{"id":815,"date":"2017-11-24T22:56:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-24T22:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-emergencejounral-english-ucsb-edu-v01.pantheonsite.io\/?p=815"},"modified":"2022-11-01T07:17:37","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T07:17:37","slug":"815","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/2017\/11\/24\/815\/","title":{"rendered":"A World I Never Made: Dualism, Violence, and Sexuality in the Novels George Washington Gom\u00e9z<\/em> and The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Francisco Olvera<\/h4>\n

Racial identity (and its formation) within the United States is an ongoing conversational theme, and given our recent election, a crucial one. If one looks at the history of the United States, it is apparent that its culture and society, at large, produces feelings of inferiority within people of color and other marginalized groups. In contribution to this conversation about the role U.S. society plays in the formation of racial identity, this paper conducts a close reading of two novels, written by Chicano authors, and structured as first-person narratives: George Washington Gomez <\/em>by Am\u00e9rico Paredes and The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo <\/em>by Oscar Zeta Acosta. In doing so, it seeks to answer the following questions: How do fictional Chicano males imagine their identity within a hegemonic white society? Furthermore, how does this hegemonic white society, built on years of racial hierarchy and division predicated on policies and practices of exclusion, shape and form Chicano masculinity? And finally, to bring it all together, how do these Chicano novelists portray the complexity of Chicano masculinity as reflective of a society and culture that denies their sense of identity and citizenship? The answer to these questions can be seen in the actions and reactions of the fictional characters within the novels. Although fictional, these characters are still able to illustrate, through their lives, the effects of a racist society. This is seen in intimate ways through questions of identity that revolve around fragmented episodes of sexual intimacy and tension, as well as acts of violence. Identity for the Chicano male thus becomes a place of fluid complexity. It is in this space where one comes to realize that we are not all just human beings attempting to survive the toils of daily life. Rather, some of us have histories stained by oppression; histories that still haunt and affect us today. So, while current reactionary critics on the political right make cases about the \u201cvile\u201d and \u201cregressive\u201d role that identity politics play in the United States, they lack a complex view of history that puts the onus of \u201cidentity politics\u201d on policies and practices orchestrated by a white hegemonic state.<\/p>\n

Practices of alienation and exclusion implemented by the United States directly affect people of color by limiting their social and economic opportunities. Furthermore, these practices construct visible and invisible divides in society which in turn create a racial hierarchy that privileges some at the expense of others. The effects of these divides appear in the areas of education, health, and freedom from imprisonment. The study of these specific areas, however, fails to expose and reveal the unique and individual psychological turmoil within racial subjects who inhabit and exist in a society of exclusion. Fiction allows for a more thorough examination into the turmoil experienced by these individuals. Through the close reading of George Washington Gom\u00e9z<\/em> by Am\u00e9rico Paredes, and The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo<\/em> by Oscar Zeta Acosta, this study will examine how these novels expose fragmented identities created by a culture of racial hierarchy and division, and how this fragmentation reflects itself through a complex Chicano masculinity in the central characters. This complex negotiation of masculinity appears in these novels in the areas of violence and sexuality.<\/p>\n

One way to understand the relationship between a culture of racial hierarchy and masculinity is by understanding that this culture, through its very structure, renders Chicano identity inferior. Masculinity is an area in which fragmentation occurs if coupled with structural racial hierarchy. A fragmented Chicano masculinity can be defined as a reactionary way of being due to feelings of inferiority, and these reactions manifest in the treatment of women as inferiors in order to create within a fa\u00e7ade of strength and power. Gloria Anzald\u00faa, writing about being a \u201cmacho\u201d (a man), states, \u201cfor men like my father, being a \u2018macho\u2019 meant being strong enough to protect and support my mother and us, yet being able to show love\u201d (Anzald\u00faa 105). Here Anzald\u00faa provides a positive account of what being a \u201cmacho\u201d can mean and presents a figure of both strength and love. However, she later goes on to juxtapose this figure with her modern conception of a \u201cmacho,\u201d one whose \u201cmachismo [masculine pride] is an adaptation to oppression and poverty and low self-esteem\u201d and later adds that \u201cin the Gringo world [which is to say the American world], the Chicano suffers from excessive humility and self-effacement, shame of self<\/em> and self-deprecation\u201d [emphasis added] (Anzald\u00faa 105). These factors fragment the sense and performance of masculinity in Chicanos, and thus, for Anzald\u00faa, \u201cthe loss of a sense of dignity and respect in the macho breeds a false sense of machismo which leads him to put down women and even to brutalize them\u201d (105). This \u201cfalse sense of machismo\u201d creates a complex Chicano masculinity under the much larger Chicano identity.<\/p>\n

A better way to understand this complex masculinity is to apply the term \u201cdouble-consciousness\u201d to the Chicano male experience. W.E.B. Du Bois states, \u201cthe Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,\u2014a world which yields him no true self-consciousness but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world\u201d (5). Like Anzald\u00faa, Du Bois understands the power the \u201cAmerican world\u201d holds over shaping and defining the identity (a \u201cconsciousness\u201d) of racial subjects. The other world, the \u201cAmerican world\u201d only allows the Chicano male subject to see himself in the light of inferiority. This application of \u201cdouble-consciousness\u201d to the Chicano experience is helpful in order to understand the dichotomy between \u201cnormative\u201d American identity (whiteness) and that of racial subjects, and how this dichotomy plays an important role in the shaping of racial identity and its subparts.<\/p>\n

George Washington Gom\u00e9z<\/em>, a bildungsroman, begins with the birth of George Washington Gom\u00e9z (also referred to as Gu\u00e1linto), \u201cborn a foreigner on his native land\u2026fated to a life controlled by others,\u201d and follows him as he navigates the hostile early 20th<\/sup> century in the border state of Texas. Symbolically, this location places Gu\u00e1linto between two worlds which will collide throughout his life: the American and the Mexican.\u00a0 Masculinity, as a component of Chicano identity, appears and manifests itself in complex and fragmented ways. One way in which it does so is through violence. Violence in the novel is either absorbed by Gu\u00e1linto and shapes him, or appears in the ways Gu\u00e1linto expresses himself as a racial subject with a history of neglect. In the novel\u2019s beginning Gu\u00e1linto\u2019s father is murdered by Texas Rangers, and on his deathbed asks his brother Feliciano (Gu\u00e1linto\u2019s uncle) not to tell Gu\u00e1linto how he died for he does not want his son to feel hate (21). Feliciano, troubled by this, remarks how \u201cit [will] be very hard to keep such a terrible truth from this male child\u201d (Paredes 31). The early death of his father overshadows Gu\u00e1linto as he grows up; for his father, a figure of masculinity, has been taken away by the same dominant force that years before took his native land (the proto-threat to Chicano identity). By denying Gu\u00e1linto an important symbol of masculinity, the racial system of hierarchy and division which he inhabits begins to split and fragment his personal evolving identity.<\/p>\n

Although Gu\u00e1linto does not learn about his father\u2019s death until much later in the novel, the hyper-violent ways in which he expresses himself in his youth reveal a subconscious understanding of the event which denied him a masculine figure crucial to his identity. An example of this appears when Gu\u00e1linto begins to ask his uncle questions about what his father was like and what killed him. Feliciano lies and tells him he died of a heart attack, but he also informs him that his father was a gentleman (Paredes 101). Eventually, the talk leads to Feliciano revealing his personal antagonisms towards the \u201cgringos\u201d and he gives Gu\u00e1linto a brief history of his people\u2019s disenfranchisement in the hands of the \u201cgringo\u201d (Paredes 102). To all of this Gu\u00e1linto responds, \u201c\u2018Just wait till I grow up! Just wait till I\u2019m a man<\/em>! I\u2019ll get our land back. I\u2019ll be like Gregorio Cortez and Cheno Cortinas and all of them.\u2019 He pulled out an imaginary gun. \u2018Shoot them down like dogs<\/em>. Ping, ping\u2026I\u2019ll kill all the Gringos<\/em> and the rinches<\/em> too, and drive them away from here\u201d [emphasis added] (Paredes 103). Gu\u00e1linto conflates manhood, and thus masculinity, with murder. He believes that one\u2019s manhood grows through violence intended to affirm an illusionary sense of strength and power. Of course, one could argue that this is just a child with a big imagination, but to do so would undermine the violent state within which Gu\u00e1linto lives and exists. His hyper-violent thoughts do not reflect a childhood imagination; rather, they reflect the world that has taken away his father and thus they affirm a brokenness which finds expression in false and vile conceptions of masculinity. They are simultaneously expressions of vulnerability and aggression. Double-consciousness returns here as an indication of what the U.S. dominant white world has placed upon Gu\u00e1linto\u2019s subjectivity: a history of violence which he then uses as his own vile defense.<\/p>\n

The imposition of a racialized consciousness also affects Gu\u00e1linto\u2019s masculinity in the complexity of sexual tensions and desires. The heteronormative sexuality presented in these novels implies sexual relations and thus sexual reproduction. Matters of sexual reproduction become important when one considers how people are categorized as racial subjects, which is in part through their physical appearance. This is evident in an event that occurs towards the beginning of the novel where Gualinto is perceived as a white child due to his appearance. A Texas Ranger (a rinche<\/em>) is aggressive towards Gu\u00e1linto\u2019s uncle and mother, asking them \u201cWhere\u2019d [they got] that white child?…chico americano<\/em>\u201d (Paredes 32). Here, racial features are associated with national identity.<\/p>\n

Questions surrounding sexual reproduction become more prominent as Gu\u00e1linto grows up. After being involved in a knife fight in which he comes out victorious, people at a party who witnessed his fight invite him over. What follows is a hyperbolic celebration of his affirmed \u201cmasculinity.\u201d The party he enters is a quincea\u00f1era<\/em>, an important festivity in Mexican culture marking the passage from childhood to womanhood. In a way, this celebration acts as a mirror to his own passage into manhood. These events meld together and represent a larger rite of passage into adulthood for both the girl and boy, but this melding together also acts as an affirmation of Mexican-ness. Later Gu\u00e1linto is taken care of by the birthday girl, dances with her and drinks alcohol (Paredes 246). It is in this setting, symbolic of Mexican culture, in which Gu\u00e1linto appears to find himself. He embraces that his name \u201c[is] and Indian name\u201d and when an old man asks if it is Aztec, Gu\u00e1linto affirms, stating, \u201cyou\u2019re right\u201d (Paredes 246). Gu\u00e1linto perceives this old man as \u201can image in water,\u201d which is to say, he sees a mirror in the old man (Paredes 246). As he leaves, Gu\u00e1linto appears to have truly found himself, claiming that, \u201cthese were his people, the real people he belonged with. His place was among them, not the \u2018Spaniards\u2019 like the Osunas. He would marry Mercedes [the birthday girl] and live on the farm. He would go back. Tomorrow night he would go back\u201d (Paredes 247). This scene ends, however, with \u201che never did [go back]\u201d (Paredes 247).<\/p>\n

Gu\u00e1linto\u2019s decision to select Mercedes is an undeniable sexual choice to affirm his identity as a Mexican subject. The role of women here is that of a pathway to a cultural self. Their potential unity holds the possibility of relieving Gu\u00e1linto\u2019s fragmentation. But the fact that he does not follow through is reflective of a struggle to confront women of his own race, and, in essence, a struggle to confront his Mexican side because of the imposition of inferiority the society he inhabits has placed upon it.<\/p>\n

If this scene depicts the complex negotiation of masculinity regarding the sexual partners of a racial subject, then the ending of the novel depicts the complete split of the racial subject. Ironically, the final part of the book is titled, \u201cLeader of His People\u201d and is set years after the coming of age of Gu\u00e1linto. In this final part, it is revealed that Gu\u00e1linto chooses a white woman as his sexual partner. On the surface level, this choice of a sexual partner seems inoffensive, but how Gu\u00e1linto makes this decision and the motives behind it reveal a much deeper problem. Gu\u00e1linto himself sees this choice as an erasure of identity. Remembering their wedding night, he states that \u201che was somewhat surprised to discover [that Ellen, his wife] was a virgin. Getting the Mexican out of himself was not an easy job<\/em>, he thought\u201d [emphasis added] (Paredes 283). By having sex with Ellen, herself a representation of what the surrounding world has denied him\u2014an American way of life and comfort\u2014he plans to erase the Mexican identity within him. Not only do the motives behind his choice reveal a fragmented identity, but what he is willing to do to maintain his new status also reveals a deep split within. Ellen\u2019s father, a retired Texas Ranger, insults Gu\u00e1linto and the name given to him by his father, and instead of defending the memory of his father, Gu\u00e1linto decides to \u201cchange his name to George G. G\u00f3mez\u2026\u201d (Paredes 284). In a scene which explicitly depicts the weight of inferiority placed upon the Chicano racial subject by the white dominant force (represented by the retired Texas Ranger), Gu\u00e1linto chooses to see the Mexican side of his identity (given to him by his father) as inferior. This, in essence, reveals that since his birth, Gu\u00e1linto \u201cwas fated to a life controlled by others\u201d (Paredes 15). The culture of racial division and hierarchy in which Gu\u00e1linto lives forces him to see the Mexican side of his identity as inferior, and instead of continuing the constant struggle and clash of self, Gu\u00e1linto chooses to accept the narrative of inferiority that surrounds his racial identity, and thus chooses to erase and betray it.<\/p>\n

The setting and time of Gom\u00e9z <\/em>situate the central character in a world shaped by legal racial segregation. The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo <\/em>situates the main character in the political climate\/era of the Chicano movement, a time and period of resistance defined by the celebration of \u201cChicano\u201d as a cultural and national identity (Pulido 113-114). Still, a similar fragmentation of Chicano masculine identity that Gom\u00e9z<\/em> exposes and explores also appears in Buffalo<\/em>. Although at first, this appears as a traditional form of masculinity in the events in the novel, it is, in reality, a unique portrayal of the fragmentation of masculinity. The main character, Oscar, goes on a \u201chero\u2019s journey\u201d throughout the United States, symbolic and representative of the Chicano racial subject\u2019s search for identity. Like Gom\u00e9z<\/em>, Buffalo<\/em> raises questions surrounding masculinity and its relationship with violence and sexuality, and how these aspects reflect a society of racial hierarchy and division. In Buffalo<\/em>, masculinity is affirmed through hyper-violence and acts simultaneously as a form of defense. This is not to say, however, that violence as a defense is appropriate for the situation in which characters find themselves; rather, it is a response to a racially tense climate. This response must be viewed as reflective of a society which seeks to demean Chicano identity. One scene in the novel illustrates this when Oscar, in his youth, is taunted by Junior Ellis, an \u201cOkie,\u201d who keeps calling him a \u201cnigger\u201d (Acosta 93). This offensive slur is used by Junior Ellis to demean Oscar based on his darker skin color. Furthermore, the usage of this slur represents a culture of racial division and reveals how the white dominant force attempts to erase individual unique identities by defining racial subjects as they see them, not as they see themselves. Oscar fights Junior Ellis and triumphs (Acosta 94). As Oscar walks away he passes and ignores Jane Addison, who, like Ellen in Gom\u00e9z<\/em>, represents a white sexual partner of desire for the Chicano male subject, one which embodies a sense of American identity which has been denied to him. The sexual obtainment of white women in these two novels represents a passage into the American world. Traditional forms of masculinity emphasize sexual prowess as a characteristic of masculinity. Still, the sexual desire for other women in these novels does not reveal traditional forms of masculinity at play. These desires are predicated on the need to survive within a structurally racist society and thus are revelations of a fragmented sense of masculinity. This, alongside the way in which violence is used to affirm masculinity in response to racial feelings of inferiority, reveals the fragmented negotiation of identity. Later in class, instead of Jane admiring Oscar for his \u201cmasculine\u201d triumph through violence, she asks the teacher to ask Oscar to put his shirt back on because \u201che stinks\u201d (Acosta 94). It is not clear that Jane does this because of Oscar\u2019s race, but that does not matter. What matters is the way in which Oscar sees himself after this, and how his response reveals feelings of inferiority. Oscar, in response to this rejection, claims \u201cI am <\/em>the nigger, after all\u2026 I am nothing but an Indian with sweating body and faltering tits that sag at the sight of a young girl\u2019s blue eyes\u201d (Acosta 95). Oscar thus sees himself through the eyes of the white dominant American world, the double-consciousness thus emerges. He sees himself as inferior in front of the \u201cblue eyes\u201d representative of that from which he is denied and excluded because of his race.<\/p>\n

Questions surrounding race in regards to a sexual partner later appear in the novel when Oscar is older. Like Gu\u00e1linto in Gom\u00e9z<\/em>, Oscar displays a complex negotiation of masculine identity when he chooses to reject his Mexican background through the rejection of a Mexican sexual partner. He states that he \u201cnever went out with the few Mexican girls in school because they always stuck to themselves and refused to participate in the various activities\u201d (Acosta 112). Oscar ignores the fact that these Mexican girls, as racial subjects, also exist in a society which views them as inferior. Their lack of participation is not by choice but by the restrictions placed upon them by a society which denies them a self. Oscar later goes on to add that, \u201cI did not know one Mexican girl that aroused the beast within me\u201d (Acosta 113). His sexual attractions represent a culture which glorifies whiteness as beautiful at the expense of nonwhite racial subjects. As a racial subject seeking recognition, Oscar subjects himself to internal splitting and fragmentation erasing his Mexican identity through his intentional rejection of Mexican women. The inferiority he imposes upon his female kin acts as a mirror reflective of his personal fragmentation. He, too, idealizes white as beautiful. In the beginning of the novel, his sexual attractiveness is predicated on his racial appearance. What he sees in the mirror is \u201ca brown belly\u201d and \u201ctwo large hunks of brown tit,\u201d his brownness never separated from his identity (Acosta 11). Following this, he goes on to reveal that his three favorite men are Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson, all white actors (Acosta 12). The choice of actors demonstrates the culture that Oscar grew up in: a culture which idealizes and favors whiteness. This, inherently, subjects nonwhite racial subjects to feelings of inferiority.<\/p>\n

Unlike Gu\u00e1linto in Gom\u00e9z<\/em>, whose subjectivity ends in a tragic form through the rejection of Mexican identity, Oscar in Buffalo<\/em> grows to admire and accept a side of his Mexican identity through his sexual desires for a Mexican female partner. This is seen towards the end of the novel in his culturally symbolic travel into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Oscar describes the setting in which he finds himself, surrounded by Mexican women, his \u201chead in a quagmire, twisted with the delights of the most beautiful women [he\u2019s] ever seen in [his] life\u201d and comes to the realization that \u201cwhatever Alice Joy or Jane Addison meant to [him] as a kid, now they were only grade school memories of a time gone by\u201d (Acosta 188). Alice and Jane, as white women, represented a pathway to American life, but the chase for them, and the possible notion of their obtainment, also meant a rejection of Mexican identity. His rejection of this past mode of thinking is an acknowledgment of his own racially complex identity and a rejection of further fragmentation. Thus the struggles of his masculinity, in the beginning, cease to exist as he accepts and learns to love himself despite the dominant culture he inhabits. Mexico, for him, is the land where he realizes this, but it does not encompass him. He is later harassed and hurt by a Mexico which also denies him a sense of identity. He returns to the United States, reborn a Chicano. As Oscar states, his \u201csingle mistake has been to seek an identity with any one person or nation\u2026what is clear to [him] after [his] sojourn is that [he] is neither a Mexican nor an American\u2026[he is] a Chicano by ancestry and a Brown Buffalo by choice\u201d (Acosta 199).<\/p>\n

The ending of Buffalo <\/em>reflects the era of nationalist pride and acceptance exhibited by the\u00a0Chicano movement, while the ending of Gom\u00e9z<\/em> reflects an era of racial exclusion and\u00a0segregation which offers no alternative to identity like the one the Chicano movement provided for Oscar. Nevertheless, both of these novels reveal the complex negotiation of masculinity within Chicano male subjectivity. The study of these novels is crucial to our understanding that the United States is a space in which identity formation is fragmented and complex for racial subjects; that its historical laws and practices of exclusion inherently create within these racial subjects feelings of inferiority. These texts allow for new ways of thinking about what it means to grapple with racism and oppression. They invite us to see this battle in the intimate settings of sex and violence. Racism and oppression do not only affect material well-being, they also affect one\u2019s psycho-emotional well-being. Understanding this opens up a much-needed conversation about feelings of alienation and inferiority within people of color, and fiction serves as a powerful medium to do so.<\/p>\n

\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Acosta, Oscar Zeta. The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo<\/em>. Vintage Books, 1989.<\/p>\n

Anzald\u00faa, Gloria. Borderlands\/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza<\/em>. Aunt Lute Books, 2007.<\/p>\n

Bruce-Novoa, Juan. \u201cHomosexuality and the Chicano Novel.\u201d Confluencia<\/em>, vol. 2, no. 1, 1986, pp. 69-77, JSTOR, jstor.org\/stable\/27921700<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk<\/em>. Penguin Books, 1996.<\/p>\n

Eng, David L. Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America<\/em>. Duke University Press, 2001.<\/p>\n

Guti\u00e9rrez, David G. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity.<\/em> University of California Press, 1995.<\/p>\n

Harris, Cheryl I. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement<\/em>. The New Press, 1995, pp. 276-290.<\/p>\n

Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity\u00a0Politics<\/em>. Temple University Press, 2006.<\/p>\n

Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract<\/em>. Cornell University Press, 1997.<\/p>\n

Mu\u00f1oz, Jos\u00e9 Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics<\/em>.\u00a0University of Minnesota Press, 1994.<\/p>\n

Omi, Michael & Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960\u2019s to the 1980\u2019s.<\/em> Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.<\/p>\n

Padilla, Genaro M. \u201cThe Self as Cultural Metaphor in Acosta\u2019s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo.\u201d The Journal of General Education<\/em>, vol. 35, no. 4, 1984, pp. 242-258, JSTOR, jstor.org\/stable\/27796969<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Paredes, Am\u00e9rico. George Washington Gom\u00e9z<\/em>. Arte Publico Press, 1990.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez, H\u00e9ctor. \u201cVoicing Resistance on the Border: A Reading of Am\u00e9rico Paredes\u2019s George\u00a0Washington G\u00f3mez.\u201d MELUS<\/em>, vol. 23, no. 1, 1998, pp. 27-48. JSTOR, jstor.org\/stable\/467761<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pulido, Laura. Black, Brown, Yellow & Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles<\/em>. University of California Press, 2005.<\/p>\n

Seliger, Mary A. \u201cColonialism, Contract and Community in Am\u00e9rico Paredes\u2019s George\u00a0Washington G\u00f3mez and\u2026and the Earth did Not Devour Him by Tom\u00e1s Rivera.\u201d Latino Studies,<\/em> vol. 7, no. 4, 2009, pp. 435-456, Ethnic NewsWatch; International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS); Sociological Abstracts,\u00a0<\/em>search.proquest.com\/docview\/222595174?accountid=14522,doi:http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1057\/lst.2009.32<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Save<\/span>Save<\/span><\/p>\n

Save<\/span>Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Francisco Olvera Racial identity (and its formation) within the United States is an ongoing conversational theme, and given our recent election, a crucial one. If one looks at the history of the United States, it is apparent that its culture and society, at large, produces feelings of inferiority within people of color and other … Continue reading A World I Never Made: Dualism, Violence, and Sexuality in the Novels George Washington Gom\u00e9z<\/em> and The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[57,36,35,20,37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1096,"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions\/1096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}