Seven years have passed since I moved to West Central Illinois to work at Monmouth College. For readers who don’t know Monmouth, this town located near Illinois’ border with Iowa is small, isolated and remote. If you need a TV, a computer, quality clothes or Unitarian Fellowship, it takes around 45 minutes to get to the nearest cities of Macomb, Peoria or Davenport, Iowa (although a great bookstore, health food store, bakery and CSA are located in nearby Galesburg). Coming from places like Chicago, Austin and Detroit, it’s taken a while for me to adjust to life in the rural Midwest. As part of my coping strategy, I’ve buzzed about the world incessantly and nervously, living for substantial periods in faraway places like Kenya, Tanzania, France and Mexico. Moreover, I’ve also moved around the region itself -- a bee drawn to a mysterious and sweet fragrance, from all appearances unable to land on the community where I work.
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| A budding community activist group called Los Alcatraces ("calla lilies") at the start of the Prime Beef Parade in Monmouth in September. I was driving the car, which was draped in papel picado and images of Frida Kahlo. |
More accustomed to urban anonymity and activity, I found small-town life stifling at first. I moved to Galesburg (a 20-minute commute) then Macomb (a more difficult 40-minute commute). By commuting to work from another place, I discovered I could detach more easily from work stress, and therefore engage more profoundly with teaching and scholarship. I felt two different forces pulling at me: a desperate desire to belong, coupled by the need to create clear borders between my private and public lives.
The ways my stay in Mexico this year will help me to reconfigure these pieces of my life into a meaningful whole may initially appear a puzzling mystery. Perhaps by recognizing relevant patterns, re-connecting missing or out-of-place pieces of my own story with others’, I will shift the world around me just a bit (or at the very least my look at it). This shift began to take place when I taught a course on citizenship-- a service learning course on immigrant communities in Monmouth., where I taught students about things like the history of immigration in the US and the unique regional role immigration from Mexico plays in our economic and cultural life. Local culture became a laboratory for exploring the world, with regional, national and global issues irretrievably linked. For me, students’ experiences off campus amounted to a study abroad as they crossed the boundaries of the college to engage in service learning and interviews with community members about immigration. As I began to understand my own growing leadership in facilitating these lessons, I also meaningfully linked my private and public lives in ways previously impossible. I rediscovered my sense of place, seeing the community through the eyes of an outsider, and felt increasingly compelled to tell the story of Monmouth’s Mexican community as a way of healing social rifts and ruptures my students and I had witnessed I am traveling restlessly back and forth between Mexico and the Midwest, and finally settling in Jalisco so that I can hear the stories I will one day tell myself.
Unlike most immigrants, I did not travel back and forth for reasons of economic hardship. I received a scholarship that enabled my mobility. However, when I hung out with families I had either stayed with or met in Mexico, I realized I had acquired some tools for understanding their in-between and unresolved identities (and mine?). I became hyper-aware of my participation in cultural practices and events shared across borders by traveling back and forth between Mexico and the US (with Mexico City in between for the Fulbright orientation). Here are some of those events:
1) During my first week at home, I visited Don Luis and Doña Mari, who had returned home to Monmouth after the fiestas patronales in Atolinga. They invited me out for dinner at their favorite steak buffet restaurant in Galesburg. I shared my photos and videos with them of our trip, which we discussed at length. I also packed some items for Chavo, who had decided to stay with extended family in Guadalajara for a while. Previous to reuniting with Luis and Mari , I had imagined interviewing them and recording their observations about the trip. However, during the times we spent together, I still felt the impulse to merely observe, without intrusion. I also felt I needed to acquire more cultural and linguistic insight to construct appropriate questions in a way that wouldn't appear ridiculous to them.
Unlike most immigrants, I did not travel back and forth for reasons of economic hardship. I received a scholarship that enabled my mobility. However, when I hung out with families I had either stayed with or met in Mexico, I realized I had acquired some tools for understanding their in-between and unresolved identities (and mine?). I became hyper-aware of my participation in cultural practices and events shared across borders by traveling back and forth between Mexico and the US (with Mexico City in between for the Fulbright orientation). Here are some of those events:
1) During my first week at home, I visited Don Luis and Doña Mari, who had returned home to Monmouth after the fiestas patronales in Atolinga. They invited me out for dinner at their favorite steak buffet restaurant in Galesburg. I shared my photos and videos with them of our trip, which we discussed at length. I also packed some items for Chavo, who had decided to stay with extended family in Guadalajara for a while. Previous to reuniting with Luis and Mari , I had imagined interviewing them and recording their observations about the trip. However, during the times we spent together, I still felt the impulse to merely observe, without intrusion. I also felt I needed to acquire more cultural and linguistic insight to construct appropriate questions in a way that wouldn't appear ridiculous to them.
2) In the first week of September I participated for the first time in the Prime Beef Festival. Thanks to the organizing efforts of the Americorps Vista Volunteer in Monmouth, Los Alcatraces joined the parade. With the encouragement (and costumes) of Professor Diana Ruggiero, a recent addition to Monmouth College's Department of Modern Foreign Languages, a group of us women dressed as Frida Kahlo. I drove the car, which was decorated in papel picado and images of the famous Mexican painter. I "blasted" banda music to no effect, due to my impotent speakers. We began the parade near the Monmouth-Roseville High School and waited for an hour or so as the rest of the floats made their way down Broadway. As we passed through town, I couldn't help but be amazed by the number of Latinos watching from the sidewalk sidelines. How had I not recognized this diversity before? Perhaps a parade was the perfect event to make visible this quality of Monmouth. As we passed in front of the college, I switched with Tim Gaster, our other new colleague in the department, who drove the car while I accompanied the other Alcatraces. I had told Don Luis and Dona Mari I would be representing Mexico in the parade (we were holding a flag). Even though they said they would be busy, somehow they made it, and were watching for me with some of their relatives.
3) Mexican Independence Day celebration on Main Street in Monmouth, organized by La Tapatia Mexican restaurant, was another special event that made me feel privileged to know the Latino community more personally than before (and more excited about returning to Monmouth to get know them more). Supposedly, celebrations like this used to happen more frequently in Monmouth, but somehow the rift between the two major Mexican restaurants in town had been blamed for the decrease in public events geared towards Latinos. There were dance groups of all kinds (i.e. tejano, ranchero, folklorico) celebrating in the streets, as well as vendors of all kinds selling delicious foods. I was proud to bring my Dad to this event and he, in turn, was quite impressed. I felt at home catching up with a few people I'd met and hung out with in Atolinga. Dad was excited to meet them too and ask them questions about their lives. This cross-cultural exchange is a major motivating factor in my community work and in my research.
4) Finally, I drew on my observations during the first trip to Mexico by brainstorming ideas for projects with friends and colleagues, including possible exchanges between students in Mexico and in Monmouth, alumni or student travel abroad opportunities and a photography exhibit on transnational communities living in Monmouth and Atolinga. In the next week I plan to flesh out those ideas and draft a proposal or two.
These experiences have helped to energize me in my discovery of new places and acquaintances here in Guadalajara. I’ve spent days with my friend S doing research at the Biblioteca Juan José Arreola at the University of Guadalajara (but located downtown). A few other highlights include the YMCA pool (just a 10-minute walk), nearby yoga and spinning classes, a pizzeria on Avenida Libertad (discovered after attending the Jalisco en Vivo concert at La Minerva Fountain last Saturday night – crazy idea), the Arles Café (the meeting site of the conversation group Polyglot), and Hubert Antoine’s Belgian crêperie “Le Coq à Poil,” a mere three blocks from my house (quelle chance!). Oh and let’s not forget the Tel Cel Customer Service center, where I went several times to get my cell phone situation straightened out (3313404124, in case the reader would like to call, even though skype is probably better – heatha8). Next step: dialogue with area scholars about my project and schedule my October trip to Atolinga.
3) Mexican Independence Day celebration on Main Street in Monmouth, organized by La Tapatia Mexican restaurant, was another special event that made me feel privileged to know the Latino community more personally than before (and more excited about returning to Monmouth to get know them more). Supposedly, celebrations like this used to happen more frequently in Monmouth, but somehow the rift between the two major Mexican restaurants in town had been blamed for the decrease in public events geared towards Latinos. There were dance groups of all kinds (i.e. tejano, ranchero, folklorico) celebrating in the streets, as well as vendors of all kinds selling delicious foods. I was proud to bring my Dad to this event and he, in turn, was quite impressed. I felt at home catching up with a few people I'd met and hung out with in Atolinga. Dad was excited to meet them too and ask them questions about their lives. This cross-cultural exchange is a major motivating factor in my community work and in my research.
4) Finally, I drew on my observations during the first trip to Mexico by brainstorming ideas for projects with friends and colleagues, including possible exchanges between students in Mexico and in Monmouth, alumni or student travel abroad opportunities and a photography exhibit on transnational communities living in Monmouth and Atolinga. In the next week I plan to flesh out those ideas and draft a proposal or two.
These experiences have helped to energize me in my discovery of new places and acquaintances here in Guadalajara. I’ve spent days with my friend S doing research at the Biblioteca Juan José Arreola at the University of Guadalajara (but located downtown). A few other highlights include the YMCA pool (just a 10-minute walk), nearby yoga and spinning classes, a pizzeria on Avenida Libertad (discovered after attending the Jalisco en Vivo concert at La Minerva Fountain last Saturday night – crazy idea), the Arles Café (the meeting site of the conversation group Polyglot), and Hubert Antoine’s Belgian crêperie “Le Coq à Poil,” a mere three blocks from my house (quelle chance!). Oh and let’s not forget the Tel Cel Customer Service center, where I went several times to get my cell phone situation straightened out (3313404124, in case the reader would like to call, even though skype is probably better – heatha8). Next step: dialogue with area scholars about my project and schedule my October trip to Atolinga.
| Train Station in Princeton, Illinois seen from the Amtrak Train. I took this train from Chicago to Galesburg. |
4 comments:
Engaging, instructive, meditative, keep writing.
You are fabulous for always commenting. I wrote you a letter a few days ago and have to still buy an envelope. But it's figuratively on its way : ) Miss you!
HB, it's wonderful reading your writing because it's a new side of you for me to know better. Thanks for blogging. I look forward to seeing how this year and your blog turn out for you; how you grow and learn about yourself and your place in the world. I now want to share some of my writing with you. Maybe we can talk about this. Keep writing, Aisha
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