Suddenly, no one, including me, was in Guescheste anymore; they weren't in Miami or Cuba; they weren't in the present, or the future, but floating somewhere in the formless, timeless space of memory.”
― Richard Blanco, The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood
Like it or not, we are not bound by location anymore, we are all interconnected.
Line-by-Line Analysis of In Defense of Modernity
Palm trees or Pine, this land is your land and that land is my land,
- Reference to border politics, arbitrary divisions
- History of exacerbating divisions through border crime, negative press (Mexican bandito stereotype perpetuated by American border newspapers in the 1890s)
Born in binaries I won’t see Spanglish on a drop down menu,
- Binary views of US vs Mexico don’t account for racial overlap
- More biracial Americans than ever, hybrid race and cultures
So do I trust the mirror or the screen?
- Reference to Stuart Hall’s process of encoding and decoding
- How do we negotiate views of ourselves and other within hegemonic frameworks imposed by the media and our own personal experiences?
Someone took a bite out of the apple before I got it, but it still lights up when I plug it in
- Refers to ubiquity of digital media consumption (increased access) and Apple computers
Blue hues and contours reach up and hang on the rings around my eyes, An app will lighten or darken them,
- Increasing numbers of digital consumers use apps to lighten or darken their skin color. Many with naturally dark skin use applications to lighten their skin to appear more white in photos.
- Negative psychological impact on Hispanic and Black communities.
And a company in Palo Alto can stream my pupils across the Atlantic,
- Reference to globalization, social media applications like Facebook
- Cultures can become more diverse, but also more homogenous
To whom? I don’t know, but at least I can choose the shade
- We can’t control who sees our information and personal lives anymore
- We do, however, possess greater agency over how we represent ourselves