Midterm exam

Dr. Manuel F. Medina
Diasporas, Migrations and Borders in US Latinx/a/o Culture
Spring 2020

Study Guide for the Midterm Exam

Exam Date: Thursday, March 4, 2020
This exam accounts for 20% of the class’s total grade.

HOW TO PREPARE:

1. Understand the following concepts and apply them to the text studied in class: Nationalism, identity, national identity, Nuyorican, Chicano, Dominican York, Cuban migrations, Cultural Adaptation, Cultural Assimilation, Space, Border, Race, Mexican-American, US-Latinos, Latinx, Religion, History of Occupation of the current US territory, stereotypes, patterns of immigration.

2. Review the questions in the film’s study guides provided for each film:

3. Review the questions to analyze a narrative text.

The exam will cover the following material:

Films: Nueba Yol (Ángel Muñíz, 1995. Venevisión, 2006.)
Sleep Dealer. (Alex Rivera, US, 2009).

Novels:

Rivera Tomás. And the Earth Did Not Devour Him/Y no se lo tragó la tierra.

Poems:

Mercado, Nancy. "On Being Nuyorican"
Arroyo, Pauly. “I’m a Nuyorican.”
Piñero, Miguel. “New York City Hard Times Blues.”
Esteves, Sandra María. “Puerto Rican Discovery #3: ON Neither.”
Morales, Aurora Levins. “Puertoricaness”
Morales, Ed. “Rebirth of New Rican.”
Carlos, Laurie. “Borinquen.”
Gómez, Magdalena, “The Two-Headed Puerto Rican.”
Urrea, Luis Alberto. “You Who Seek Grace from a Distracted God.” The Tijuana Book of the Dead: Poems.

Excerpts from novels and memoirs:

Segment from Cofer, Judith Ortiz. Silent Dancing : A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood. 2nd ed., Arte Público Press, 1991.
Segments from Quiñonez Ernesto. Bodega Dreams. First ed., Vintage Contemporaries, 2000.

Articles: (listed in the order we read them in class)

Balbosa-Carter, E. (1999). “Multiply Identity and Coalition Building: How Identity Differences Within Us Enable Radical Alliances Among Us.”

Montoya, Margaret. 'Border Crossing in an Age of Border Protocols: cruzando fronteras metafóricas.' New Mexico Law Review vol 26, Winter 1996, 1-8.

Hernández Vázquez, Francisco. "A Dream of Justice: Contexts, Methods, and Practices in Latino/a Thought."

Ramírez, Tanisha Love and Zeba Blay. "“hy People Are Using the Term ‘Latinx’.”

Pages from Carlisle, Rodney P. . Volume 1, the Hispanic Americans, Facts On File, 2011.

Nelson, Candance and Marta Tienda. "The Structuring of Hispanic Ethnicity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives." Challenging Fronteras : Structuring Latina and Latino Lives in the U.S.: An Anthology of Readings., edited by Mary Romero, et al., Routledge, 1997.9-29.

Rendón, Armando. “The Chicano Manifesto”

Macias, Ramón Ysidro. “The Plan of Aztlán.”

Anzaldua, Gloria. ”To Live in the Borderlands Means You"

Rodríguez, Clara, “A Summary of Puerto Rican Migration to the United States.”;

Flores, Juan. “‘Qué Assimilated, Brother, Yo soy Asimilao’: The Structuring of Puerto Rican Identity in the U.S."

Guarnizo, Luis E. “Los Dominicanyorks: The Making of a Binational Society.”

Section I.

Answer five (5) of seven (7) questions(50% of the exam’s total grade) based on the following material:

Section II. Write an essay (worth 50% of the exam’s total grade)

Write an essay using a traditional format (introduction where you present a thesis statement, arguments where you defend or defend your thesis statement and a conclusion, where you summarize your essay’s or thesis statement’s main idea)

Sample topics:

Religion as a social construct in And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.
Gender roles in Dreaming in Cuban and "Silent Dancing”
Nostalgia as a recurrent theme in Nuyorican poetry
Nationalism and Chicano Identity