Liliana E. Correa

'Cuerpos'

Over the past few months, we have had the immense pleasure of working with Latinx writers and artists for this special issue of the Australian Multilingual Writing Project. In a time of uncertainty and loss, it has been a humbling reminder of how beautiful and connected our community is. Reading all the submissions, selecting them to feature where we had limited spots, getting to know new writers and read other sides of some we already held great affection for, has been nothing short of a privilege.

Poetics in the Time of Pandemic. There is Always Going to be a Before and an After

This paper reflects on the impact of lockdown in Sydney on artists and creatives. We share our personal story of how we imagined our lives would be before COVID-19 and the changes we observed after entering in pandemic mode. Intertwining images taken with a mobile phone and text, we offer our observations on the evolving new language that appears around us in supermarkets, on walls and on the footpath: signs determining social interactions and affecting behaviour. We also touch on the idea of how writing can bring us home and make us feel closer to our languages and countries of origin. We underline theatre's importance to tell stories from the time of the pandemic, when governments have been found wanting due to lack of care of the most vulnerable, in particular First Nations peoples. We reflect on the need for reinvention, accepting change, reassessing our human values and making present our links to the natural world. As the pandemic takes us from one stage to the next, we suggest that creativity is the one possible space that offers relief and hope and opens up possibilities to make sense of our new reality while contributing to a collective sense of humanity.

From Little Words, Big Words Grow: Annotations on the Yo, Sí Puedo Experience in Brewarrina, Australia

This article is a reflection on the application of the Cuban literacy methodology Yo, Sí Puedo to the Australian setting. The Yo, Sí Puedo / Yes, I Can! model developed in Cuba by the Instituto Pedagógico Latinoamericano y Caribeño, IPLAC (Institute of Pedagogy for Latin America and the Caribbean) has been successfully implemented across the Global South as a strategy of adult literacy. It is a legacy of our Latin American revolutionary roots, with its origin in the Freirean pedagogy of the oppressed. Expanding across continents this model continues to teach reading and writing to disenfranchised adults in marginal and Indigenous communities, from the Argentinean Chaco to Brewarrina in northern NSW, Australia. Its aim is to contribute to the hope of improving the health and educational outcomes of the country's First Peoples. This article is indebted to conversations with the Cuban advisor of Yes, I Can!, José Manuel Chala Leblanch. Observing him working in the classroom setting of Brewarrina touched me at different levels: personally because it reminded me of my own family experiences with the education system in my country, Argentina; and professionally as an educator negotiating different languages and cultures. It also reinforced my belief in the importance of incorporating Indigenous ways of learning and teaching to Western styles of teaching and learning. I built this reflection moving from personal and poetic—visual and textual—narratives and observations to academic interventions informed by researched literature on adult and Indigenous education.

El lugar de la memoria: Where Memory Lies

Memory, belonging and continuity beginning with history, unthinkable events somehow unnamed that will remain somewhere, that will get retold, once and once again. Letting the storyteller continue unravelling and recuperating moments. Memory giving us context and place, a geographic and historical site with references to the past and, at the same time, placing us in an active present time, making my actions relevant to this here, and now, in a space of absolute belonging. Perhaps this is why we, migrants repeating our millenary customs with some sense of attachment, continue to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and so then a story must be told. This article explores the distinctive roles that memory play in the context of migration. Memory dynamic is constructed in dialogue with others, and resides in artistic expression, or what Paul Willis calls cultural penetrations. Memory contextualizes our actions and functions as emotional sustenance. For those living outside their culture of origin, by choice or forced, there is a constant tension in our daily negotiations with the surrogate country: a tension between conflicting desires and responsibilities that memory helps to alleviate. Memory and the reinvention of one's histories mediate between current geographic locations and imaginary homes by providing a sense of place and belonging. Looking at the role that memory plays for Latin American migrants in Australia, I reflect on my own experiences utilizing a bilingual mode of expression that includes personal accounts, excerpts from artists' testimonials, and photographic documentation.

Los Sentidos de la Noche (Senses of the Night)

One way to explore the complexities of senses, cultures and identities is through creativity and in conversations with other artists exchanging experiences or reflecting about personal journeys. I use creative prose, poetry and image-text compositions, for example in the form of postcards or collage. Creative conversations have facilitated an understanding of this country's complexities, and through this process I can make sense of my surroundings while sustaining a connection with places in Latin America I considered home. In this instance I invited Uruguayan painter Abigail Lutzen, trained in the Constructivist School of paint led by Torres Garcia and Tjanara Jaly Talbot, a young Indigenous woman from Sydney who supports Sydney Action for Juarez, a group that I established with other women to raise awareness about gender violence in Mexico. These are different representations of poetic and visual “feminine sensitivities” showing how we make sense of our immediate cultural environment in solidarity with others and engaging in creative collaborations as women artists.

From Hermosillo to Hill End: Potter Lino Alvarez Carrasco