One of my favorite moments in “My Broken Language”—written and directed by Quiara Alegría Hudes, at Signature Theatre’s Pershing Square Signature Center—comes when the femme performers of the play’s chorus walk in willowy patterns around the stage, each holding a book by a venerated writer. They lay the books on the ground and space them out precisely, forming a path. That image alone is enough to set forth the electric, often moving idea behind the play: that the arts we attend to—literary, religious, choreographic, conversational—are what, in the end, make us who we are and set us on our way. These books and their words are the substance of an unsettled soul, and have paved its road outward, into the world.
While the books are paraded, the performers call out the names of their authors: Allen Ginsberg, William Shakespeare, and Esmeralda Santiago are mentioned. (I glimpsed one of my own long-loved books, Santiago’s “When I Was Puerto Rican,” just before it got placed on the ground.) “Where would I be without ‘The House on Mango Street’?” somebody asks, referencing Sandra Cisneros’s classic coming-of-age novel.
In Cisneros’s recent poem “Tea Dance, Provincetown, 1982,” published in this magazine, she describes growing up— her constant subject—on the raucous, energetic dance floors of that summer resort town:
We were all on the run in ’82. Jumping to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” the summer’s theme song. Beat thumping in our blood. Drinks sweeter than bodies convulsing on the floor.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 21, 2022-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 21, 2022-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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STUNTED
\"The Fall Guy.\"
MOTHERS OF US ALL
Paula Vogel's \"Mother Play,\" Shaina Taub's \"Suffs,\" and Amy Herzog's \"Mary Jane.\"
PURE PLEASURE
The \"Radical Optimism\" of Dua Lipa.
PARADISE LOST
The search for a home that never was in Claire Messud's new novel.
ORIGIN STORY
What do we hope to learn from our prehistory?
DEATH IN VENICE
At the Biennale, the past dignifies the weird, desperate present.
WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I
\"You'll never get away with this!\" Ultra Man vowed as he wriggled in his chains. \"You may destroy me, but you'll never destroy what I stand for!\"
STONES OF CONTENTION
The British Museum faces accusations of cultural theft-and actual theft.
A CAMPUS IN CRISIS
Dissent and defiance at Columbia's pro-Palestine protests.
ARROW RETRIEVER
I am an arrow retriever. After a batrows are costly and time-consuming to make. It seems like a terrible waste-and maybe even a sin―for an arrow to fall to the ground without hitting someone. Even if the arrow kills somebody, it can be reused to kill someone else. As Randolf the Scot famously said, \"Arrows don't grow on trees.\"