Marisela Norte, NORTE/word

Abstract

Zooming across the geography of the southwest borderlands, Marisela Norte’s 1991 compact disc NORTE/word projects a transnational imaginary that humanizes the daily trials and triumphs of a transnational female work force caught in the web of economic exploitation and dysfunctional personal relationships. Envisioned as an “alternative to a book” (Snowdon 1991) NORTE/word consists of nine tracks of lucid, hypnotic spoken-word narratives. Taken as a whole, NORTE/word is structured like a film, composed of a series of fade-in and fade-out vignettes. NORTE/word, eloquently bilingual, is about women and girls on the “outside”—women and girls outside of the home, outside of loving relationships, outside of adequate education and health care systems, and outside of the mass media. Moreover, NORTE/word is at once a subtle and eloquent critique of power relations that attempt to limit the possibilities of Latinas and a loving homage to the city of Los Angeles and the Latinas themselves who keep the city running even as their “stockings lay defeated after hours of crossing and double crossing” (“El Club Sufrimiento 2000”).