Write a well-developed essay that addresses the following prompt:
The performances/texts from del Carmen (Shero’s Journey), Gamboa (Brujos), Gómez (the way she spoke),
Hudes (Water by the Spoonful) and Díaz (Chad Deity) ask audiences to consider 21st century Latinx
experience as a product of intersecting histories of colonization, enslavement and heteropatriarchy, at the
same time that they demonstrate how Latinidad—a fluid and complex formulation that groups together
disparate identities—exists relationally with other non-Latinx people. Using the assigned critical texts (the
various Keywords and Patricia Ybarra’s How to Read a Latinx Play), discuss how these artists invoke
storytelling, relational networks and the power of magic/conjure and nature as strategies for centering
alternative non-Western knowledge systems. In doing so, demonstrate how these performances/texts work to
offer redemptive interventions that re-signify and reclaim bodies long contained and erased both through state
violence and Latinx stereotypes in popular culture. Pay particular attention to how these interventions go
beyond a corrective gesture of “representing” Latinx people and instead ask us to consider new ways of
looking and experiencing.
Directions for writing:
Please address all five of the performance/texts indicated in the prompt.
Be sure to use specific examples from each of the performances/texts to support your argument. Quotes are
encouraged, especially when used in a meaningful way.
You will be able to learn a lot about non-Western knowledge systems/worldviews represented in the
performance/texts by attending to the themes and content in each of the texts, however, be sure to also attend
to how the form (the structure, or how the story is being told) also brings Latinx knowledges into being