Macaroon collage, page 1 29/03/2007
Posted by dlatman in Collage, Jewish, anti-war, food, history, spirituality.2 comments
This is the cover for my mini-zine dedicated to the luscious Jewish coconut dessert, macaroons. View big picture here.
Passover, one of my favorite Jewish holidays, is approaching. During Passover we tell the story of our slavery in Egypt, the 10 plagues, and finally our exodus into freedom. What I love about this holiday is that the theme of liberation can be applied to present-day situations, both personal and political. I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on my own personal shackles; the ways I limit myself or am constrained by external circumstances, and opportunities for change. At the same time, it’s important to consider ways my society, nation and the world constrict others, creating needless suffering and exploitation in places like Iraq and Palestine. Passover is a time to re-dedicate myself to creating the just and loving world I want to live in.
On a more logistical level, we abstain from eating bread and other foods containing yeast during the 8 days of Passover. Macaroons are an awesome dessert because they have no leavening agents, yet still taste so yummy and don’t make the restricted diet feel like a sacrifice. Chocolate, almond, chocolate-chip, plain… bring ‘em on! I love macaroons!
Originally appeared in a print zine for A Night Under the Moon & Stars, a Muslim-Jewish Arts Fest.
goddess of bad hair 25/03/2007
Posted by dlatman in African American, Collage, Jewish, beauty, books, feminism, literature.4 comments
This collage is inspired by my Jewish ethnicity, which has blessed me with curly, frizzy hair and a prominent nose. Hence, I share with many women the sometimes-challenging impulse to love and embrace myself while existing outside mainstream beauty standards.
Tonight I saw a play which explored this challenge quite poignantly; “The Bluest Eye,” based on the novel by Toni Morrison and performed at Playmakers Theater in Chapel Hill, NC. The story involves a young black girl’s desire for blue eyes in response to a racist society that despises her blackness and poverty. I read the novel over ten years ago, but seeing the characters brought to life in front of me was a powerful experience.
The story has meaning for me on so many levels. I am very different from protagonist Pecola Breedlove due to my race, class and the love I have received from my family and community. Yet as a child I still wished for blue eyes and blonde hair to look like my fictional idols the Sweet Valley Twins; and my mom admits the only reason she didn’t want girl children was her fear of us inheriting her and my dad’s “bad hair.”
The collage is framed with descriptions of different hair types and their subsequent correctives, acknowledging that so many women have “bad hair,” or in some other way fall short of society’s damaging beauty standards. Yet the goddess inside the picture encourages us all to love ourselves!
Legba collage 21/03/2007
Posted by dlatman in African American, Collage, books, history, spirituality, travel.3 comments
This is the 3rd collage in my Zora Neale Hurston project. Here I explore Legba, a major deity in the Voodoo pantheon. He is a trickster god, featured alternately as a wise old man and a playful young boy. I intersperse information about Legba as a crossroads figure (text on top) with images taken from Ron Bodin’s book “Voodoo: Past and Present” that map the slave trade, including enlargements of both major West African cultures (on the right) and slave migrations to the U.S. (on the left).
These maps demonstrate the migration of the Voodoo religion which enslaved Africans brought to the U.S. Legba seems a poignant deity to me because of his role as “god of the crossroads” and the geographic and spiritual crossings Africans endured in the Transatlantic slave trade. I paste multiple copies of Legba’s ritual number three throughout the latitude and longitude lines on the ocean to comment on how European explorers viewed the New World as an empty space waiting to be carved up according to cold and calculating methods, and as a reminder that many people (at least 10% of enslaved Africans) died during the Middle Passage and the ocean serves as a graveyard of sorts.
The text on the bottom says that Legba is sometimes viewed as a thief because he steals divine information and gives it to humans; it is also an ironic comment on contemporary African American stereotypes in the media. The term “Abobo!” is a Creole expression, usually exclaimed during or after a dance or ceremony.
View it larger HERE.
oya / zora collage 15/03/2007
Posted by dlatman in African American, Collage, books, feminism, literature, nature, spirituality.4 comments
This is the 2nd collage for my Zora Neale Hurston project. Yes, I love the woman… Part of my thesis explores the connection between Zora and the voodoo deity Oya. As some of the text in the collage states, Oya is the powerful and unpredictable goddess of storms. Zora acknowledges her connection to the storm goddess in her anthropological writing; for example during Zora’s voodoo initiation ceremony in Mules and Men, a priest paints a lightning bolt symbol on her back and renames her “Rain-Bringer,” stating that divine power will speak to her in storms. Zora also includes several climactic storm scenes in her fiction. Further, Oya’s ritual number is nine, the most common number used in her Mules and Men appendix on “Hoodoo Formulae.” The number also recurs frequently in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
I am influenced in part by scholar Keith Cartwright’s exploration of the Oya/Zora connection in his recent article for the journal American Literature (volume 78, issue 4, 2006). Particularly interesting to me was his analysis of the hurricane scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God in light of Hurricane Katrina. Hence the map on the bottom tracing Katrina’s destructive path.
Pictures of dripping acid rain in the collage background come from magazine copies of Camille Rose Garcia’s paintings.
Janie & Erzulie collage 08/03/2007
Posted by dlatman in African American, Collage, beauty, books, feminism, literature, love, spirituality.5 comments
I made this collage based on my senior thesis, a long paper on the Harlem Renaissance writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. In the paper I explore Hurston’s study of voodoo in Haiti and New Orleans, and how that research influenced her masterpiece, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” This collage shows a picture of a beautiful black woman (lovingly cut out from BUST magazine) representing both Janie, the main character in Hurston’s novel, and the Voodoo goddess of love, Erzulie. While Erzulie can manifest herself in different forms, she is often depicted as a beautiful, young, long-haired mulatto woman who loves offerings of sweets. Janie in the novel is also a beautiful mulatto woman with long flowing hair who loves to eat sweets. (Interestingly enough, Hurston herself was a light-skinned woman, with a penchant for eating sweet foods.)
The top quote, about the tree shivering in ecstasy, is a memorable line from “Their Eyes,” where a young Janie dreamily sits under a pear tree in spring, watching a bee pollinate the flowers. This “marriage” serves as an ideal love for Janie as she grows up and experiences three marriages of varying levels of fulfillment. The second quote, on the bottom, is from Hurston’s 1938 anthropological text, “Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica.” She describes a ritual in which a priestess wearing all-black bears her genitals to display the secret of life. In both her novels and anthropological work, I believe Hurston demonstrates the power of women, our sexuality and our ability to give birth.
Click here to see a larger version.
“Las victimas invisibles” graffiti 01/03/2007
Posted by dlatman in Graffiti, Spain, anti-war, art, europe, history.add a comment
Located in Granada, Spain near the cathedral. On the bottom it says “The invisible victims of war.” The mural appears to feature a woman wearing a hijab (Muslim head covering) while the city behind her is bombed.
Tonight I heard the brilliant writer and Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien read his stories about being a soldier so long ago. Some of what he read seemed so poignant, as today our country leads another generation of young people to fight for dubious causes. O’Brien likes to speak to college audiences to encourage young people to say “no” in situations that compromise our ethics. He thinks that may save some of us from going through the hell he did.
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Ubicado en Granada, Espana cerca del catedral. Dice en el fondo, “Las victimas invisibles de las guerras.” La muralla muestra una mujer llevando una hiyab (el panuelo musulman), mientras la ciudad detras de ella esta bombardeado.
Anoche oi el escritor fabuloso y veterano de la guerra en Vietnam Tim O’Brien lee sus cuentos sobre su vida como soldado hace muchos anos. Algunas de sus cuentas aparecen muy moderno, como hoy mi pais guia otra generacion de los jovenes a lucha para las causas sospechosos. Le gusta a hablar en las universidades para animar los jovenes a dicen “no” en las situaciones que comprometen nuestras eticas. Lo cree que lo puede guardarnos de sus experiences de los diablos.
