[Links are broken, but searched for the titles are keywords should bring them up, too tired to fix rn sorry]
This is a collection of past essays. If you’re interested in discussing them or need help reading them, please let me know. I try to only write about things worth reading, so I present them in the hope they’re worth your time. Essays represent a lot of time, research, and (usually) editing. They are my most polished writing. I’ve written up a description for each essay to give you an idea of what’s important about them.
Una colección de ensayos. Si te interesa discutirlos o necesitas ayuda para leerlos, indícamelo por favor. Procuro solamente escribir cosas dignas de ser leídas, por lo que los presento con la esperanza de que sean dignos de tu tiempo. Ensayos son el resultado de mucho tiempo, investigación y edición. Son mis escritos más pulidos. He escrito una descripción para cada ensayo para darte una idea de la importancia de cada uno.
English stories have the EN tag. / Cuentos españoles tienen la etiqueta ES.
2021
[ES] Una crítica de la clasificación de Don Quijote como loco y no una víctima de la radicalización violenta, con referencias a la radicalización moderna con la literatura caballeresca y el enlace falso entre la enfermedad mental y la violencia. Unas citas en inglés.
[ES] El argumento que el valor del género noir se halla en desarrollar la empatía universal. Unas citas en inglés.
2020
[EN] This essay is about La Vida total (the total life), which is more or less my philosophy of life, centered on literary empathy. La Vida total can be summarized by its name. It’s about living as expansive a life as possible via literature, diversity, and empathy. It works most directly with Gabriela Mistral’s work, while relying on the theories of umwelten and polyphony to do so. Umwelten is defined in the essay while polyphony is the literary technique of writing such that the many characters in a text have their own voices, rather than their voices being dominated by the author’s. The text includes a relatively small amount of Spanish quotations.
[EN] A literary analysis of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s novel Insensatez. Its primary focus is the sheer difficulty of writing about atrocities and getting people to pay attention to the unthinkable. Yet, we need people to think about them, even knowing that this act of contemplation will hurt them. Before reading this essay, please note that Insensatez describes horrible, horrible things. While the essay is far less explicit than the novel, there is discussion of murder, sexual violence, gore, and so on. Most quotations are in Spanish.
[EN] This is a literature review applying a concept of moral distress to second language teaching. I’m especially interested in moral distress because it emphasizes the need for moral discussion and legitimizes moral pain. The idea that people can just ignore others’ moral decisions is a farce; requiring people to not morally advocate or “mind their own business” propagates moral harm in this sense. The second-language specific content is important, but secondary (in reality, I was more interested in moral distress and had to tailor the essay to fit the context of the pedagogy course I was in). For reference, L2 is just shorthand for second language in second language pedagogy.
2019
ON THE PERSECUTION OF THE SALVADORAN PEOPLE
[EN] My undergraduate thesis on human rights abuses suffered by the Salvadoran people, on the domestic and international scene. Lacks yet fully developed sections on the history of US involvement in El Salvador’s crisis and recommendations, among others. Develops ideas like discrimination against youth, the lack of legal options available to victims, the need for asylum, and international harassment.