Two UC Merced professors have collaborated on a meditative and innovative exploration of the literal and figurative threads that weave through a Southern California city.
“Reparaciones,” created by Lorena Alvarado and Yehuda Sharim, is a multimedia poetic essay about a Latinx neighborhood in Huntington Park, about six miles south of downtown Los Angeles. The nexus of the tale is a clothing alteration workshop along the Pacific Boulevard, the city’s main north-south street.
“I was raised there,” Alvarado, a professor of music and performance studies, said of Huntington Park. “A largely Spanish-speaking immigrant city that has, and continues to be, a source of quinceañera boutiques, stories, wounds, stitches that endure.”
“Reparaciones” is presented by the University of California Humanities Research Institute. It is a contribution to “Care & Repair,” the annual theme set by UCHRI and the UC Humanities Network.
Many Spanish-speaking tailor or garment workers refer to completing their tasks as hacer reparaciones — to make repairs. The phrase echoes reparations — the correcting of wrongs against underrepresented people.
