Posts tagged J-A- Marzán
The Bonjour Gene

Hot off the University of Wisconsin Presses is J.A. Marzan's The Bonjour Gene -- a story that revolves around the French-descended, Puerto Rican family called Bonjour. Each family member carries with him or her the legacy of the chronic promiscuity of every Bonjour male. Communities in both Puerto Rico and New York City (boroughs included) are also forced to accept the growing populations of illegitimate Bonjour children. Mothers fear their Bonjour child will unknowingly fall in love with another Bonjour. The anxiety of this rampant wantonness is reiterated throughout the book from beginning to end, so that there is no doubt in the reader's mind that the gene is that of licentiousness and irresponsible lust.

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"EL BARRIO: PUERTO RICAN NEW YORK"

The brochure for this exhibit is bilingual. The Museum offers a brochure for each of its other several exhibits, but those brochures are not bilingual. Is it that the museum administrators think that Spanish speakers who still cannot read English travel all the way from, say, Brooklyn, only to learn the history of El Barrio? Wouldn't those Latinos also want to learn about Glamour: New York Style, on high fashion dress? Those questions are, of course, facetious. The Museum was obviously deviating from its anglophonic norm to accommodate symbolism important to the exhibit's curator

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