Something else to read

I've been away from work for a few days. The school year ended and I've moved out of the school and into my agency's office and took a much-needed (albeit short) vacation. While I was away, I read a fascinating book that I recommend to everyone working in social work, public health, and education, as well as anyone who is Latino or works with Latino communities.

In the Land of God and Man describes how "good girls" are brought up in Latin America and how for the author, there was very little room for questioning the Church, the law and the roles of men and women. She explores abortion (including a disturbing passage on the methods women utilize to perform self-induced abortions), homosexuality, transvestitism, men having sex with men, machismo, and the impact of gender roles on the whole society, including the women who can afford to employ servants and those that live in favelas. A key thread is the effect that AIDS has had on these prescribed gender roles (for example, the infection of "monogamous" wives who married as virgins) and how it is forcing these issues out into the open. The author enriches her journalistic accounts with her own personal experience as a "good girl" in Colombia who becomes "americanized" in the US during high school and college.

Toward the end of the book, she discusses how there is no exact translation of the word, “empowerment” in Spanish, despite the widespread use of the term by foundations, organizations and the World Bank to fund and operate programs aimed at “empowering women.” She writes, “Is the word ‘empowerment’ such a foreign and imported –and censored- concept for Latins that there is no space for it?” After I read this, I realized that I have tried to say the word “empower” to many of my Latina clients and never really felt I was translating it correctly. It seems it will take much more than a dictionary to translate that concept.