Jessica Matthis
    Staff Writer

Any American who has been through public school in the will know that our country has an intricate history, full of countless leaders and greats, immortalized by fame and deeds done on behalf of their country.

In elementary grades alone, students learn about a myriad of people who they are taught have changed the world – from Martin Luther King Jr., to Christopher Columbus, to Mark Twain. Often, with so much curriculum to get through, even college-level courses are forced to neglect or skim over some of the more fascinating and colorful stories from decades past.

“There just isn’t time,” sympathized Sarah Carrig, a Spanish teacher at UNCG and Faculty in Residence at Spartan Village.

The Faculty in Residence program, or FIR, is designed to enhance student living and learning communities within on-campus residences by providing a space where students can live within the same community as faculty members. Carrig lives at Spartan Village and hosts periodic academic events there as part of the program.

Recently, Carrig hosted a Tertulia, an event historically and culturally significant to Latin American cultures, representing a gathering of like-minded people to discuss intellectually stimulating topics like poetry, art, and literature.

Carrig described her upbringing in Washington, D.C. as well as her Colombian heritage, as elemental to her professional interests and also her motivation for centering the Tertulia on the influential works and life of Langston Hughes.

“In addition to being a very cosmopolitan, international city, it’s a city that is very rich in African American culture, so from a young age, I started learning about African American music, art, and literature… And that’s not to say that it was taught in the schools there, because it wasn’t, really,” Carrig explained, citing the Harlem Renaissance as the period of African American history she was most interested in.

“I thought it’d be fun to just show students a little bit about where both of those cultures intersect, and I think a lot of students, including African American students, may not be aware how many African Americans in our history were actually part Latino themselves, spoke Spanish, or had many Spanish-speaking friends…. This is particularly true in the earlier part of the 20th century, and it’s still true today, and I think a lot of people are unaware of that.”

Langston Hughes served as a great example of this cultural blend, as his father was Cuban. Having spent time in Spain, Cuba and Mexico, Hughes was, “Fluent in Spanish, loved Hispanic culture, and was very influenced by Spanish language and by Spanish literature that he read,” said Carrig.

“As he became more and more well-known and more influential, his poetry influenced Latin American writers in particular. It’s really neat how much exchange there was going on… People are so unaware of this and it’s really a shame they’re not taught in school, in Spanish classes and English classes, history classes, wherever, because it’s a really rich part of our history.”

Almost twenty UNCG students gathered in the common area of the Haywood Clubhouse for thought provoking conversation and a fusion of African American “soul food,” from Harlem Express, as well as Cuban and Mexican beverages and savory plantain chips, a meal representative of the Tertulia’s subject matter.

The diverse group was comprised of a variety of majors – many Spanish majors and students of Carrig attended, as well as history, education, English, business, art and science majors.

However, the general consensus among the students was that Langston Hughes’ influence in Latin America as well as African American culture was new information to them.

Carrig led the event, encouraging students to read aloud both tributes to Hughes’s work from Latin American poets and Hughes’ poetry, while offering relevant Harlem-era artwork for interpretation and discussion.

Hughes’s poems were read in both Spanish and English, alternating from one stanza to the next with the cadence of the jazz and blues rhythms that were distinctive to the Harlem Renaissance.

Discussion of the themes in Hughes’s poetry eventually wandered to more contemporary topics, including immigration, prejudices based on skin color or age, perceptions of individual identity and cultural awareness.

The discussion served as a gentle reminder of the ways that history remains relevant for modern conversations and issues.