Response Paper 9

Quilt Essay

A cultural quilt represents part of someone´s heritage. It can help you to understand where the person comes from, which kind of practices are done in its culture, and the most important thing: its interests, values, and beliefs. To share your quilt, as we did on our culture class presentation, can be very useful to make you feel more proud of whom you are, and also can help you to feel more identified with your roots; which is something that you should never forget.
My quilt was done to represent my personal interests, which are art forms from Costa Rica. I chose art forms because I can easily identify with this kind of products. I put three main elements on my quilt, and each of them represented a different aspect of art. For example, I put an electric guitar with the words “National Rock Music” because what I wanted to represent was the most popular kind of music in our country. These days, among all generations this genre of music is the most appealing. Bands like “Evolución”, which performs alternative rock, and “Time´s Forgotten”, which performs progressive rock have a huge amount of followers these days. I also wanted to represent Costa Rican literature through story tellers, so I put a book with a picture on it of the most popular story teller in our country: Juan Madrigal, better known as “Juan Cuentacuentos”. He appeals any kind of audiences because its stories are about Costa Rican´s urban legends, or are very colloquial stories. On the other hand, we have a young group of story tellers named “Colectivo Cuentiando”. They are four guys from the University of Costa Rica who get together for a college project, and ended up performing all around the country. They focus mostly on urban audiences, so the vocabulary that they use to tell its stories is the same as the one that is use for teenagers and young adults from our country, and that makes them unique. Finally, the last element that I put on my quilt was a typical symbol of theater, which is a drawing of two masks, one is happy and the other one is sad. This drawing represents Costa Rican theater. In our country the most popular kind of theater is comedy, so most of the theater´s groups work on that particular style; however, there is group call “Giratablas”, which work on any kind of theater style. Everyone can become part of “Giratablas” because they offer workshops for people of any age, and from everywhere. Professors are professionals on that field, and they help you to become one professional as well.
So, basically my quilt represented the kind of art that I enjoy from my country, and sharing this assignment with my classmates and the foreigners was a very nice experience to show them a little bit of Costa Rican art. The quilt presentation was part of the Costa Rican celebration of the Guanacaste´s annexation, so there were some folklore dancers and musicians, and also delicious typical food. We all share the snacks, and then we presented our quilts. I enjoyed the experience because I not only had the opportunity to show my small piece of art, but I also had the change to meet people from other interesting cultures; people who have been traveling a lot, so they have a lot of experiences to share. We also exchange ideas, values, and particular beliefs. For example, one girl was surprised by the fact that I still live with my parents and siblings because in her country people leave their parents home when they are around 19 or 20 years old. So, I was amazed by the fact that I was able to notice a lot of cultural differences between us just in a conversation of around 30 minutes.
Basically, the quilt experience was very educational for me from the beginning of the assignment. First, I had to come up with the idea of an element of the culture which represented my background, then I had to figured it out how to represented it in a piece of quilt, then I had to shared it with the rest of my partners, and finally I had to do a reflection of the entire experience. So, it was not only a nice experience, but it also was a very formative assignment.