Rashaan Alexis Meneses joins St. Mary’s College as an adjunct professor in Liberal and Civic Studies. She has taught at Merritt College, Laney College and Diablo Valley College and holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s. A Jacob K. Javits Fellow, her research and writing focuses on the Filipino and Mexican diaspora, immigration and overseas workers, cosmopolitanism, and globalized cross-cultural influences. She serves as a Collegiate Seminar Governing Board member and, last fall, co-supervised the SMC Writing Center. She has been published recently in UC Riverside’s The Coachella Review, University of North Carolina’s Pembroke Magazine and the anthology, “Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults.”
Spring 2011, I had the privilege of mentoring two colleagues for Collegiate Seminar at Saint Mary’s College of California. So quickly had I jumped for being a mentee myself, suddenly I found the tables turned. Reflecting on the experience, which I hope to share again, here’s suggestions on what I learned that might prove helpful for others:
MENTEES:
-Arrange to meet with your mentor and prepare a list of questions.
-Submit syllabus and course calendar to mentor by second week of classes for review.
-Schedule time to observe your mentor’s seminar.
MENTORS:
-Request syllabus and course calendar from mentees and have them submit by the second week of classes for your review.
-Schedule time to observe mentee’s class and be sure to meet directly after observation to cover questions and concerns your mentor might have.
-Provide contact information and consider following up before the end of the semester to cover any more questions or concerns your mentee has.
-Discuss participation about program activities such as retreats and the informal curriculum.
An end of the semester reflection seems an incredibly useful and invaluable tool for mentors, mentees, and the program. Below are questions, which could be prefaced with: "Mentoring support which is meant to be collegial and non-judgmental. Therefore, mentors are not evaluators."
In your reflection, you may want to respond to these questions:
What date and which text was your class discussing when you were you observed?
When did you have your follow up meeting after your observation? Please give a brief summary 3-4 sentences on what was covered during your meeting.
What expectations did you have as a mentor/mentee?
How were your expectations met?
Were any expectations not covered?
What suggestions do you have for future mentors/mentees?
Recently my Pa asked suggestions for good radio shows about Art. Here are some of my favorite go-to sites. These links always inspire my writing and teaching. Let me know what you think and help us add to the list.
In Our Timewith Melvyn Bragg– he brings in top scholars and academics to discuss art, literature, science, and history. There’s an undeniable Western slant, but the discussions are always riveting and the participants often argue, which is entertaining. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/
Terrence McNally– he doesn’t really cover art but his guest speakers are the leading thinkers and writers on politics, culture, environmental studies, global issues, etc, and the topics are always urgent. http://temcnally.podomatic.com/
Image from Web TV Hub
FORATV– I make my students watch videos of authors we’re reading on this site, looks like they have some good art interviews http://fora.tv/subtopic/arts
TED talks– Hands down the most comprehensive site for interviews with all the leading international and national thinkers, movers, and shakers. This is an incredibly comprehensive and popular site. I subscribe to their weekly newsletter, which is worth it cause you can see what the latest talks are and click on any that you want to hear. This is an essential resource that I check regularly. Very, very inspiring. http://www.ted.com/talks
And, just for kicks, here’s a clip on RSA animate, which I’m currently addicted to, with Slavoj Zizek’s First as Tragedy, Then as Farce:
On Saturday, May 14, I had the honor and pleasure of delivering the keynote speech for the Asian Pacific American Student Associaion Graduation Celebration at Saint Mary’s College. Upon arrival, Hagerty Lounge was transformed into an elegant venue dressed in gold and purple with red and white table cloths laid out in the back for some fine dining that would take place after the speeches and ceremonies. An undergrad named Craig, immediately welcomed me and got me situated. Organized by Joan Iva C. Fawcett, the Director of the Intercultural Center, which sponsored the event, the celebration opened with an address from Jef Aquino, the MC. Alex Carbonel, a talented musician, singer, and basketball player performed throughout the celebration, and her beautiful music really added to the ceremony.
Trying to hold my own, I gave my speech, included below. Three awards were soon presented: the Student Scholar Award, the Student Leader Award, and the Dean Grace Cardenas-Tolentino Award then Brother Camillus Chavez gave the candle blessing, after which all attendees were invited to taste some delicious dishes from James Na and Jim Fawcett’s catering company as well as listen to the beautiful ukulele played by Eileen Lindley, a former student of mine.
This was a happy, tear-filled event, which I am very grateful to have shared, and I hope to attend more since these students are so wonderfully inspiring.
Here’s the keynote speech, a tribute to my family, speaking of inspiration:
APASA 2011 Graduation Ceremony Speech
Thirteen years ago, I sat in uncomfortable folding seats, just like you. Tipsy from excitement, thrilled to be sharing this moment of arrival with family and friends, eager to finally be an independent adult. With all frankness, I don’t remember the graduation speeches. I couldn’t tell you which prominent speaker said what, but I remember feeling like I could catch air and fly. I also distinctly remember hitting ground after graduation and crashing into the reality of life after college. There were the student loans, the string of jobs to pay the rent. I floundered between careers and learned more about what I didn’t want to do rather than coming to some instant grand destiny. Life after college was a process of elimination. Messy and confusing. What kept me sane, tethered to my dreams, and confident in my sense of self were my friends from college and my family.
Hedy Lamarr
Every once in a while, like today, we get to step back and survey what we’ve accomplished, celebrate the distance we’ve covered, and chart the new heights we hope to achieve. We are always arriving. In 1947, a newly married Filipino bride and groom, my grandparents, arrived in the U.S for the first time. Traveling by ship, they crossed the Pacific from Leyte, Philippines. You’ve probably heard similar tales such as theirs. Between the bride and groom they had two ten-dollar bills to serve as a nest egg for their new life in the States. The young woman carried a smile that could rival sunlight. She admired the ideals and beauty America stood for so much that she decided she wanted to be just as pretty and fair as the Hollywood actress, Hedy Lemarr. So my grandma got it in her head to turn her dark Pilipina skin to lily-white just. She basked on the rocks next to the river where she washed and dried her family’s laundry, thinking she could bleach herself the same way her brothers’ shirts and sisters’ linens were whitened in the heat of the sun. When she got home, she found herself darker than the earth she walked on. She learned an early lesson to just be yourself.
My grandpa had been encouraged at age eleven by his mother to make a living in the States. She told him that if he ever wanted to be someone he had to go to America because the tiny island of Limisawa didn’t offer the same opportunities he would find in the States. And, after she died, he went to California, all alone, at sixteen-years old to discover himself and a world that he’d make his home.
After serving in the Navy during World War II, he returned to the Philippines to marry his sweetheart and they sailed back to California. On their journey they met another Filipino who had no money but hefted a load of responsibility and promises that he also made to his family back home. This fellow Pinoy, asked my grandparents, if they could lend him some money, and my grandpa, being the overly generous soul he was gave the man one of his ten-dollar bills. Of course, grandma was furious. “Why did you do that?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, dear, we’ll be all right,” he answered.
Felipe & Ramona Napala, my maternal grandparents
My grandpa always knew whatever adversity he and my grandma would face they’d succeed. He hadn’t the smallest doubt that they’d find their way and be able to share their fortune, so he always took great lengths to help others. I look to each of you today, and I see you doing the same. You’re honoring community and family, supporting your brothers and sisters who journey into the unknown alongside you. I know that by your commitment to APASA, you each have stayed true to who you are and where you’ve come from.
With no safety net aside for their love for each other, my grandparents embarked on one of the scariest endeavors we could ever take, daring to make their way in a new country, living a foreign life among strangers. Imagine if they had Facebook, Twitter, or Skype to keep them connected to home and to warn them of the dangers they might come across.
Today you have so many tools and means to keep you informed and stay linked to your family and friends. My grandparents had only the relationships they’d make along the way and the ambitions their families inspired within them. Still, you’re every bit the pioneers my grandparents were. They, like you, embraced a new world, unsure of the next step or the step that would follow after the first one. Faith, hard work, and commitment to family, friends, and their heritage kept their nerves steeled, helped them grit their teeth, and hold fast to their dreams. I have every confidence you’ll be doing the same on your journey.
You’ve navigated some deep and choppy waters in the different classes you’ve taken at Saint Mary’s, and the different activities you’ve participated in. I’m thinking now of Collegiate Seminar which has given you the rare opportunity to reflect honestly and deeply about some of life’s most important ideas. Rarely will you get a chance to just sit and discuss some of our most muddiest concerns.
At the same time that you’re drawing upon your college education as a foundation for what’s ahead be sure to also remember the stories, experiences, and advice that your family and friends have shared. Think of all the challenges your grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins, and parents have faced to help you get where you are now. Keep learning and shaping your own wisdom, which rests on the wisdom of your loved ones. Honor their words and memories.
Delivering the keynote speech, can you tell my hands are shaking?
I’ll leave you with a couple life’s lessons and you can do with them as you will. Firstly, try with all your might to avoid debt or try not to get into any more debt. Credit cards are bad. Stay away. I learned that the hard way. Don’t be me.
Secondly, stay hungry and keep your thirst for knowledge and experience. Read everyday of your life. Always be inquisitive. Try to see the world from someone else’s eyes and walk in their shoes.
Thirdly, and lastly, keep engaged and connected to your communities. Don’t forget about us here at Saint Mary’s because we’ll miss you and we want to chart your success. Stay close to family and friends as you scale your ambitions and make your way in this world. Keep your communities close to heart because each of you inspire us.
Let’s take a moment to thank and congratulate one another for arriving here, celebrating all that we have accomplished and wishing only success and good fortune for what’s to come. Today is your day, and I wish you many successes. Peace and blessings!
Wishing all the grads many successes!
Big thanks to APASA for including me in such a grand event!
All photos, except the pic of Hedy Lamarr, are courtesy of PJ Sanders.
Honored to be delivering the keynote speech at Saint Mary’s College of California’s for the following ceremony:
Asian Pacific American Graduate Celebration Saturday, May 14th 2-4 p.m. Hagerty Lounge (Please note the change in location; it was originally scheduled in LeFevre Theater.)
Here’s a taste of the speech, an excerpt from an essay written in response to a call for Fil-Am literature:
“Barbie’s Gotta Work”
Unlike my mother who grew up in an old Army barrack tacked to the dusty farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley or my father who sometimes had to sleep in the chicken coop because his family’s house off of Franklin Boulevard in Sacramento was over-crowded with six other siblings, not only did I enjoy a spacious suburban room of my own, but I also had full governship of a pink and white miniature estate. At four feet, the Barbie Townhouse towered over my seven-year old frame. First released in 1975, my three-story edition boasted a blush bedroom suite with a lace canopied bed and matching pink armoire on the top floor. The second level living room afforded Barbie and her friends a cozy space to converse and enjoy tea while lounging on white wicker furniture. On the bottom floor, Barbie hosted small dinner parties and cooked in a cramped kitchen that lacked a stove, an oven, and a sink but offered instead a mini-refrigerator. The townhouse also featured a canary-colored pull-string elevator, which ended up stalling dramatic storylines. Between unspooling the pulley and positioning Barbie just right so her limbs wouldn’t catch as she was towed between floors, she eventually bypassed the elevator, so she could continue her arguments or flirtations uninterrupted.
***
Inspiration for this particular essay was partly borne out of that plastic pink dream we call Barbie. Before I fell hopelessly in love with Louise Erdrich’s tales or stumbled trying to follow the footsteps of Woolf, I wove stories and created characters using the most pink and most traditional of mainstream narrative tools.
The Barbie Townhouse circa 1970’s release was my cardboard and plastic play-stage where I could re-enact and revise plot-lines from One Life To Live and All My Children with an ethnic twist. Instead of Barbie as the lead her friend, Island Fun Miko, was lady of the house and the center of all my Barbie narratives.
Spring 2011 has been nothing but high octane action and on Wednesday, April 27 at Saint Mary’s College’s Soda Center, your salonniere was pushed into full throttle for the Alumni Reading, as part of the Creative Writing Reading Series, which featured Professor and writer Rosemary Graham who’s books include Thou Shalt Not Dump the Skater Dude and her new novel Stalker Girl. Marilyn Abildskov, the program’s director, deemed this annual event a homecoming that, thankfully, doesn’t require football matches or awkward school dances. The SMC Alumni reading is that rare occasion when former students gather together after years apart, to celebrate one another’s accomplishments, and the list of accolades and publications for 2011 was quite impressive.
Many of your salonniere’s students came out in full force support, and I couldn’t be more grateful to see their radiant faces in the audience. Much appreciated!
Elizabeth Stark, current visiting faculty and author of Shy Girl, published by FSG, introduced the reading, and your Salonniere read from her story “Like Fish to Ginger” published in UC Riverside’s The Coachella Review Fall 2010 issue.
And! Check out the write-up covered by fellow alum, fiction writer, and English professor, Emily Bruenig on her site, Notes from a Writing Life. Here’s an excerpt on her response:
The reading was wonderful. Most readings are wonderful, really, if you ask me. Just the act of sitting in a literary audience with a notebook will make my evening, and, I must confess, when it’s a poetry reading, the rhythm of the words often becomes the best kind of trance-inducing background music, leading me to my own surreptitious writing, rather than constant attentive listening. But I didn’t get anywhere close to that this particular evening, and not due to any lack of poetics; both Rashaan and Rosemary write beautifully, but they also each write gripping plots and extremely compelling characters. Rashaan joked that you might have to try kind of hard to imagine her as the middle aged Thai restauranteur who narrates “Like Fish to Ginger,” but I’m sorry, Rashaan, you were wrong. It didn’t take any imagination at all. Your story does all the work.
Still reeling from the intense four-day conference of Associated Core Texts and Courses 17th Annual gathering at New Haven, Connecticut, held on April 14-17, one of the panels that stands out in my mind, and which I immediately want to integrate into my own curriculum was “Writing, Drawing, Producing: Students Response to Core Texts.”
Arundhati Sanyal and Nancy Enright from Seton Hall University presented their best teaching practices in their “Re-Telling Personal Narrative: The Digital Short in a University Core Class.” In their classes, they encourage students to consider their own transformative experiences and personal journeys influenced by the core texts they read. Their assignments allow students to explore and explain how a core text “speaks” to them. Students will gather a collage of family photos and images and set these images in synch with a song that illustrates their inspired experience with a particular text. They work on their project for a half hour in each class session. A lot of the students’ projects focus on decision-making and crossroads. Sanyal and Enright report that there’s a new dynamism in class when students get to work on their laptops. They also storyboard the narrative before creating the whole piece, which forces students to understand pace and determine where do they tighten the flow or when can they expand.
From St. Bonaventure University, Professor Anne Foerst covers the Eight Step Bonaventure Intellectual Education, and focuses on step 3, which covers “Who am I as an individual?” Professor Foerst has freshman students write a self portrait that both self-praises and self-critiques. The students reflect over their intellectual journey over the course of their first semester in college and they model their reflections off of Montaigne’s essays. She uses this assignment as a mid-term project; five pages about myself, which is about becoming your own friend. Students become less self-indulgent and more analytical. Foerst uses a quote to direct and inspire students, “I am my own public. My book has made me as much as I have made my own book.”
At the beginning of the semester, she has freshman write down three adjectives to describe themselves. Foerst doesn’t read the adjectives but puts them away until six weeks later when she has them perform the same exercise, but, this time, she breaks out the past adjectives and has them compare their self-perception. Students get to see how they have fundamentally changed over the short course of six weeks. This assignment helps give them a foundation to write their self reflection. In their reflective essay, students use quotes from texts they’ve read in Foerst’s class, and the essay focuses on personal transformation, exploring such inquiries as the following.
(I’ve added some questions and prompts of my own to try and tailor this assignment to some of my courses)
(My addition) Consider the core values or ideas of two authors you’ve read in this seminar. Summarize and evaluate these values or ideas by exploring how they might have influenced or inspired you by answering the following questions in reflection of these new values and ideas you’ve learned:
Where are you now after reading your chosen authors?
How has your sense of self changed?
How has your outlook on the world changed?
How have your opinions about a specific topic or idea changed?
Who am I in society?
How have I transformed intellectually?
How do I see others differently? Specify what you mean by “others” whether its classmates, roommates, professors, teammates, etc.
Analyze how your relationships to others (i.e. classmates, professors, siblings, parents, lovers, co-workers and cousins) have changed since you’ve read these texts.
How have your core values changed, if at all, after reading your chosen texts?
Foerst explains how students come to evaluate their own construction of “otherness” and how artificial their constructions can be. She asks her class often if they think race is real, and they have a hard time wrestling with this but slowly come to learn that they’re not isolated individuals. “If they embrace their own ambiguity, they can learn to embrace the ambiguity in others,” she urges, and then warns us, “There can be a dark side to the adjectives used” since students come to see their own faults. With this exercise they learn ambiguity and empathy. They can see themselves as a character. These assignments help make the core texts less scary and less daunting. As professors, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help students engage with the texts in the most immediate and urgent ways, and these best practices are wonderful opportunities for both students and faculty to connect with the authors and with one another.
From April 14 through April 17, 2011, I had the honor and pleasure of presenting at the 17th Annual Conference for the Association for Core Texts and Courses, sponsored by Yale University, and co-sponsored by Augustana College, Boston College, and College of the Holy Cross, hosted at The Omni Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut. This year’s theme was “The Quest for Excellence: Liberal Arts and Core Texts.”
One of the plenary speakers argued for the spirituality of 19th century French poetry focusing on a particular piece by Mallarme, and two scientists, a quantum physicist and a chemist, responded with genuine enthusiasm about the connections they’d made to the poem presented and how the poem demonstrated the fragmentation in quantum physics and solvation of chemistry. The engagement from the scientists was wonderfully inspiring, and I truly hope to see more reaching out across the disciplines.
Thankfully the last speaker for the plenary sessions called for more cross-disciplinary collaboration and criticized the institutions for making such collaborations impossible. ACTC focuses more on critical and scholarly work though some of the panels centered on best practices and pedagogy. The panel “Core Images, Part II: Learning, Examples, Practice” brought together art historians and art professors who urged the use of art as a vital source for discussion and inquiry. Tatiana Klacsman from Augusta State University and her presentation “The Iliad in Teaching Art History within a Humanities Framework” covered how culture and values can be analyzed and evaluated through Greek artifacts. Mona Holmlund from University of Saskatchewan discussed approaches to indigenous art, especially in contrast to the Western canon with her presentation “The Challenges of Integrating Indigenous Knowledge with the Western Canon.”
Another literature scholar posed the worry of art replacing the written word, and an attendee followed up by asking how much time should faculty dedicate to art versus text. I had to counter that time is a measure of value, and everything discussed on that panel came down to values whether we’re comparing Indigenous art to Western or text versus image. As Socrates lamented the rise of the written word claiming that text would corrupt the rich oral culture of his time, everything comes down to values, which is determined by culture. We need to keep this in mind anytime we weigh one thing against another. As scholars we should constantly be checking our values and be wary of how our values factor into our curriculum, especially considering how those values may be servicing our goals for diverse student populations.
My own paper certainly evolved out of this consideration of values, which I presented for the panel “Contemplating Critique: How Far Back in Time is It Used?” Here’s an excerpt:
Engaging First-generation Students with Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality
Through his Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau draws in First-generation students through affective means, modeling an essential method of critique and analysis that demonstrates an individual’s agency of power based on reason, observation, and imagination. Rousseau provides a critical point of connection for students who may not be traditionally accustomed to the culture and privilege of higher education, and, through his narrative and argument, students can discover a means for engagement within their communities.
Nicole, we’ll call her, was a student who had yet to find her footing, academically. By simplest definition, she is a first-generation student. Neither of her parents had earned their undergraduate degree, and the college experience was all together uncharted waters for her and her family. She floated through Greek Thought and listlessly wandered through the likes of Dante, Augustine, and Chaucer in Roman/Christian, consistently feeling estranged by authors who looked and sounded nothing like her, describing cultures and concepts that seemed completely foreign, and irrelevant to her immediate experience.
By the time she came to my class as a sophomore, she had found her niche on campus and was part of a strong social network, but, academically, she was still unanchored and her displacement seriously affected her GPA. Still, Nicole was hungry for intellectual nourishment, knowing she lacked purpose in her studies, which inhibited her from realizing her full potential. By mid-semester, she was barely treading the choppy waters of Cervantes, Hobbes, and Locke, until, suddenly, to both her surprise and my own, Nicole reached terra firma with Jean Jacques Rousseau.
More coverage and reflection post-conference is forth coming.
Paper presentation at Yale on “Engaging First Generation Students with Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality”
Paper Proposal: Clearly an outsider looking in, Jean-Jacques Rousseau exploits the adversity and hardships he’s faced as an exile, turning his experiences and observations into a source of empowerment and a means for enlightenment. In “A Discourse on Inequality” Rousseau’s rhetorical strategies, his critical view on hierarchy, and his refusal to accept the status quo, demonstrates for First Generation college students invaluable methods of critique and cognitive processes. First Generation students may often feel over-whelmed and estranged within institutions of higher learning, and a close reading and discussion of Rousseau provides a critical point of connection, shedding light on our own agency of power. While his contemporaries insist on entitlement, Rousseau reveals our own empowerment by illustrating how to engage critically within our community.
Frontispiece and title page of an edition of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (1754), published by Marc-Michel Rey in 1755 in Holland.
at Soda Center, Saint Mary’s College of California, 1928 Saint Mary’s Road, Moraga, CA.
Rosemary Graham holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Virginia. She is the author of Thou Shalt Not Dump the Skater Dude and My Not-So-Terrible Time at the Hippie Hotel. Her third novel, Stalker Girl, was published in August of 2010. She is a professor of English at Saint Mary’s College of CA.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses earned her MFA from Saint Mary’s College of CA, where she was named a 2005-2006 Jacob K. Javits Fellow and awarded the Sor Juana Indes de La Cruz Scholarship for Excellence in Fiction. She has recently published in Pembroke Magazine and Growing up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults.
On the Facebook, of all places, I reconnected with a fellow SMC MFA’er and college professor who is teaching a fall semester course on “Globalization and Cosmopolitanism,” two passions of mine. Our discussions got me thinking about how I could revamp some of my composition courses. Below is a list of possible source materials that come to mind as I consider re-designing my syllabi (all sources deal with transnational politics, immigration, citizenship, etc):
ESSAYS & ARTICLES
1. Roger Cohen’s NY Times’ columns deal with globalization and global citizenship, and I’ve had some classroom success with his astute article “The Global Rose as a Social Tool” published March 13, 2008:
Most of the roses I saw were destined for the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain in Britain, with a price tag of the equivalent of $10 already affixed. I asked Helen Buyaki, aged 27, one of 1,800 employees at the farm, what she earns: “4,500 shillings a month.” That’s 70 bucks.
Look at the global economy one way and Buyaki earns the equivalent of seven bunches of roses for a month’s labor. That smacks of exploitation. Look at it another and she has a job she’d never have had until globalization came along.
Nobody puts it more elegantly than The New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. In an article called, “Craziness Pays”, he said, “The U.S. has to make it clear to Iraq and U.S. allies that…American will use force without negotiation, hesitation or U.N. approval.” His advice was well taken. In the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the almost daily humiliation the U.S. government heaps on the U.N. In his book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman says, and I quote, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas…and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.” Perhaps this was written in a moment of vulnerability, but it’s certainly the most succinct, accurate description of the project of corporate globalization that I have read.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses joins St. Mary’s College as an adjunct professor in Liberal and Civic Studies. She has taught at Merritt College, Laney College and Diablo Valley College and holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s. A Jacob K. Javits Fellow, her research and writing focuses on the Filipino and Mexican diaspora, immigration and overseas workers, cosmopolitanism, and globalized cross-cultural influences. She serves as a Collegiate Seminar Governing Board member and, last fall, co-supervised the SMC Writing Center. She has been published recently in UC Riverside’s The Coachella Review, University of North Carolina’s Pembroke Magazine and the anthology, “Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults.”
Rashaan Alexis Meneses 