Clemente between the worlds: Exploring race through the novella

[Cindy McMurray]

An Ethics Institute colloquy with Dr. Jose Torres-Padilla

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Noon over Zoom: https://bit.ly/3u3t3rE

Institute for Ethics in Public Life

Roberto Clemente was the iconic Afro-Puerto Rican baseball hall-of-famer
who died tragically on a humanitarian mission to aid the victims of an
earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua. In a new novella about Clemente,
Torres-Padilla – a long-time member of SUNY Plattsburgh’s English program –
explores racism from a Caribbean and Puerto Rican perspective. Rather than
offering readers a fictional biography, the novella  represents a fictional
journey into Clemente’s afterlife experience – essentially a voyage of
discovery, self-awareness and self-affirmation, particularly as these
relate to Clemente’s African ancestry. Torres-Padilla’s approach to the
Clemente narrative is influenced by current critical race theory, and
therefore our conversation on Wednesday will undoubtedly focus on issues of
race, racism, and racist ideology. Torres-Padilla will also examine the
connection between colonialism and racism and draw our attention to the
nuanced differences in the ways a Puerto Rican experiences racism in Puerto
Rico (or an Afro Latinx person in their own country) as opposed to what
happens in the United States in general. Throughout the novella,
Torres-Padilla raises, through Clemente, the prickly problems of racism
that many Latinx communities continue to confront.

Colloquies at the Ethics Institute are open to all members of the SUNY
Plattsburgh community.

For further information, contact Dr. Jonathan Slater, director of the
Institute for Ethics in Public Life at slaterjr at plattsburgh.edu
<slaterjr at plattsbrugh.edu>.

The Institute for Ethics in Public Life is a program of SUNY Plattsburgh
with additional support made possible through generous gifts to the
Plattsburgh College Foundation.
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