Yasmine Blair, Gurba critique

Gurba’s work was a very interesting piece and I enjoyed reading it. The way that Gurba rips apart “Dirt” by Jeanine Cummings expressed a very important message. She tackles the idea that people should not try to be something they are not or speak on things they don’t truly understand. Cummings was clearly someone that tried to step into a character with little knowledge of what she attempted to represent. Gurba didn’t leave anything out she called out Cummings to make her accountable for all the false labels, false judgment, and false perspectives that she put into her book. She made it clear that it was very difficult to stomach all of the misconceptions portrayed in Cummings work. I feel as though Cummings book was a perfect example of how people often try to “white wash” things and act as though they can represent someone else’s perspective. The reality of it is that Cummings didn’t see fault in her work because it is a norm in society for people to change things if they don’t originally understand. Gurba says “ It aspires to be Día de los Muertos but it, instead, embodies Halloween.” was the perfect line that summed up all of what Gurba was try to say about the piece. Cummings tried to write something to represent Mexican people a supposed “faceless” people but instead she gave them the wrong face, her own. Gurba is trying to express that in reality they are not a “faceless” people. Mexican people do have a face yet some people in society try to put their own features on it like Cummings did. Overall I think that Gurba’s work was clear and got the message across. She was straight to the point and gave her reasons, her use of language and tone easily showed her opinion.