Broken English memories

Modern Language Quarterly

Volumn 57, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 381-395

  Flores, Juan ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0347672586     PISSN: 00267929     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00267929-57-2-381     Document Type: Review

References (14)

1. Díaz-Quiñones, La memoria rota: Ensayos sobre cultura y politica (Río Piedras, P.R.: Huracán, 1993).
2. Spanish translation in Diálogo (March, April, May 1995).
3. Díaz-Quiñones, "Puerto Rico: Cultura, memoria y diáspora," Tercer Milenio 1 (1994): 11-9.
4. The title of Luis Rafael Sánchez's story "La guagua aérea" [The air bus], trans. Diana Vélez, Village Voice, 24 January 1984, has become proverbial for the commuter status of Puerto Rican culture.
5. Laviera, Amerícan (Houston: Arte Público, 1985), 53.
6. Bhabha, "Between Identities: Homi Bhabha Interviewed by Paul Thompson," in Migration and Identity, ed. Rina Benmayor and Andor Skotnes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 190.
7. Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), 33-4.
8. Esteves, Tropical Rains: A Bilingual Downpour (New York: African Caribbean Poetry Theater, 1984. 26.
9. Santiago, 'The Puerto Rican Stew," Nm York Times Magazine, 18 December 1994, 34, 36.
10. Martorell's performance-installation was first presented at the International Colloquium on the Contemporary Social Imaginary, held at the University of Puerto Rico in February 1991. The text, "Imalabra 11," appears in Coloquio intcrman'onal sobre el imaginario social contemporaneo, ed. Nydza Correa de Jesus, Heidi Figueroa Sarriera, and Maria Milagros Lopez (Rio Piedras: Universidad de Puerto Rico, n.d.), 161-4. What Martorell means by "la lengua mechada" (as in "carne mechada," meat that has been larded and stuffed) becomes clear in the following sentence: "Nuestra lengua, querrimoslo o no, estii mechada y requetemechada con otras lenguas y con imagenes soriadas, recordadas, olvidadas, combatidas, rendidas, victoriosas y subversives que versadas o en verso, prosaicas o procaces, silentes o sin lentes, encarnadas o bernejas, berrendas o virulentas dan sabor y grosor a nuestro apetito, extension a nuestras ansias, caricia a nuestra hambre." [Like it or not, our tongue (language) has been stuffed and stuffed to the gills with other languages and with images which were dreamed up, remembered, forgotten, combated, surrendered, victorious and subversive, well versed or in verse, prosaic or precocious, silenced and no-lensed, incarnate or inchoate, tame or tempestuous, lending flavor and fullness to our appetite, length to our longing, endearment to our hunger].
11. Pietri, Puerto Rican Obituary (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), 12-6.
12. Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (New York: New Press, 1995).
13. Laviera, La éticu corriente/Muinstreum Ethics (Houston: Arte Público, 1988) , 37-9.
14. Ramos, "Migratorias," in Las culturas de fin de siglo en América Latina, ed. Jose-fina Ludmer (Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo, 1994), 60.