Ana Patricia Rodríguez - Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area - with Dr. Sheri Parks— at Union Market
Ana Patricia Rodríguez - Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area - with Dr. Sheri Parks— at Union Market
For more than four generations, Salvadorans have made themselves at home in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and have transformed the region, contributing their labor, ingenuity, and culture to the making of a thriving but highly neglected and overlooked community.
In Avocado Dreams, Ana Patricia Rodríguez draws from her own positionality as a Salvadoran transplant to examine the construction of the unique Salvadoran cultural imaginary made in the greater D.C. area. Through a careful reading of the creative works of local writers, performers, artists, and artivists, Rodríguez demonstrates how the people have remade themselves in relation to the cultural, ethnoracial, and sociolinguistic diversity of the area. She discusses how Salvadoran people have developed unique, intergenerational Salvadoreñidades, manifested in particular speech and symbolic acts, ethnoracial embodiments, and local identity formations in relation to the diverse communities, most notably Black Washingtonians, who co-inhabit the region.
This timely and relevant work not only enriches our understanding of Salvadoran diasporic experiences but also contributes significantly to broader discussions on migration, identity, and cultural production in the United States.
Ana Patricia Rodríguez is associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and U.S. Latina/o Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches courses in Latin American, Central American, and U.S. Latina/o literatures and cultures. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Rodríguez will be in conversation Sheri Parks, Ph.D., who is a public intellectual, author and community strategist who works with disinvested communities, from idea to project implementation. She is the author of two editions of Fierce Angels, an Essence Magazine Editor’s Pick, which traces the path of the Sacred Dark Feminine from the Creation through Western life, history and mythology. She is the former vice president of Strategic Initiatives at the Maryland Institute College of Art and former associate dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, where she is professor emerita of American Studies and current Research Affiliate at the UMD National Center for Smart Growth. You can see more about her and her work at www.sheriparks.com and | Sheri Parks | Substack.
For more than four generations, Salvadorans have made themselves at home in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and have transformed the region, contributing their labor, ingenuity, and culture to the making of a thriving but highly neglected and overlooked community.
In Avocado Dreams, Ana Patricia Rodríguez draws from her own positionality as a Salvadoran transplant to examine the construction of the unique Salvadoran cultural imaginary made in the greater D.C. area. Through a careful reading of the creative works of local writers, performers, artists, and artivists, Rodríguez demonstrates how the people have remade themselves in relation to the cultural, ethnoracial, and sociolinguistic diversity of the area. She discusses how Salvadoran people have developed unique, intergenerational Salvadoreñidades, manifested in particular speech and symbolic acts, ethnoracial embodiments, and local identity formations in relation to the diverse communities, most notably Black Washingtonians, who co-inhabit the region.
This timely and relevant work not only enriches our understanding of Salvadoran diasporic experiences but also contributes significantly to broader discussions on migration, identity, and cultural production in the United States.
Ana Patricia Rodríguez is associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and U.S. Latina/o Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches courses in Latin American, Central American, and U.S. Latina/o literatures and cultures. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Rodríguez will be in conversation Sheri Parks, Ph.D., who is a public intellectual, author and community strategist who works with disinvested communities, from idea to project implementation. She is the author of two editions of Fierce Angels, an Essence Magazine Editor’s Pick, which traces the path of the Sacred Dark Feminine from the Creation through Western life, history and mythology. She is the former vice president of Strategic Initiatives at the Maryland Institute College of Art and former associate dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, where she is professor emerita of American Studies and current Research Affiliate at the UMD National Center for Smart Growth. You can see more about her and her work at www.sheriparks.com and | Sheri Parks | Substack.