culture
Samantha Bee: Undocumented immigrants make your food (video)
Samantha Bee stops by the City of Brotherly Love’s South Philly Barbacoa and learns about the vital roles immigrants (undocumented and documented) play in making the food we eat.
The Legend of The Wolf Woman/La Loba, The Bone Woman/La Huesera (video)
La Loba, from film student Margarete Laue re-imagines the traditional Mexican folk tale popularized by Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run With the Wolves:
She creeps and crawls and sifts through the mountains and dry riverbeds, looking for wolf bones.
This image of a ‘Tamalada’ is in the Smithsonian collection (toon)
Tamalada, a lithograph by Chicana artist Carmen Lomas Garza, is in the collection of the Smithsonian. Looks sorta like your family, right, primo?
Mas…This image of a ‘Tamalada’ is in the Smithsonian collection (toon)
Where have all the brown folks gone? I’m In love with ‘Coco’ that is
Where have all the brown folks gone?
I sit at a bar and I count how many are like me, I count two in a room of 30, one is a bar back Latinx and one is an African American bartender, I’ve done this since I realized that I am the other, and I need to find allies quick, in case shit goes down, in case there’s a race war
I order thai food from a food truck and the señor making the food could be my primo, while the Asian owner takes my order
Mas…Where have all the brown folks gone? I’m In love with ‘Coco’ that is
This one family has been making piñatas for 50 years (video)
On the outskirts of Mexico City, over 50 years ago, a family began making and selling piñatas to the local community. Nowadays, the whole town is involved. The Piñata King takes a look inside the life of this town, and the head of the family who started it all.
Pocho Ocho amazing little-known first Thanksgiving factoids
See this painting that is supposed to depict the first Thanksgiving? It’s wrong wrong wrong. What really went on at that epic feast so long ago? We’ve got eight little-known factoids right here:
8. The frozen string beans in the casserole were past their sell-by date
7. Pilgrim Zephaniah Winslow = silent but deadly
6. Squanto’s “Mezcla de Maiz” was really esquites from the barrio elotero.
Mas…Pocho Ocho amazing little-known first Thanksgiving factoids
Sexual harassment is everywhere, not just Hollywood! Shocking, no?
Currently, the focus is on Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of harassment, attacks, and/or rape by over 70 women. This evil industry. Hollywood.
Shocking, no?
No, carnales. Before the Weinstein story broke, Bill Cosby, the sweater-wearing, jello-eating [alleged] rapist, was accused of attacking or raping 41 women. Did we forget about him? To date, he has not been convicted. People still defend him.
Mas…Sexual harassment is everywhere, not just Hollywood! Shocking, no?
Freaky Frightful Friday #FFF: The Nahual (toons)
The nahual is a human who can shapeshift or manifest in the form of an animal.
Happy Rosh HaShana from the Jews of Tijuana! Happy 5778! (video)
Mexico, like the United Estates, is a “nation of immigrants.”
In the 1900s, Tijuana welcomed Jewish refugees fleeing wars, hate, and poverty in Europe, Asia and the Mideast.
Tijuana Jews, the story of the extended Artenstein family, has become a POCHO Rosh HaShana (New Year) tradition ever since we noticed rosh-ha-shana rhymed with Tijuana in 2012.
Mas…Happy Rosh HaShana from the Jews of Tijuana! Happy 5778! (video)
It’s a classic of Mexican art — La Selfie (toon)
La Selfie is one of the newest additions to my contemporary codices series. The series asks: “If we were still creating codices like our ancestors what would they look like? What would our community look like?”
[More like this @ JakePrendez.com.]
What language is that? Funny, you don’t look Nahuatl (video)
Languages around the world share similar characteristics, but how do we know if they are related?
April showers bring May flowers — and ‘El Paletero’ (toon)
El Paletero is the newest edition to my contemporary codices series. The series asks if we were still creating codices like our ancestors what would they look like? What would our community look like?
[More like this @ JakePrendez.com.]
…and that’s how they make tortillas in Mexico City, D.F. (video)
Ritual ordinario mixes the sounds of Mexican streets with visuals of the process of making, baking, and selling tortillas. This video was shot and the ambient audio recorded in Mercado Cartagena in Mexico City, D.F. [Video by Ricardo Martinez Roa.]
Student Video: ‘Making tamales with Yamelith’ (and her mom)
We bet this looks familiar! Yamelith made tamales with her mom over the Thanksgiving weekend and shared her experience in this student video, uploaded by the Charles W. Harris School in Phoenix, AZ.
‘Happy Asian Thanksgiving’ from the Fung Brothers (video)
American children of immigrants are all the same when it comes to dealing with Thanksgiving.
Y digamos: “Amén.”
Dear Trump Voter Ashley: We are real people, not your ‘Taco Tuesday’
Dear Ashley,
I don’t really know you very well. I met you for the first time when my family and I travelled to Rogers, Arkansas to see you marry my nephew. I knew my nephew at some point. I saw him grow up here in Los Angeles until my brother and his wife thought the streets of Woodland Hills too gang-infested and uprooted their entire family to the enclaves of my sister-in-law’s home state.
Shortly after, sometime in the 1990s, my mother and I travelled to Arkansas on an Amtrak train for two days (don’t ask – I still haven’t forgiven my mother for refusing to fly) to visit and see our family’s new dwellings.
You weren’t in the picture yet – your husband was still a teenager. Despite the torturous train ride, we relished the opportunity to spend time with my brother and his family. We were even excited to see a new part of the country.
Mas…Dear Trump Voter Ashley: We are real people, not your ‘Taco Tuesday’