Tag Archives: awareness

The Use of Spanish in Viramontes

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This week I will write about the use of Spanish in Under The Feet of Jesus. Viramontes use of Spanish in Under the Feet of Jesus has a jarring effect at first if you do not know Spanish (or even if you know some Spanish but cannot speak it that well like myself). Even though I am an English major I have plenty of trouble with the English language so  any additional languages lead to doubts about being able to relate to the text, but it will be argued here that this may be a desired effect.   It seems that the result of combining two languages seems to alienate the reader who does not know Spanish, unless they spend time researching what these passages say. Yet the use of English as the main text does give insight into these experiences, so for the English speaker, Spanish seems to be used as a method  of saying while you can relate to these people in the text, they are also part of a different world that you can only relate through by a translation. From what I have learned about Spanish a translation may suffice, but it is not the same as knowing the language as something always seems lost.

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The two articles written by Bill McKibben (2005 and 2009) were substantially eye opening, at least for me. Global warming and everyone’s carbon footprint are topics that are hard to ignore when one lives in a city like Eugene. Nationally it occasionally makes headlines and is mentioned a punch line for future generations because that is how it tends to be viewed, a problem for future generations. Humans aren’t going to be melting or living underground in this lifetime but perhaps that’s the catch 22 of global warming. It’s so noticeable that it goes unnoticed. It’s too big to notice. In his 2005 article McKibben stated “when something is happening everywhere, all at once, it threatens constantly to become backdrop, context, instead of the event” further promoting that in the ‘text’ of our lives the environment is ‘transparent’. You know it’s there and you see it as the background or setting of your life but you don’t focus on it enough to make it apart of your life. This fault humans possess has enabled “one species, ours, (has) by itself in the course of a couple of generations managed to powerfully raise the temperature of an entire planet” (McKibben, 2005). Humans, as a species, are either visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners so what better way to educate and bring awareness to ecocentrism than through art.

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