Unscripted

Resource Guide for “Native Gardens”

Playwright Karen Zacarías touches on a variety of themes in Native Gardens which offer audiences the opportunity to dig deeper into a range of topics. Gathered here are some related resources that will allow you to learn more about the communities who are most affected by the issues explored in Zacarías’s play. Amongst these resources, you will also find opportunities to support and take action in solidarity with organizations who are working towards a more just society. In addition, please return to join us for an exploration of these issues and more during our post-show panel discussion following the matinee performance on Sunday, October 30. Panelists from our campus partners at the Carolina Latinx Center, UNC American Indian Center, and the North Carolina Botanical Gardens will share their perspectives and responses to the play with director Patrick Torres. 

RESOURCES

Our campus partners doing incredible work locally: 

Books:

  • All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands by Stephanie Griest. 
    • Associate Professor of Creative Non-Fiction at UNC-Chapel Hill, Griest weaves stories from the U.S-Mexico and the New York-Canada borders, where Indigenous people from both borders face similar struggles. 
  • Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and the novel Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. 
    • In both texts, Luiselli honestly and compassionately tells the stories of those impacted by the fraught immigration policies of the U.S. placed on those making the dangerous crossing from Mexico. 

Essays and Articles:

  • “We Didn’t Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us” by Edward J. McCaughan
    • An article detailing how artists have used the themes of immigration and the US-Mexico border as inspiration in their artwork to chronicle the changing representations of race, nationality, and borders.  
  • “Latin American Food between Export Liberalism and the Vía Campesina” by Jeffrey M. Pilcher from the book Food in Time and Place: The American Historical Association Companion to Food History by Paul Freedman, Joyce E. Chaplin, and Ken Albala, eds.
    • This essay explores how colonial agriculture changed indigenous crop practices in Latin America and how food can foster multicultural civilizations.

Films:

  • The Territory, directed by Alex Pritz from National Geographic Films. 
    • A 2022 film showcasing the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people’s fight against the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon. 

Additional Organizations/Movements:

“Native Gardens” is on stage October 12-30, 2022. Get your tickets now!