Paula's Taco Salad

Effing delish. It reminds me of all the summer grilling parties in Mt. P! Anyway, her "secret" was to use Doritos and to make sure not to stir everything together until immediately before eating... which is why my version is also wonderful. Plus I used the low-cal Western dressing. Yes, it's white-trash-tastic.

Javier Bardem? Yes Please!

Many found the story inspiring, many found it patronizing. I hate Julia Roberts, but I'm still waiting patiently for the film version of "Eat, Pray, Love." The release date is August 13th and people are already bitching about it... read here! Anyway, maybe I'll re-read the book this summer so I can decide whether or not it will still have the impact on me that I thought it did back in 2007. Now to find my copy... oh wait, I lent it to some illiterate hoe-bag. Oops.

Sweatshop warriors: Immigrant women workers take on the global factory By Miriam Ching Yoon Louie

Ok, not sure what I'm reading so I'll try for most of it =)





Looking at Louie's text, I found that the intricate stories of the Chinese, Korean, and Mexican immigrant women workers permeated deeply. On p. 3 Louie acknowledged that "the powerful and the priviledged often stifle these women's voices."

Other points that I latched on to (and can also serve to augment my research interests) are as follows:

- subcontracting through immigrant women workers is carried through in many industries globally and non-globalized locally-based sectors (e.g. food processing, restaurants, service, etc.)

- the global sweatshop pyramid of exploitation comes clothed in the specific gender, race, class, and national garments of its workers, subcontractors, and elit (p. 6)

- Louie (p. 11) generated 5 main themes from the women's stories:

a. the women worked in their homelands, within economies that have been increasingly integrated
into the global sweatshop

b. the women migrated to urban centers inside their rapidly industrialized countries, and to the
US, the country whose dominance has so deeply influenced the destinies of their homelands

c. the women worked in the sweathsop segments of the US labor market

d. the women chronicled the painful yet liberating process through which they changed from being
sweatshop industry workers to sweatshop warriors

e. the women helped build workers' centers that enabled them to both resist the oppressions they
face and begin to fashion new ways to work, live, think, and create

Some questions:

What is a 'sweatshop' and how can Western perspectives influence that definition?

How/why is the turn from 'workers' to 'warriors' significant?

What changes have we witnessed since the publication of this text?

Does Louie ever run the risk of romanticizing the discourses of immigrant women workers due in part because of her anecdotal writing style? Why or why not? Can this be detrimental to her argument? Expound.