We usually reject what we don´t know. Luís de Camões´ Os Lusiadas resumes among others our fear of unknown territories. The sea - which can be also interpreted in a more complex Freudian key - represents the unknown, something that goes beyond our imagination and capacity of grasping worlds and phenomenon who were under our control and knowledge. Time and experience showed us better ways to grasp the sea, but the fear of unknown is an archetypal human feeling.
This fear nowadays is mostly expressed through our reactions - very often negative ones - towards foreigners. Listening to foreign languages and accents, skin colours and habits, food customs and smells coming from non-local apartments are a curse and a blessing at the same time. It depends on us to turn the unknown into palpable and familiar truths. Living in an age of fast communication with access to a significant amount of sources does not guarantee automatically the end of all evils of intolerance. Rather the opposite: it can help people to fuel their fears, while using exclusively sources of information confirming over and over again their fears.
Our Migrant Soul. Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of ´Latino´ by Héctor Tobar approaches the variety of experiences of being - often an undocumented - Latin American immigrant in the US through stories. His own story, his own family story, his relatives stories, his current and former neighbours stories and unknown people stories.
I can grasp theoretically the identity layers and challenges of being a minority, but through stories I am able to access personal experiences, to figure out the stories and their emotional weight, I can represent in the front of my eyes the people telling or experiencing those events. I can better acknowledge the similarities with other non-White stories - as related in the book about Black Americans - and eventually think about what would follow next, at what extent there will be a similar pattern marking the evolution of a given phenomenon.
Our Migrant Soul, a book I had access to in audiobook format, is an excellent collection of stories that may enrich both the researcher and the curious reader about the generous contribution of immigrants from all layers of life to our experience about identity.
Rating: 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment