Victoria Miller’s blog

  I had a lot of fun this week learning about Latin America and how to dance. It was interesting to take notice of the different regions' music. I don’t usually listen to Latin music so I never really knew about the different types. My most favorite style of music was the Haitian music. I enjoyed the traditional African music that is tied into their music. I also really enjoyed learning to dance and wish we could have spent more time doing it. It was fun to work with the different styles and I hope I get to pull out my new skills soon. I enjoyed dancing with everyone and was very proud of my progress by the end of the classes. I will enjoy teaching my younger brother and the rest of my family how to do these dances though they probably won’t be completely willing. I hope we get to do something like this again soon.

  Hello Lexie! I really enjoyed reading your post and learning more about Manuela Saenz. I too wish we got to talk more about her in class, and I am also glad that she is being recognized for the accomplishment. For her to become a colonel during this time period is truly amazing and to find out that she did more than sit on the side lines is very impressive.

  This week we read The kingdom of this world and though I struggled to fully understand everything that was happening in the book I did find it really interesting. The thing I found the most intriguing in the book was how closely it tied some of the events that had occurred to voodoo and magic. I also found it fascinating how naturally it combined with the story not like it was some crazy idea but rather that it was perfectly normal. While the King was at the church in chapter V of part three the king thinks, “In some remote house - he suspected - there was probably an image of him stuck full of pins hung head down with a knife plunged in the region of the heart.” These acts of voodoo are things that I have heard of and are ways to cause harm to others. I find it very interesting how the king thinks about this act of violence and threat to his life so naturally like it was the expected thing to do, which it most likely was, but as a person only knows the voodoo of fairy tales, rea...

     There are many things in today's society and culture that are creations made from bits and pieces of past culture and practices . No culture is exempt from this. Every language that exists today is made up of a mixture of words and formulas from another language. But it doesn’t just stop at language, even religion integrates other religious ideas. For example, many of the Christian holidays are set on Pagan holidays, such as Christmas. As time goes on and cultures meet other cultures, ideas and inventions are shared. This week we discussed how the African slaves kept their culture alive. They would dance, sing, dress, cook, and even communicate in ways that kept their culture alive. As time went on, the bits and pieces of their African culture, along with Spanish and indigenous culture, meshed together to create the Latin American culture of today. This small hold on our ancestors' culture and history, even if we are unaware of its presents, is an important part of...

     This week we discussed the autobiography of a slave and the slave trade. I found the question of resistance and assimilation the hardest thing to answer. We were asked if we thought people in a certain situation were resisting or assimilating. I believe that this question is impossible for us to answer simply because we have no idea what intentions and meaning the individual had by their actions. On top of that some actions could have been assimilation as well as resistance, for instance Manzanos action of spending a lot of time learning household tasks like sewing and cooking. This could be argued as assimilation because he is bettering his skills to help his master, or it could be argued as resistance because he is mastering this that will help him after he gets out of slavers. We can go back and forth on this matter all day but the reality of it is that we can never answer whether it was assimilation or resistance because we don’t know what Manzano was thinking wh...

 Hi Ella! You brought up some really good points that I completely agree with. All of the horrible things that happened and are still happening to people based of race are things that we can't simply never happened. There is far to much history tied in these experiences and thing we need to understand that was can't and should never pretend that it didn't happen.

This week’s discussion about race was very enlightening. As a Caucasian in America, I can note sympathies with experiences involving race but that does not mean I don’t empathize. Racism is a huge problem in society and it needs to be fixed. However, with all the discussions and Prof. Serrata’s story, I began to think about what would happen if everyone just stopped talking about race and pointing out how people look different? If we stopped talking about it would the divide between the races disappear? Would the new generations never question it? Or would they still question it? These are all hypothetical questions that probably won’t ever be answered because of how involved race is with culture and society. Also, by no means do I think we should just stop talking and learning about things like the slave trade. Slaves are a pertinent part of history that needs to be learned about in order to understand the dark side of the part.             ...