I feel like I inhabit a different planet when I read these reports. I can’t relate to a single word of this thing. 

A day doesn’t go by without me thanking my lucky stars for landing me in a profession that lets me spend tons of time with my kid, read kilos of books for fun, and indulge my passion for watching tons of trashy TV and wander about aimlessly. And travel to places like the DR, calling it “work.” 

How is it possible to have such diametrically opposed experiences?

So my former thesis advisor showed up at the conference and came to my talk. Since then, we’ve been joined at the hip like popular mean girls. She’s the popular one because she’s at Yale and she’s the guest of honor. But we end up gossiping and laughing like crazy all the time and  I’m sure it all looks totally middle school.

An attendee at the conference gave us a questionnaire that was so poorly worded and confusing that I immediately felt like a bad student who is failing a quiz. The thesis advisor, on the other hand, started correcting the questionnaire and writing mean comments in the margins. This brought back all of the heart-warming memories of how she used to do this to my papers back in the day.

It was a truly shitty questionnaire, though. 

That being said, this is the best conference I’ve ever been to. Most of the talks I heard are fantastic. The cultural program doesn’t make me want to skip it. The plenary talks are great. And everything is very well organized.

I’m thinking we should hold more conferences in the countries of the Caribbean because people here take scholarship very seriously and it ends up being a wonderful experience.

Another series of Dominican graffiti says, “Russians, go away from Syria!” I agree with the sentiment, but where is “Russians, go away from Ukraine”?

I’m very angry right now. The leadership of the Association of Female Hispanic Literature and Culture has been renamed into “Association for the Study of Genders and Sexualities.” The explanation is that we need to be more inclusive.

Of course, nobody cares that this name is not inclusive of me. Because I study literature. That’s what I do, and I refuse to feel bad about it. I don’t study “genders and sexualities.” What am I, a sexologist? 

I’m so angry to see that the word “literature” is being banished from the names of departments and professional associations. Nobody is making us do it. No evil administrator or business person is forcing us to avoid the word “literature” like it’s something shameful. I’m literally shaking with rage. I love this conference. It’s my favorite. And now I don’t think I can come any more because it doesn’t reflect what I do and it would look bizarre on my CV. 

I still don’t understand who it is we are being inclusive of with this new name since every single person here is a literary critic or artist. 

In the Dominican Republic, I always get these horrible ojeras (What do you call them? Dark patches?) under my eyes. And they get progressively worse with every day of the stay. It only happens in the DR, never at home or in Europe. 

I only drink bottled water, don’t touch alcohol in spite of the constant exhortations to participate in the tasting of the traditional Dominican beverage rum Brugal,” get good sleep, etc. Does anybody know what causes this? It bothers me because ojeras normally mean kidney issues, and I had two rounds of severe gestational diabetes, which means kidney damage. 

Is it true that Trump touched Putin’s shoulder at the summit? The Russian media are reporting it with so much jouissance that I begin to suspect they are trying to invest the occasion with erotic undertones. It’s like, did he touch him or did he touch him up?

Throughout the meal at the local Peruvian restaurant, the waiter and I chatted comfortably in Spanish. But after I left a large tip (because I’m trying to be nice and I don’t want to exploit the local workers who get tiny salaries for serving tourists), he switched to English and there was no way of getting him to go back to Spanish.

The very first graffiti I saw in the DR as we were driving from the airport was of a swastika. And then another one. And another. The word “Obama” was written under one of them. 

I’m not a Latin Americanist, and I have no explanation for this. The area we were passing when I saw the graffiti was that of very typical Central American slums with 100% Afro-Caribbean population. 

Ah, so this is why several women told me that the Trump sex talk tapes made them less likely to vote for Hillary. I was on a different continent until 1998, so I had no idea about any of this.

What I don’t get is what possessed Hillary to use the tape with all this history. 

I wouldn’t have supported her at all if I’d known any of this. I’d just be for Bernie, hopeless as it was.