Caramelo: Estudio independiente (Aneli)
For her independent study in Spanish, Aneli chose to read the novel Caramelo by writer Sandra Cisneros. During the second trimester and the first half of the third trimester she devoted her time to reading the novel, taking numerous detailed notes on it, and having weekly discussions with Leisa. Their discussions centered around specific themes that Aneli encountered and was drawn to throughout the book, such as: family, identity, the role of women in families, cross-generational relationships, memory and storytelling.
Since the book focuses so much on the role of women as storytellers in charge of preserving a family’s history, for her project Aneli decided to gather and highlight diverse perspectives of female members of her family from different generations. Apart from interviewing her maternal grandmother (in English) and an aunt (in Spanish), Aneli included her own voice through a written reflection. In it she considers the same questions she asked her two relatives during her conversations with them. By interviewing her grandmother, her aunt, and including her own thoughts, Aneli not only connected three generations of women, but also explored, as Lala the protagonist in the book, her identity as a member of two different cultures. For her creative expression project, Aneli built a mobile in which she wrote selected quotes from her interviews and passages of her own reflection to portray the connections between women in her family.
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La novela Caramelo publicada en 2002.
Propuesta para el proyecto
A la izquierda y arriba, parte del proceso creativo de Aneli para su proyecto visual.
“Like, now, my not going to college would seem like ‘oh, what was wrong with her’ but nobody thought anything about it back then, it wasn’t unusual, not going to college - - - ”
“Fui la primera mujer en mi familia de tener un diploma universitario — fue muy importante. Entonces fui la primera en irme de mi casa sin casarme, tener una pareja sin casarse, tener un hijo y ser aceptada por la familia aun sin casarse, porque eso lo decidí yo. ”
La reflexión de Aneli
Proyecto: Proceso y producto final
