[2018 feels like
it’s been about ten years in one, but it’s almost done, so this week I’ll
AmericanStudy a handful of the biggest stories from the year that was. I’d love
to hear your year in review thoughts as well!]
On three of the
many newly elected
Americans who embody the best of our community and identity.
1)
Veronica
Escobar: Escobar and Sylvia
Garcia were both elected in November, becoming the first two Latinx
Congresswomen from Texas (one of the nation’s most Latinx states, of course). They’re
equally inspiring and impressive, but I wanted to highlight Escobar for a
somewhat selfish but pretty cool reason: she is a former
college English professor, having taught Chicano literature at both the
University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) and El Paso Community College. She also
defines herself as a voice from the border and an heir to one of my favorite American
writers, Gloria Anzaldúa. If that’s not one of the coolest sentences I could
write about a newly elected Congresswoman, I don’t know what is!
2)
Jahana
Hayes: Escobar was one of a number of teachers elected as part of the 2018
blue wave (you’re damn right I’m calling it a
blue wave still), including, in one of the most ironic political results in
American history, Tony
Evers, the school superintendent who defeated Scott Walker to become
Wisconsin’s new governor. But only one of those newly elected teachers was the
2016 National Teacher of the Year: Jahana
Hayes, who became the first African American woman from Connecticut elected
to Congress. That Hayes was a social studies teacher at John F. Kennedy High
School (in Waterbury, CT), and one who was awarded her teacher of the year
recognition by none other than President Barack Obama, are
only symbolic layers of icing on this very real, and very American, cake.
3)
Deb Haaland:
The first two Native American women elected to Congress were elected this year,
and understandably a lot of the attention has been directed to Sharice
Davids, a lesbian MMA fighter from Wisconsin’s Ho-Chunk nation elected to
the House of Representatives in Kansas (another one of those very American
sentences). But I’m a particularly big fan of Deb Haaland, elected to Congress
from New Mexico—she’s a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, the same community
that produced the author and protagonists of one of my two favorite American novels,
Leslie
Marmon Silko’s Ceremony
(1977); and she’s an incredibly impressive and, as she puts it in this
piece’s title, fierce voice. That phrase could be used to describe all
three of these newly elected officials, and many others as well who helped make
this one of the inspiringly American elections I’ve ever experienced.
December Recap
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? 2018 reflections you’d share?
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