PacificOperaVictoria | For All to Hear | Valerie Gonzalez | November 20, 2020 @PacificOperaVictoria | Uploaded November 2020 | Updated October 2024, 6 hours ago.
Join Canadian soprano Valerie Gonzalez as she shares stories of racism committed against her family long ago and how she is still reckoning with them today, showcasing the impacts of generational trauma.
“I think the recent scrutiny of America’s failings and travails has reached across the international cultural spectrum, challenging even those outside America to examine the psyches of their own cultures. It has compelled people all walks of life, to take a private accounting of racism, and to assess their relationship to it. Before the term “systemic racism” became viral, I think that many of us perceived racial issues at arms-length. Understandably, for most people, racial perspective remains invisible due its all-encompassing pervasiveness. As provoking events unfold however, we are being challenged to examine societal constructs built on race, and to analyze if and how such constructs affect our actions, decision-making, define our self-concept and self-expression, create advantage or harm, or promote discord or inequality. Perhaps in this transformative period in history, we can find healing and forgiveness in one another’s stories. In this presentation, I will share my own experience of reckoning with the racially charged traumas that my Filipino family endured long ago, which continue to impact and affect my own Filipino-Canadian-American identity today.
My video tells one of the central stories of my childhood that gave me identity and an understanding of Filipino loyalty, love and decency. It also taught me of the inhumanity and atrocities that occur in the hands of power that operates on a premise of racial superiority.”
- Valerie Gonzalez, 2020
See more at pacificopera.ca/event/for-all-to-hear
Piano Craig Ketter
Hosted by Rebecca Hass
Produced by Roll Focus Productions
For All to Hear
Sponsored by TD
Opera ETC
Physically Distant | Socially Connected programs
PACIFICOPERA.CA
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:16 Racial Awareness
1:30 Filipino Lore
2:35 Chapter 1: The Buggy Driver
4:35 Reunion
6:18 Namelessness of the Buggy Driver
7:12 Chapter 3: History
9:55 Chapter 4: Conflicted
15:00 Filipino Folk Song
18:00 Credits
Join Canadian soprano Valerie Gonzalez as she shares stories of racism committed against her family long ago and how she is still reckoning with them today, showcasing the impacts of generational trauma.
“I think the recent scrutiny of America’s failings and travails has reached across the international cultural spectrum, challenging even those outside America to examine the psyches of their own cultures. It has compelled people all walks of life, to take a private accounting of racism, and to assess their relationship to it. Before the term “systemic racism” became viral, I think that many of us perceived racial issues at arms-length. Understandably, for most people, racial perspective remains invisible due its all-encompassing pervasiveness. As provoking events unfold however, we are being challenged to examine societal constructs built on race, and to analyze if and how such constructs affect our actions, decision-making, define our self-concept and self-expression, create advantage or harm, or promote discord or inequality. Perhaps in this transformative period in history, we can find healing and forgiveness in one another’s stories. In this presentation, I will share my own experience of reckoning with the racially charged traumas that my Filipino family endured long ago, which continue to impact and affect my own Filipino-Canadian-American identity today.
My video tells one of the central stories of my childhood that gave me identity and an understanding of Filipino loyalty, love and decency. It also taught me of the inhumanity and atrocities that occur in the hands of power that operates on a premise of racial superiority.”
- Valerie Gonzalez, 2020
See more at pacificopera.ca/event/for-all-to-hear
Piano Craig Ketter
Hosted by Rebecca Hass
Produced by Roll Focus Productions
For All to Hear
Sponsored by TD
Opera ETC
Physically Distant | Socially Connected programs
PACIFICOPERA.CA
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:16 Racial Awareness
1:30 Filipino Lore
2:35 Chapter 1: The Buggy Driver
4:35 Reunion
6:18 Namelessness of the Buggy Driver
7:12 Chapter 3: History
9:55 Chapter 4: Conflicted
15:00 Filipino Folk Song
18:00 Credits
