McNeal, Jasmine

Hello, my name is Jasmine McNeal and I am from South Central, Los Angeles. I am African American and I'm a World Arts and Cultures major. I really enjoy immersing myself in the education on other cultures and I value the connections I can make to my own. I'm also excited to be taking this class because I'm interested in learning about what it means to be Chicana and how art can influence the Chicana identity.

In There's No Place Like Aztlan, The author discusses how Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz feels a sense of displacement from being in Oz versus her home in Kansas. I appreciated that comparison between Dorothy trying to find her identity in an "uncivilized" city, which was Oz and how indigenous artists who are also displaced are also on a journey to find their homeland, which is equivalent to identity. I also see a trend in the African American culture with the connection to the homeland as well. There is a trend in African American culture where some of us hope to find peace and return home to our Motherland of Africa. There has also been a longing for identity in the community to find a piece of ourselves that was taken from us in slavery. There is a similar comparison to Aztlan, which Gaspar De Alba describes as, "... the reclamation of 'the land of our birth', a lost or stolen motherland that was taken involuntarily"