{"id":169275,"date":"2025-04-03T14:58:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T14:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-april-3-2025-foolish-texts-this-fool\/"},"modified":"2025-04-03T14:58:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T14:58:19","slug":"americanstudies-april-3-2025-foolish-texts-this-fool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=169275","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: April 3, 2025: Foolish Texts: This Fool"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[For this
\nyear\u2019s April Fool\u2019s series, I\u2019ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with \u201cfool\u201d
\nin the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,
\nfor a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]<\/p>\n

First, a
\nbit of inside baseball: I haven\u2019t yet had a chance to check out either of the
\ntexts on which my last two posts in this series will focus. I don\u2019t want to pretend
\nto have specific things to say about them, but I did want to both highlight them
\nand use them as a lens for broader AmericanStudies questions. So in honor of the
\nacclaimed recent sitcom<\/a>
\nabout cholo young men and their families and communities in LA, some thoughts
\non three other Latino cultural works that each redefined their respective
\ngenres (as that sitcom seems to have):<\/span><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Ruiz
\nde Burton\u2019s novels<\/a>: Between that post for the American Writers Museum blog
\nand posts here like this
\none<\/a>, I\u2019ve said a good bit about Mar\u00eda Amparo Ruiz de Burton, one of my
\nfavorite 19th<\/sup> century American authors and a truly unique voice and
\nperspective on our history, community, identity, and more. Here I\u2019ll just add
\none thing: I wrote
\nin this post<\/a> about my friend Larry Rosenwald\u2019s excellent book Multilingual
\nAmerica: Language and the Making of American Literature<\/i> (2008), and while
\nRuiz de Burton published her novels in English, I\u2019d still say she exemplifies a
\nmultilingual literary legacy that can help us radically reframe what American
\nliterature itself includes and means. <\/span><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>The
\nSalt of the Earth<\/a> <\/span><\/i>(1954): When it comes to this groundbreaking film
\nabout Latino and labor history, I can\u2019t say it any better than did the great film
\nhistorian Vaughn Joy<\/a> in that first hyperlinked post for her Review Roulette
\nnewsletter. In many ways Salt<\/i> is in conversation with other films about
\nlabor history, including one of my personal favorites from my favorite
\nfilmmaker, John
\nSayles\u2019 Matewan<\/i><\/a> (1987). But in the mid-1950s, with the horrific Operation
\nWetback<\/a> in frustratingly full swing, a film about Latino workers represents
\na truly radical cultural work\u2014and one that likewise embodies an alternative vision
\nof what the era\u2019s \u201csocial
\nproblem films<\/a>\u201d could be and do. <\/span><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>In the Heights<\/a> <\/span><\/i>(2005): As
\npart of a 2016 series on Puerto Rican stories and histories, I wrote
\nabout West Side Story<\/i><\/a> (1957), which as I noted there started with very
\ndistinct cultural backgrounds for its protagonists before evolving to feature a
\nPuerto Rican heroine (and her even more overtly Puerto Rican friends and
\ncommunity). Given that multilayered evolution, I\u2019d say that the title of \u201cfirst
\nLatino Broadway musical\u201d was still up for grabs, and that In the Heights<\/i>
\nmight well qualify. But such distinctions are ultimately less important than
\nwhat cultural works themselves feature and do, and there\u2019s no doubt that the
\nvoices and beats, the identities and communities, put on stage by Lin-Manuel
\nMiranda and Quiara Alegr\u00eda Hudes<\/a> added something significant to the genre
\nof the Broadway musical, as each of these texts has in its respective genres. <\/span><\/p>\n

Last
\nfoolish text tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? Foolish texts you\u2019d share?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[For this year\u2019s April Fool\u2019s series, I\u2019ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with \u201cfool\u201d in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word, for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!] First, a bit of inside baseball: I haven\u2019t yet had a chance to check out either of the texts on which my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[13299,4759,43750,60796,30458],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-169275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-americanstudies","tag-april","tag-fool","tag-foolish","tag-texts"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: April 3, 2025: Foolish Texts: This Fool - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=169275\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: April 3, 2025: Foolish Texts: This Fool - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[For this year\u2019s April Fool\u2019s series, I\u2019ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with \u201cfool\u201d in the title. 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