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Rare Books Goes to Utah State University!

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Rare Books Loans

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ailments, Alexa Sand, Andromachus, animal, antidotes, Antioch, antiquity, Arab, Arabic, aristocracy, artists, Athalus III, Avicenna, Baghdad, Barcelona, benefits, Bibliotheque National de France, binding, bites, border, Byzantine Renaissance, Cairo, climate, codex, Constantinople, court, covers, Criton, culture, display, doctor, drink, drugs, Egypt, Ellucasim Elimittar, exhibition, facsimile, food, formulas, French, fruits, Giovaninno de Grassi, grammarian, Graz, Greek, handbook, happiness, healing, health, Hebrew, Hellenistic, herbal, herbs, Homeric, household, hygiene, Ibn Butlan, illustration, Italian, Italy, King of Pergamum, Latin, layout, layperson, leather, magical, management, manual, Materia medica, medical, medicine, medieval, Merrill-Cazier Library, Mesopotamia, Middle Ages, mineral, miniatures, Mithridates, Moleiro, monk, movement, nature, Nero, Nestorian, Nicander of Colophon, observation, occidental, opium, pain, paper, patrician, Pedanius Dioskurides, pharmacological, physician, plants, poet, poisons, potions, publicity, rare books, reception, remedies, rest, Roman, sadness, samples, scholar, science, simples, sleep, Special Collections, stings, substances, symposium, Syria, Syrian, Theatrum sanitatis, therapeutic, toxicology, Trajan, Ububchasym of Baldach, University of Utah, Utah State University, vegetables, Venice, woman, wooden

Last semester, Rare Books loaned six of its medieval manuscript facsimiles to the Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University in collaboration with an art history course taught by Professor Alexa Sand. The upper-level course, “Special Topics Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Art: Rare Books and Facsimiles,” provided a wide-ranging introduction to the interdisciplinary field of manuscript studies. The focus was the history of the codex from its advent in late Roman times to the early print era.

Each student selected a facsimile and researched its origins, history, and significance toward the final assignment of including it in a group-curated exhibition displayed in the library. The seminar concluded with a one-day symposium in which student researchers played an active role in discussion.

The materials selected for study related to botany and its medical and magical associations from late antiquity through the early modern period. Students prepared all aspects of the exhibition, from layout and display to publicity and the opening reception, working with Special Collections faculty and staff and Professor Sand.

Facsimiles on loan from Rare Books were:


Des Pedanius Dioskurides aus anazarbos arzneimittellehre in funf buchern
Ca. seventh century, Italy
Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1988
R126 D56 1988

Facsimile. This manuscript is one of the oldest in the tradition of Materia medica, a pharmacological treatise written by Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the first century CE. Dioscorides’ work was used by the medieval world for centuries. In the sixth century it was translated into Latin and by the ninth century it had been translated into Arabic, Syrian and Hebrew. More than four hundred plants are described in this illustrated herbal manual, each illustration bordered in red ink. The binding of wooden covers and leather accords with the character of the original.


Theriaka y Alexipharmaka de Nicandro
Nicander of Colophon
Barcelona: Moleiro, 1997
QP41 N53 1997

Facsimile. The Greek text for this codex, produced in the tenth century, was written in Constantinople in the second century BCE. Nicander, a trusted doctor, poet, and grammarian served in the court of Athalus III, King of Pergamum. In Homeric-style verses, Nicander describes poisons caused by animal bites and stings and by the ingestion of plant, animal, and mineral substances. Antidotes are given for each type of poisoning. These nearly sixty formulas were later improved upon by Mithridates, who added opium and aromatic herbs to the potions. Nicander’s work was used by Criton, the doctor of Trajan, and Andromachus, Nero’s doctor, and is the oldest extant Greek text relating to toxicology. Using this text as his basis, Andromachus compiled a list of seventy-one curative remedies – a list used until the nineteenth-century as the panacea textbook for all and any poisonings. The tenth-century codex, a product of the Byzantine Renaissance, is the only remaining illuminated copy of Nicander’s poetry. The forty-one illustrations form a part of the Hellenistic artistic tradition. The original is now housed at the Bibliotheque National de France. Facsimile edition of nine hundred and eighty-seven copies. University of Utah copy is no. 469.


Theatrum sanitatis
Ububchasym of Baldach (d. ca. 1068 AD)
Eleventh Century
Barcelona: M. Moleiro, 1999
RS79 T46 1999

Facsimile. This handbook of health was written between 1052 and 1063 CE by the Arab scholar Ububshasym of Baldach, better known throughout medieval literature as Ellucasim Elimittar. Many of the concepts used in his writing were derived from earlier Greek, Roman, and Arabic medical treatises. Good health depended upon six essential factors: climate, food and drink, movement and rest, sleep and wakefulness, happiness, pain and sadness. Plants, fruits, vegetables, and basic hygiene also affect a person’s health. Ninety-nine of these and other elements are described with the therapeutic properties of each and the ailments that may be helped by them. The illustrations were influenced by the school of Giovannino de Grassi. Two hundred and eight red-framed, nearly full-page illuminations illustrate scenes from daily life as well as the elements described.


Tacuinum sanitatus in medicina.
Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1986
RS79 T335 1986

Facsimile. Northern Italy. This illuminated medical handbook was produced for a layperson – a woman of the upper aristocracy or of a rich patrician family able to read, and afford, a lavish book. A reference of sorts for the household management of health and healing, this type of book goes back to an Arab source written by the physician Ibn Butlan in the 11th century. The Arab art and science of healing decisively influenced occidental medicine and enjoyed a long-lived and distinguished reputation. The Latin translation, which made the codex accessible to the educated of the medieval western world, was widely known. Many copies survive. This particular copy is one of the finest of its kind, displaying over two hundred full-page miniatures of all that was considered important with regard to human health and well being. Beginning in the 14th century, the text was placed below an individual image. The evocative miniatures portray everyday life of late Medieval Italian culture. With a natural style and strong colors, two artists portrayed plants, animals, food, and drugs. All of the objects are within scenes centered upon a human. The text below each miniature describes both the benefits and shortfalls of the object depicted. Derived from the classical herbal tradition, but closely related to Arab manuscripts, the format follows a later western tradition. Bound in leather on wooden boards with hand stamping according to contemporary pattern.


Livre des simples medecines
Antwerp : De Schutter, 1984
QK99 A1 L58 1984 v.1

Facsimile. This late fifteenth-century manuscript is of what has become known as “Livre des Simple Medecines,” a major text of medieval science. Many manuscript copies of this work exist – at least twenty-three from the fifteenth century and one from the sixteenth century. It was first printed in 1488 and printed nine more times before 1548. In classic herbal format, Livre des simple medecines is an alphabetical list of “simples,” that is, unadulterated vegetable, mineral or animal products. Each entry provides a description and, among other things, its usefulness in treating ailments. Herbals as pharmacopeia began in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. The earliest surviving medical herbal is a work in Greek compiled by Pedianos Dioscorides. This work would dominate European herbals for the next fifteen centuries. It was translated into Arabic as early as the ninth century and influenced Avicenna and other physicians from the Arab world. Herbals were living works. That is, copyists, often practitioners of medicine themselves or copying for practitioners, would contribute to adapt or modify an herbal depending on new or different experience. In this tradition, the French translation here includes new sources such as ibn Butlan, an Arab physician, and others. The four hundred and fifty-seven illuminations in this copy, the Codex Bruxellensis IV, reveal an attempt by the artists to be faithful to nature. In this sense, the desire was to return to copying nature, instead of merely copying degraded illustrations from older herbals. Deliberate observation and representation of nature emerged in all forms of art in the fifteenth century. Codex Bruxellensis IV was copied onto paper. Written in maroon ink by a single hand sometime in the second half of the fifteenth century in a cursive script, the copy also contains marginal annotations by at least two sixteenth-century hands. An attempted pagination was added by a seventeenth-century hand. At some point in its history, one owner added dried samples of plants within its leaves. Facsimile edition of two thousand copies. The University of Utah copy is no. 316.


Tacuinum sanitatis/enchiridion virtutum vegetablilium, animalium, mineralium rerumque omnium: explicans naturam, iuvamentum, nocumentum remotionemque nocumentoru[m] eorum/ authore anonymo
Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1984 RS79 T33 1984

Facsimile. Venice, 1490. Tacuinum Sanitatis (Handbook of Health) is the modern title given to one of the most popular treatises on medicine during the later Middle Ages. It combines Arabic and western knowledge on many types of foods, plants, and circumstances, with particular reference to their useful and harmful properties, and how the latter could be cured if necessary. The illustrated versions of this text yield much information on medieval daily life. The manuscript is comprised of 82 leaves, with four miniatures per page, a total of 294 miniatures. The captions or text are based on the Taqwin al-sihhah of Ibn Butlan (d. 1066), which was unillustrated. Ibn Butlan, originally from Baghdad, visited Cairo about 1049, after which he went to Constantinople before settling at Antioch in Syria and becoming a Nestorian monk. Facsimile edition of nine hundred and eighty copies, numbered.

Photographs of people by Andrew McAllister/Caine College of the Arts, Utah State University

Digital scans of books by Scott Beadles/Department of Art, University of Utah

Special thanks to our colleague Jennifer Duncan, Head of Special Collections, Book Curator, Merrill Cazier Library, Utah State University.

 

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A Fulbright Scholar Returns Bearing Gifts

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

≈ 1 Comment

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Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentina, bookstores, Bueno Aires, culture, English, Fulbright Scholar, H. Bustos Domecq, history, Jorge Luis Borges, language, Latin America, literature, Lyuba Basin, Magic Realism, milongas, Para Las Seis Cuerdas, short stories, solidarity, Sur, tango, The Invention of Morel

Rich in imagery and fantastical in nature, La Trama Celeste by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Para Las Seis Cuerdas by Jorge Luis Borges are the two newest additions to the Rare Books Latin American collection.

Every country has a history – that is certain. If we are too young to know our history through life and experience, textbooks can only try to educate us a little further. Unfortunately, the academic rhetoric of such books distances us from the very roots of history, the emotional and personal connections between a country and its citizens where the story of a culture is revealed. This story can only be found within the language of literature.

Recently, I was looking for the story of Argentina. As I walked along the sidewalks of the capital city in the interior province of Córdoba, the modern roads and upscale storefronts clashed with the colonial architecture of the popular Jesuit churches. It was the Jesuit Order which founded the oldest university in the country, and gave Córdoba city the nickname, “The Learned One.”

jesuitchurch

In order for me to learn more about this country, I had to explore the hidden nooks and crannies which veered off main roads. These quiet alleyways acted as a personal time machine and led me even further into the history of Argentina, into old bookstores covered in dust and filled with the smell of lingering memories and dreams.

My presence in the small bookstore on Avenida 9 de Julio was initially ignored, much like many of the old photographs and postcards that had been lost or forgotten. I lingered quietly in between the stacks of books for a while, before I decided to formally introduce myself to the two old men drinking mate at the counter.

nooksandcrannies

“Hola, soy de los Estados Unidos y trabajo con la biblioteca de la Universidad de Utah, en el departmento de los libros raros. Me interesa encontrar primeras ediciones de Borges y Bioy Casares. Pueden ayudarme?”

My newly acquired Argentine accent complimented my foreign mystique, and led the owner to realize that I wasn’t merely a tourist passing by. His eyes opened wide and he smiled, directing me to sit in a dusty chair and wait. Espera. I settled in to the soft, velvet cushions, excited by the all the fragile pages of the venerable books around me. That excitement I felt was elevated to extremes when the owner returned with a dozen or more first edition books and set them in front of the chair. Para vos, he said, for you.

One such book was La Trama Celeste by Buenos Aires writer, Adolfo Bioy Casares.

bioycasarescover

La Trama Celeste
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Buenos Aires: Sur, 1948
First Edition

In Memory of Paulina:
I always wanted Paulina. In one of my first memories, Paulina and I are hidden in a dark gazebo of laurels, in a garden with two stone lions. Paulina said to me: I like the blue, I like the grapes, I like the ice, I like the roses, I like the white horses. I understood that my happiness had begun, because in these preferences I could identify myself with Paulina. It seemed so miraculous to us that in a book about the final meeting of the souls in the soul of the world, my friend wrote in the margin: Ours already met. “Ours” at that time, meant hers and mine.

bioycasaresspread

Translated into English as The Celestial Plot, this collection of short stories was first published in December 1948. By this time, Bioy Casares had already made a name for himself with the release of his novella The Invention of Morel (1940). In addition to his renowned literary works, his fame was elevated by his longstanding friendship with the Argentina’s literary hero, Jorge Luis Borges.

While both working with Sur magazine in the early 1930’s, the two writers met and before long transformed their friendship into a series of collaborative works, often published under the name of H. Bustos Domecq. Over the years, Bioy Casares and Borges, among others, worked to develop the growing genre of philosophical literature in Latin America, sometimes vaguely defined as Magic Realism, connecting dreams and reality through mazes, mirrors and memories, while consistently begging the question of identity.

Within an elite circle of intellectuals, the famous fantastical writers might have seemed impervious to the desolate reality of political, economic and social decline outside the walls of the publishing house. However, it was never too far from reach. Between the lines of their collected literary works the influence of their country’s politics can easily be seen.

In Borges’ collection of poetry Para Las Seis Cuerdas (For the Six Strings) the history of Argentina is depicted in a series of 11 milongas, folkloric songs written in the style of the famous Argentine tango.

borgescover

Para Las Seis Cuerdas
Jorge Luis Borges
Illustrated by Héctor Basaldúa
Buenos Aires, Emecé Editores, 1965
First Edition
Edition of 3,000

Someone Speaks of the Tango
Tango that I have seen dancing
Against a yellow sunset
By those who were able
Of another dance, that of the knife.

Tango from that Maldonado
With less water than mud;
Tango whistling in passing
From the side of the car.

Carefree and loose,
You always looked straight ahead,
Tango you were the one
To be a man and to be brave.

Tango you were happy,
Like I have been as well,
According to my memory,
Which is a little forgetful.

Since that yesterday, how many things
Have happened to us both;
The games and the regret
To love and not be loved.

I will have died and you will continue
Bordering our life;
Buenos Aires does not forget you
Tango that you were and will be

borgesspread

The tango is just one of the cultural phenomena written within Argentina’s diverse history, a history which asks all those who are part of it, or wish to study it, to participate in a continuous conversation. This conversation must include many countries, cultures and languages. Unlike common textbooks, the language of literature provides us with the key to get the very core of history and culture. Unlike textbooks, literature helps define solidarity and shows us how similar we truly are.

Contributed by Lyuba Basin, Rare Books Assistant and graduate student in World Languages and Culture at the University of Utah, who also provided the translations.

Editor’s note: Welcome home, Lyuba and thank you for your gifts!

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Journal of the week — Vojvodjanski zbornik

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Arad, art, artists, Begrade, Bogdan Ciplic, Bogdan Suput, Bogdan Teodorovic, Budapest, children's literature, colorism, cubism, culture, Europe, fascists, German, Hungarian, Hungary, impressionism, Ivan Tabakovic, journal, landscapes, linocuts, Milan Konjovic, Milenko Sevan, modernist, Munich, Nava Sudarska, Novi Sad, Paris, Petar Dobrovic, portraits, Prague, prisoner-of-war, Romania, Serbia, Serbian, Serbo-Hungarian Baranya-Baja Republic, Sima Cucic, Stepan Bonarov, Vojvodjansk, Vojvojdina, woodcuts, World War II, Yugoslavia, Zagreb

PG1400.15-V64-knij.1-portrait
PG1400.15-V64-knj.1-buildingimage PG1400.15-V64-knij.1-wagon

Vojvodjanski zbornik: almanah. vols. 1 (1938) and 2 (1939)
Novi Sad: S.n., 1938-1939
PG1400 I5 V64

This journal of art and culture was produced in Vojvojdina, an autonomous province of Serbia, on the eve of the second World War. The journal, published in these two issues only, assembled the work of modernist artists and writers of the region, including many contributors whose work is otherwise unpublished or unrecorded. Many of the artists and writers did not survive the war.

The journals include prose, poetry and, in the first volume, illustrations – including original graphic works (woodcuts and linocuts) by Bogdan Teodorovic, Stefan Bodnarov, Milan Konjovic (1898-1993), Milenko Servan, Bogdan Suput (1914-1942), Ivan Tabakovic (1898-1977), Nava Sudarska, Petar Dobrovic (1890-1942) and others.

The journal was edited by Bogdan Ciplic and writer and critic Sima Cucic (1905-1988). Today in Serbia, annual awards for achievements in the field of children’s literature are given in the name of Sima Cucic.

Milan Konjovic (1898-1993) became a prominent Serbian painter. He went to school in Prague, lived in Paris between 1924 and 1932 and traveled throughout Europe before returning to Vojvodjansk. He survived a German prisoner-of-war camp.

Bogdan Suput, considered one of the great Serbian painters of the first half of the twentieth century, was born in 1914. He also spent time in Paris. In 1939 he returned to Belgrade where he became a member of the art group, “Ten.” That April, the Germans invaded Yugoslavia. Suput survived German captivity, but was shot by Hungarian fascists in Novi Sad in 1942. An art school in Novi Sad, begun sixty years ago, is named after him.

Ivan Tabakovic was born in Arad, Hungary (now Romania). He studied art in Budapest and Zagreb. He traveled briefly in Munich. In 1930 he moved to Novi Sad and began teaching in Belgrade in 1938.

Petar Dobrovic, a proponent, along with Milan Konjovic, of Serbian colorism, was known for his portraits and landscapes. He experimented with impressionism and cubism. He was President of the short-lived, small Serbo-Hungarian Baranya-Baja Republic in 1921. He died in Belgrade during the German occupation.

alluNeedSingleLine

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DOC/UNDOC — Part 2/6, “A Mouth Full of Ink”

22 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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acotaciones, Ars Shamánica Performática, art, book, book art, bookmaking, books, Catholic, citizen, citizens, colmillo de coyote, colonial, colonized, commentary, country, culture, desert, Doc/Undoc, documentado, economy, Felicia Rice, Fluxus, Gesamtkunstwerk, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Hispanic/Latino, human rights, identities, identity, immigrants, ink, Isabel Dulfano, Jennifer González, laws, lucha libre, Luise Poulton, mask, media, monologues, Moving Parts Press, objects, obsidian, oils, Open Book, performance art, poem, poems, poetry, racist, rare books, reader, readers, reliquaries, Sam DeMonja, smells, sounds, Spanish, stereotypes, stethoscope, stones, sunglasses, symbol, tastes, undocumented, United States, videos, violence

During Fall Semester, 2015, University of Utah graduate students in SPAN6900-2 Analyzing Texts: Form and Content visited Rare Books. During the third and final session with Rare Books, the students were introduced to late 20th century/early 21st century fine press and artists’ books. The session ended with the premiere viewing of our copy of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, purchased in September. Student response was so strong that managing curator Luise Poulton, in her typical over-enthusiastic way, exclaimed, “You should post your thoughts on Open Book!” Prof. Isabel Dulfano, in her own enthusiastic way, immediately took up the suggestion and made this a new assignment, right then and there. Bless the beleaguered grad students! Rare Books is pleased to present these responses.

From Sam DeMonja

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

This is a brief analysis of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, published in 2014, by Moving Parts Press. Our class had the opportunity to explore a variety of printed works. Each book carried with it a unique style and background. Many of these books transcended the traditional concept of bookmaking to create works of art.

One such work of art our class viewed is DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática produced by Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jennifer González and Felicia Rice. At first glance, this piece is nothing more than an indiscriminate collection of bric-a-brac thrust into a secondhand gun safe and pronounced “book art” by its creators and curators. This work takes a sizable step away from the paradigmatic, Eurocentric style of bookmaking. This book has obvious roots in both the Fluxus and Gesamtkunstwerk artistic styles wherein books are made to be interactive, exploratory, and incorporate a variety of media (Backstory). All books are interactive, but this piece engages the reader, or participant, through audio, tactile, visual, and olfactory components. Gomez Peña states the piece’s “interactive dimension may be its main contribution to the field of experimental book art, or rather ‘performative book art’” (DOC/UNDOC).

20151201_154828

The reader, to whom I will refer as one who interacts with this “book” from here on, may push buttons and turn knobs to hear commentary on the various items contained therein. Upon pushing these buttons, the reader hears Gomez Peña’s voice providing supplemental musings regarding each object in the box. The box contains mirrors surrounded by lights, in front of which the reader is encouraged by, Gomez Peña’s recorded utterances, to try on various wearable items such a stethoscope, sunglasses, and makeup.

The “book” is accompanied by videos of Gomez Peña’s provocative performance art. The reader sees Gomez Peña pretend to wield a loaded gun, cut his tongue and ears with scissors, place a hot iron on his chest, and make unintelligible sounds with a mouth full of ink which, according to Gomez Peña, sent him to the hospital. The piece also contains printed material with poetry arranged in a fresh format. The reader must scrupulously follow each word in each poem, as the preceding and succeeding words may be arranged in unusual, wave-like, patterns. There are a total of 15 printed monologues that are lyrical in nature and even contain acotaciones, or stage directions, to ensure each is read according to Gomez Peña’s penchant for performance art.

It is one thing to simply describe this piece, and it is quite another endeavor to try to explain what the piece means. The full title, DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, urges the reader to think about what it means to be documentado in Spanish and what is meant by the term “undocumented” in the U.S. The word “undocumented,” as it is used in the U.S., is politically charged and portrayed as inherently negative. The term is a symbol of racist stereotypes that robs immigrants of their true identity as members of the human family and is synonymous with powerlessness and a lack of human rights. In Gomez Peña’s poem, “What I chose not to do tonight,” the author states “when you cross the border it is as if your identity splits into two and one is permanently questioning the other” (What I chose not to do tonight). The text suggests that upon immigrating, one always possess two identities, an insider and an outsider, as both a documented citizen of one country and an undocumented citizen of another.

The author uses the terms colonial and colonized in his poems to explore this dichotomy of documented and undocumented identities. In one poem entitled “Flagrantly stupid acts of transgression,” the author describes giving an audience member a knife and asking her to cut his abdomen with it. The poem reads “’here… my colonized body,’ I said… and she went for it, inflicting on me my 45th scar, right her on my soul” (Flagrantly stupid acts of transgression). This speaks to the idea of being colonized by a dominant culture. The author insinuates that the U.S. harms immigrants through laws and economic dominance to maintain a distinction between the documented and undocumented.

This poem, and the entire piece, illustrates how undocumented persons are thought of as nameless, faceless, subjects of a colonial economy whose purpose is to suffer the misfortunes of supplying cheap labor to an empirical nation and not participate in it fully as citizens. Gomez Peña states that suffering, such as the suffering demonstrated in the poem, of migrants who “move from their proper place without documents is a direct consequence of a failed global project, but their suffering appears inconsequential. The fact that men, women, and children risk their lives by crossing the desert to escape violence and to make a few dollars to send back home remains insignificant” (On immigration 1). The interactive contents of this piece help to bring significance to the professedly insignificant acts of immigrants.

The objects in the case serve to give prominence to the seemingly unimportant objects that represent aspects of Hispanic/Latino life that contribute to the identity of the undocumented. There are hot sauce packets, Catholic trinkets of Virgins, a lucha libre mask, a colmillo de coyote, oils, obsidian stones, and countless other objects. Each object must carry some personal meaning to one or more person involved in the creation of the piece. These objects may have significance to a wide audience of Hispanic/Latino readers. This could serve to illustrate the fact that there are many parts of one’s life that go undocumented (Commentary). There are elements of identity and worth that are not recorded in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services department.

The packaging of this piece is important also. It’s significant that so much content, such as videos, printed poems, artwork, reliquaries, sounds, tastes, and smells, are concealed within a relatively nondescript box. The box is metallic, cold, and has sharp corners and edges. The only writing on the exterior is: “Documentado Undocumented.” A parallel could be drawn between this and the lives of undocumented persons in the U.S. Labels are powerful in that they mask one’s true identity. Superficially, all that government, or law enforcement agencies, can perceive when they view the Hispanic/Latino population is whether or not they are legal citizens. In actuality, within the cold, metallic container projected on them by stereotypes and sociocultural norms, there is much more to be discovered. Within the box, awaits a world of exploration, emotion, worth, and identity regardless of the label on the box. Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jennifer González and Felicia Rice have successfully pulled off the creation of an intimate medium of expressing these important themes of citizenship, identity, colonization, and cultural disparity through this piece.

“Backstory.” DOCUNDOC. 6 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015 <http://docundoc.com/2014/07/02/what-i-chose/>.
“Doc/Undoc | Art | UC Santa Cruz.” Doc/Undoc | Art | UC Santa Cruz. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.
“What I chose not to do tonight.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. <http://docundoc.com/2014/07/02/what-i-chose/>.
“On immigration 1.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. http://docundoc.com/2004/02/22/on-immigration-1/>.
“Commentary.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.http://docundoc.com/2014/06/06/commentary/>.

Coming soon: Response from Peter Tanner

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