{"id":10073,"date":"2023-05-27T15:36:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-27T15:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/lavie\/?p=10073"},"modified":"2023-05-27T15:36:01","modified_gmt":"2023-05-27T15:36:01","slug":"books-backstory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/2023\/05\/27\/books-backstory\/","title":{"rendered":"Book’s backstory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Cheyenne Bagley ’23, special contributor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ivette Guzm\u00e1n Zavala is a professor of Spanish and the only Puerto Rican professor at LVC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, she published her first book titled \u201cMaternidades puertorrique\u00f1as: esclavitud, colonialismo y di\u00e1spora en el arte y la literatura\u201d which translates to \u201cPuerto Rican Motherhoods: Slavery, Colonialism, and Diaspora in the Arts and Literature.\u201d Her book was published with the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, <\/em>a prestigious Spanish-language press in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she was asked why she chose to write her book in Spanish, Guzm\u00e1n Zavala said she was thinking about her audience of Puerto Rican mothers and caretakers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like I have a responsibility to write it in Spanish,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guzm\u00e1n Zavala was inspired to write this book because of her own experiences \u201cmothering alone.\u201d She borrowed the term \u201cmadre sola\u201d from Marcela Lagarde since the term \u201csingle mother\u201d often associates motherhood with marriage. While growing up in Puerto Rico, Guzm\u00e1n Zavala was mothered mostly by women. Fathers, grandfathers, and uncles were present, but her neighbors, nannies and grandmothers played the most important roles in raising children. In the United States, though, she had to create her own community to help raise her son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book also brings together Guzm\u00e1n Zavala\u2019s other passions: art and literature. She has long had an interest in the arts, teaching art in the island\u2019s public school system before she went to graduate school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe arts and literature have always been a passion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is no surprise that our author also loves to read. Specifically, she said, \u201cI love to read narratives written by women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guzm\u00e1n Zavala\u2019s book is its own form by creating a dialog between Puerto Rican art and literature around the theme of motherhood which is central to how people see themselves and sometimes fail to see themselves clearly. The term \u201cMotherhoods\u201d in the title of her book is plural because of the \u201cmultiple ways to mother\u201d according to Guzm\u00e1n Zavala. Her readers will be inspired to think of motherhood as a verb for all people who mother, rather than a noun only referring to a person who gives birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cover of the book features a black nanny with a white baby. Puerto Rico never had segregation but has not had a deep reckoning with racism or its history of slavery. Moreover, there are very few historical records about black women, nannies and wetnurses, so Guzm\u00e1n Zavala had to turn to literature, painting, and photography to explore the many absences and silences of women in history. These sources allow her to call attention to the mothering done by Afro-Puerto Rican women that were part of children\u2019s lives and by extension, of the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was very difficult to do all the research and writing required to write a book with the full course load as a professor, so it took Guzm\u00e1n Zavala several years of work to complete and publish her book. Though it was difficult, the rewards were worth all the work that she has done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPart of my job is to teach but I do a better job teaching with all the research that I have done for this book,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guzm\u00e1n Zavala has used her research in her classes, especially those pertaining to women in minoritized groups. Along with teaching all levels of Spanish, she has included some of the art and literature in her upper-level Spanish courses because these images help spark conversations. Overall, Guzm\u00e1n Zavala\u2019s growth all comes back to LVC. Her hard work goes to show her dedication to art, literature, motherhood and education.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cheyenne Bagley ’23, special contributor Dr. Ivette Guzm\u00e1n Zavala is a professor of Spanish and the only Puerto Rican professor at LVC. Last year, she published her first book titled \u201cMaternidades puertorrique\u00f1as: esclavitud, colonialismo […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10074,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-campus-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}