Voices from the Gaps: Kym RagusaPosted in Articles, Biography, Identity Development/Psychology, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2010-09-05 01:38Z by Steven |
Voices from the Gaps: Kym Ragusa
Voices from the Gaps
University of Minnesota
2007-04-24
Shalee Dettmann
Joey Grihalva
Jenna Fodness
Gaushia Thao
I don’t know where I was conceived, but I was made in Harlem. Its topography is mapped on my body: the borderlines between neighborhoods marked by streets that were forbidden to cross, the borderlines enforced by fear and anger, and transgressed by desire. The streets crossing east to west, north to south, like the web of veins beneath my skin.
The Skin Between Us (26)
In the prologue of her acclaimed memoir, The Skin Between Us, Kym Ragusa writes of a journey she took in 1999 to her paternal ancestors’ home of Messina, Italy. A year after the death of her two grandmothers—the central figures in her personal life, each representing her Italian and African-American heritage respectively—Ragusa embarks on a search for clues about her identity. This journey is symbolic of her artistic work as she is constantly involved in the formulation and explication of what it means to be multicultural.
Kym Ragusa was born February of 1966 in Manhattan, NY. Ragusa comes from a mixed background: her mother is African American and her father is Italian. Ragusa’s ancestors on her mother’s side were brought to the United States as African slaves…
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