Description/Abstract/Artist Statement
1% left of 100 is a documentary poetics research project exploring the confluence of identity, family, and language. Crafted in a hybrid format that mixes Spanish and English according to my personal idiolect, which is itself a product of my heritage as a Puerto Rican, Africa, native Taino American, this poem engages with exciting new approaches to thinking about race which liberate us from talking about physical features and takes us instead toward race as a social fact, a product of culture, history, and family. I seek to intervene in a narrative of American history that, though it teaches about first contact for Africans, and Spanish and Carribean peoples, seldom offers the voices of the natives who have occupied the islands before their arrival. I ask: who were those who self-identified as Taino? Where are the Taino? Can a people be erased? In similarity to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee, a memoir-poem about the Japanese occupation of Korea, I see to claim a feminist genealogy. I argue that language is part of going back to mother and grandmother and generations farther back. How have my mothers and their mothers spoken Spanish---the third most spoken language in the world. There are 90,000 words in its vocabulary, yet only 300 words originate from Taino’s native speech. Again, I argue against the outsized lament for purity, for Pure Taino people who are “extinct.” Instead, with my project I try to demonstrate that no one person can truly claim to be purely indigenously Taino. To hold a part of history isn’t only for DNA to choose for us. Who we are can be a cultural claim in body and soul. This project draws on historical archives as well as personal familial archives to tell a new kind of historical race narrative. 1% left of 100 integrates Taino and Puerto Rican history with my family language and history. I present early memories woven with digital images from family photo albums as I also integrate critical sources and historical documents. Telling my ancestors’ story as well as my own offers up a poetics of witness. The war of the Taino existence is stuck to repeat itself within me now. Connecting life to picture to archive is the linkage to making 1% left of 100.
Faculty Advisor/Mentor
Margaret Konkol
College Affiliation
College of Arts & Letters
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Disciplines
Caribbean Languages and Societies | Other Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature | Poetry | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies | Women's Studies
Session Title
College of Arts & Letters UGR #3
Location
Zoom
Start Date
3-19-2022 3:30 PM
End Date
3-19-2022 4:30 PM
Upload File
wf_yes
Included in
Caribbean Languages and Societies Commons, Other Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons, Poetry Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons
1% left of 100: Taino History and Puerto Rican Identity
Zoom
1% left of 100 is a documentary poetics research project exploring the confluence of identity, family, and language. Crafted in a hybrid format that mixes Spanish and English according to my personal idiolect, which is itself a product of my heritage as a Puerto Rican, Africa, native Taino American, this poem engages with exciting new approaches to thinking about race which liberate us from talking about physical features and takes us instead toward race as a social fact, a product of culture, history, and family. I seek to intervene in a narrative of American history that, though it teaches about first contact for Africans, and Spanish and Carribean peoples, seldom offers the voices of the natives who have occupied the islands before their arrival. I ask: who were those who self-identified as Taino? Where are the Taino? Can a people be erased? In similarity to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee, a memoir-poem about the Japanese occupation of Korea, I see to claim a feminist genealogy. I argue that language is part of going back to mother and grandmother and generations farther back. How have my mothers and their mothers spoken Spanish---the third most spoken language in the world. There are 90,000 words in its vocabulary, yet only 300 words originate from Taino’s native speech. Again, I argue against the outsized lament for purity, for Pure Taino people who are “extinct.” Instead, with my project I try to demonstrate that no one person can truly claim to be purely indigenously Taino. To hold a part of history isn’t only for DNA to choose for us. Who we are can be a cultural claim in body and soul. This project draws on historical archives as well as personal familial archives to tell a new kind of historical race narrative. 1% left of 100 integrates Taino and Puerto Rican history with my family language and history. I present early memories woven with digital images from family photo albums as I also integrate critical sources and historical documents. Telling my ancestors’ story as well as my own offers up a poetics of witness. The war of the Taino existence is stuck to repeat itself within me now. Connecting life to picture to archive is the linkage to making 1% left of 100.