 24/7, I'm afraid that making her story be about being happy adventuring in a separate imaginary land filled with nonhuman characters might turn into an ""abandon your family and culture"" narrative. Are there any ways how I could avoid this? Maybe making the fantasy land's worldbuilding and designs more Latin American or Jewish inspired and thus resonate more with her cultural background, or making it clear that the land is not ""perfect"" and she still loves her family?
One of the first things that stands out to me is that you haven’t set her up to need to abandon her culture in order to make a life in another place. She has the ability to go home and visit her family, but I also don’t see any reason why, if she lives primarily in the fantasy land, she couldn’t be portrayed as practicing Judaism actively in her new home. It’s true that Judaism isn’t solely defined by religious/cultural practices, but it’s also true that religious/cultural practices are one of the most recognizable and most uniting elements of Jewish identity.
I think it might help in this case to think about Jewish practices in terms of communal versus personal: that is, what are practices she would need to seek out a Jewish community for, and what are practices she can do independently?
Does she control when she is able to visit her family? If so, visiting for Jewish holidays so that she can be at a family meal or holiday services seems like a way to highlight that she is just as connected to her family as someone who moved to a different city might be. If she experiences/has experienced the death of a family member or partner, going home to be with a Jewish community for shiva or to say kaddish on a yahrzeit is another touch (for readers who may be unfamiliar, Jewish mourning practices are intensely communal and are intentional about bringing the mourner into an active support system and slowly reintroducing them to the world, and as such a mourner is likely to spend this time somewhere where they can access and be supported by a Jewish community).
As far as practices she can engage with on her own in the fantasy setting, it would be nice to see her observing Shabbat, either in a traditional way by refraining from adventuring and instead engaging in hospitality and prayer between dusk Friday and sundown Saturday, or in a less-halakhic way if she comes from a Reform or comparatively-assimilated background, by marking Friday sunset with candles, blessings, and a good meal, even if she is intending to continue her research through the next day. She would hardly be the first Jewish person to live in a place without an established Jewish community, and a festive meal can be shared just as happily with non-Jewish friends if they’re griffons and fauns as if they’re Christians and Muslims.
Here’s one idea that I think would be hugely meaningful as a way of establishing both that she intends to make her home long-term in Fantasy World and that she intends to carry Jewish traditions with her into her new life: hang a mezuzah.
Think about it: a mezuzah is the visual marker of a Jewish home, as much to the resident as to a guest. When she is home from her adventures, in her garden cottage or enchanted tower or wherever she returns to between adventures to record and categorize her research, simply showing a mezuzah in the background instantly makes the point both that she is intending to stay, and that this is a Jewish space. If as time goes on she adds other Judaica items to her space, it can add to the sense that her Jewishness is present and alive in this world, simply because she is present and alive in it.
If she doesn’t have a settled space or if you’re not planning on setting any scenes there, having Jewish visual markers on and around her can help, too. For low-hanging fruit, maybe she has a silver Jewish Star or chai necklace that catches the light now and then, but since you’re going for a light, fun vibe, maybe she’s packing her adventuring supplies in a bright-blue vinyl backpack emblazoned with “Temple Shaarei Tzedek Junior Youth Retreat 1998” (am I old? I’m pretty sure there are adults reading this who were in Junior Youth groups in 2003, but I’m willing to bet retreat swag hasn’t changed that much).
I do like the idea of including Latin American and Jewish elements in the worldbuilding, especially as an intentional way to combat the cultural dominance of Western European folklore over fantasy writing, but because your character is from and has access to our world, you have the beautiful opportunity to carry real-world markers of Jewishness with her as well.
-Meir
I adore Meir’s answer, but then, I’m the kind of person to whom “enchanted tower with a mezuzah” as an aesthetic is so near and dear to my heart that I wrote a whole fantasy series about it. Couple of random suggestions: one thing I really enjoy is exposing my gentile friends to Jewish food—I love watching the absolute shock of delirium hit someone’s face the first time they taste my charoseth. Imagine this little bowl of chopped apples and walnuts, looking vaguely dirty because they’re soaked in cinnamon-infused wine, so it’s basically dingy beige slop….so that first bite of sensuous, deep sweetness is a huge surprise. Pick your favorite equivalent and imagine the first time a centaur or a winged princess or whatever other fantasy character tries it at your MC’s behest! (Feeding brisket to dragons would make a great name for…something…)
I don’t think you’re likely to do this anyway but since these are public answers: “fantasy world fun, Jewish upbringing a chore” is a narrative I would not feel at home in or care to read. But that’s a rather predictable remark from me anyway ;)
And of course I support the “the secondary fantasy world is actually Jewish” solution too, having one of my own.
–Shira
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stardustandrockets · 9 months
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Do you read indie books?
I'll admit, I don't read many because a lot are only available via eBook, and I have retention issues with that format. However, since subscribing to Rainbow Crate and getting one every month, I've read more. I typically use the ebooks as work reads because it's easier to access than carrying around a full physical book. Though I guess now that they're including physical copies that'll change. 😅
This edition of The Name-Bearer by Natalia Hernandez is GORGEOUS! I love that the original cover was printed on the naked hardcover. The edges are stunning and I love that the top and bottom aren't plain like a lot of digital edges are. These special editions are top tier!
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BHM Fact #20
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Afro Venezuelans
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tequieroperoafuera · 1 year
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Me explaining to my white American bestie how I sing Afro latine lullabies to my latino child
And how the song "Negrito" mentions that "si el bebe no se duerme viene el diablo blanco y ¡zaz! Te come la patita, chacatunga chacatunga." = If baby doesn't sleep, the white devil will come and eat your foot, chacatunga chacatunga.🎶
Let's just say she was speechless and a little shocked
😅😅🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️
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sexyg8ymen · 7 months
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Paniagua😮‍💨😮‍💨
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Yemanja: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil (2015), Donna Roberts, Donna Read, Brazil
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ohmenai · 3 months
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Available now at Fanvue and Patreon!
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haveyouheardthisband · 4 months
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callmerosiie · 4 months
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Lets see if this stays up 😂
But heres some tiddies to start the day ✨😚
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nickysfacts · 6 months
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Happy Hispanic Heritage Month!
🎊🇧🇷🎊🇲🇽🎊🇭🇹🎊🇵🇪🎊🇨🇷🎊
I hope all my Hispanic and Latina sisters are having a amazing day!
🎊🇨🇴🎊🇯🇲🎊🇨🇱🎊🇳🇮🎊🇨🇺🎊
To celebrate here is a collection of history facts that help to showcase are impact on history!
🎊🇦🇷🎊🇵🇦🎊🇭🇳🎊🇺🇾🎊🇻🇪🎊
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kemetic-dreams · 7 months
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The Invention of Hispanics: What It Says About the Politics of Race
America’s surging politics of victimhood and identitarian division did not emerge organically or inevitably, as many believe. Nor are these practices the result of irrepressible demands by minorities for recognition, or for redress of past wrongs, as we are constantly told. Those explanations are myths, spread by the activists, intellectuals, and philanthropists who set out deliberately, beginning at mid-century, to redefine our country. Their goal was mass mobilization for political ends, and one of their earliest targets was the Mexican-American community.
These activists strived purposefully to turn Americans of this community (who mostly resided in the Southwestern states) against their countrymen, teaching them first to see themselves as a racial minority and then to think of themselves as the core of a pan-ethnic victim group of “Hispanics”—a fabricated term with no basis in ethnicity, culture, or race.
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This transformation took effort—because many Mexican Americans had traditionally seen themselves as white. When the 1930 Census classified “Mexican American” as a race, leaders of the community protested vehemently and had the classification changed back to white in the very next census. The most prominent Mexican-American organization at the time—the patriotic, pro-assimilationist League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—complained that declassifying Mexicans as white had been an attempt to “discriminate between the Mexicans themselves and other members of the white race, when in truth and fact we are not only a part and parcel but as well the sum and substance of the white race.”
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Tracing their ancestry in part to the Spanish who conquered South and Central America, they regarded themselves as offshoots of white Europeans.
Such views may surprise readers today, but this was the way many Mexican Americans saw their race until mid-century. They had the law on their side: a federal district court ruled in In Re Ricardo Rodríguez (1896) that Mexican Americans were to be considered white for the purposes of citizenship concerns. And so as late as 1947, the judge in another federal case (Mendez v. Westminster) ruled that segregating Mexican-American students in remedial schools in Orange County was unconstitutional because it represented social disadvantage, not racial discrimination.
At that time Mexican Americans were as white before the law as they were in their own estimation.
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The process would only work if Mexican Americans “accepted a disadvantaged minority status,” as sociologist G. Cristina Mora of U.C. Berkeley put it in her study, Making Hispanics (2014). But Mexican Americans themselves left no doubt that they did not feel like members of a collectively oppressed minority at all. As Skerry noted, “[the] race idea is somewhat at odds with the experience of Mexican Americans, over half of whom designate themselves racially as white.” Even in the early 1970s, according to Mora, many Mexican-American leaders retained the view that “persons of Latin American descent were quite diverse and would eventually assimilate and identify as white.” And yet “Spanish/Hispanic/Latino” is now a well-established ethnic category in the U.S. Census, and many who select it have been taught to see themselves as a victmized underclass. How did this happen?
In other words, a distinctive set of beliefs, customs, and habits supported the American political system. If the Cajun, the Dutch, the Spanish—and the Mexicans—were to be allowed into the councils of government, they would have to adopt these mores and abandon some of their own. It is hard to argue that this formula has failed. Writing in 2004, political scientist Samuel Huntington reminded us that
“Millions of immigrants and their children achieved wealth, power, and status in American society precisely because they assimilated themselves into the prevailing culture.”
Indeed, merely calling Mexican-Americans a ‘minority’ and implying that the population is the victim of prejudice and discrimination has caused irritation among many who prefer to believe themselves indistinguishable [from] white Americans…. [T]here are light-skinned Mexican-Americans who have never experienced the faintest…discrimination in public facilities, and many with ambiguous surnames have also escaped the experiences of the more conspicuous members of the group.”
Even worse, there was also “the inescapable fact that…even comparatively dark-skinned Mexicans…could get service even in the most discriminatory parts of Texas,” according to the report. These experiences, so different from those of Africans in the South or even parts of the North, had produced
a long and bitter controversy among middle-class Mexican Americans about defining the ethnic group as disadvantaged by any other criterion than individual failures. The recurring evidence that well-groomed and well-spoken Mexican Americans can receive normal treatment has continuously undermined either group or individual definition of the situation as one entailing discrimination.
It is incumbent on us to pause and note exactly what these UCLA researchers were bemoaning. Their own survey was revealing that Mexican-Americans’ lived experiences did not square with their being passive victims of invidious, structural discrimination, much less racial animus. They owned their own failures, which—their experience told them—were remediable through individual conduct, not mass mobilization. Their touchstones were individualism, personal responsibility, family, solidarity, and independence—all cherished by most Americans at the time, but anathema to the activists.
The study openly admitted that reclassification as a collective entity serves the “purposes of enabling one to see the group’s problems in the perspective of the problems of other groups.” The aim was to show “that Mexican Americans share with Negroes the disadvantages of poverty, economic insecurity and discrimination.” The same thing, however, could have been said in the late 1960s of the Scots-Irish in Appalachia or Italian Americans in the Bronx. But these experiences were not on the same level as the crushing and legal discrimination that African Americans had faced on a daily basis. That is why the survey respondents emphasized “the distinctiveness of Mexican Americans” from Africans and “the difference in the problems faced by the two groups.” The UCLA researchers came out pessimistic: Mexican Americans were “not yet easy to merge with the other large minorities in political coalition.”
Thereafter, militants from La Raza, MALDEF, and other organizations put pressure on the Census Bureau to create a Hispanic identity for the 1980 Census—in order, as Mora puts it, “to persuade them to classify ‘Hispanics’ as distinct from whites.”
The Hispanic category was a Frankenstein’s monster, an amalgam of disparate ethnic groups with precious little in common.
The 1970 Census had included an option to indicate that the respondent was “Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, [or] Other Spanish.” But re-categorizing Mexican Americans and lumping them in with other residents of Latin American descent under a “Hispanic American” umbrella was a necessary move, Mora writes, because “this would best convey their national minority group status.”
The law states that “a large number of Americans of Spanish origin or descent suffer from racial, social, economic, and political discrimination and are denied the basic opportunities that they deserve as American citizens.” The very thing that defined Hispanics was victimhood.
IT IS SHOWN THAT THE HUMAN CATEGORY "WHITE" WAS BUILT UPON THE IDEA OF THAT BRITISH AS WHITE, CHRISTIAN, OF THEIR ESSENCE FREE,AND DESERVING OF RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES FROM WHICH THOSE INSUFFICIENTLY BRITISH -LIKE COULD BE DENIED. JACQUELINE BATTALORA "BIRTH OF A WHITE NATION.
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felucians · 9 months
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Hobie x Afro-mexicana!reader who's aesthetic is Mexicore
(Mexicore: The combination of Indigenous Latine/Mexican culture and alternative/scenemo/goth subcultures - created by Pierce The Veil - example of the fashion from @zamber_lamber on TikTok pictured as I am unable to find any afromexican examples online)
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bideogaymes · 6 months
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new It Girl™️ just dropped
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tinynebula · 1 year
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girl where do you expect Latinos to be born and raised then if it's not a Latinoamerican country??? mars??????
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San Basillio - Ana Mercedes Hoyos
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