(Reading )
Chicana Movidas
The early “La Raza” movement excluded women from leadership and participation, which made it a movement for expanded patriarchy as opposed to liberation. This connect back to the early feminist movement that excluded black and brown women, which made it a movement for expanded white supremacy.
Our ancestors are our greatest creative collaborators, and facilitators of collaboration. In Chicana Movidas several Chicana activists describe their use of Zine making as an act of liberation—an essay I was listenign to as I was refining my Zine assignement for the Imago Framework.
In LA MARIPOSA DE ORO The Journey of an Advocate Virginia Martínez Esq. of MALDEF remebers: “I always wanted to learn cake decorating, and when I saw the cake for my sixtieth birthday, I knew I had to do it. The cake was decorated by my daughter’s friend with butterflies and flowers. I looked up cake-decorating classes and found one not far from me, in Spanish. My friend Norma also decided to take the class, and we went through all four levels. I have made cakes for friends and have been totally surprised by the creative energy released by these projects.”
Thought provoking snippets
“A woman who loves herself loves other women sexually and/or nonsexually.” —Alice Walker
The logic of fantasy, imagination, creativity, or dreams — The logic of intuition.
Early Mesoamerican experts have it wrong because their world views are patriarchal, and that biases their interpretation of our culture.
Mythopoetic imaginary worldview. Olmecas - the super female. Archeological statues are genderless
Essay Excerpt
Visions of Utopia while Living in Occupied Aztlán
Osa Hidalgo de la Riva Riva and Maylei Blackwell
“the mujerista aesthetic” was inspired by Alice Walker’s womanism. There are seven elements but they are not in hierarchical order.
Number one, the Mujerista filmmaker loves herself unconditionally and often radically. She is [a] woman-identified woman whether she has experienced emotional or physical intimacy with another woman. The Alice Walker definition says, “A woman who loves herself loves other women sexually and/or nonsexually.”
Number two is getting the job done, willfully, using nonconventional methods, those outside of the traditional Hollywood studio system. It is the successful production and aim towards the liberation of self and others. It focused on making access to technology by any means necessary, its ideology informs its praxis, its praxis or methodology is informed by a responsible set of personal politics, this is always in flux, changing and transforming with the changing times. Number three: Mujerista movies are educational but in a nontraditional sense, not indoctrinating or subordinating all people to a WASP patriarchal mindset and hegemony. Rather, they offer transformational experience about people, events, issues, and point of view usually not dealt with, underrepresented, and misrepresented in mainstream media. Fourth, Mujerista filmmakers are activist in nature and reclaim our stories from a women-of-color and children-of-color POV. Fifth, familia is inclusive of all peoples, ages, religions, colors, abilities, classes, genders, and sexualities. Six is teaching others and including our communities in the production process as crew members. Seven, taking risks, being outlaws to create change and transformations for healthy beings.
These principles talk about having a healthier world and that is why I think filmmaking has that responsibility. We don’t do art just for art’s sake. You just can’t be talking about it, you actually have to make it. You are an activist in that way. The thing about the hero in Hollywood movies, that is the visual narrative dominating the planet with the same white male heterosexual hero. Mujerista moviemaking centers other types of protagonists and characters. Another principle is that we even make the films with our own crew members. To be sure, not only within the story or the narrative or the movie itself, but also in the making of it, that you become inclusive and intercultural with your crew members so the production process also serves an educational purpose. Those are the things that I feel are really vital in doing our work. Art is the vanguard of the revolution. The artist or cultural movement was a major part of Chicano movement with the murals and the teatro, the poetry, and all of it.
A Woman Is A School + Learning by Heart
My ADHD likes to read at least 3-4 books at a time. It takes A LOT longer to finish a whole book this way, but the pattern recognition part of my brain points out connections between themes and ideas that enrich the experience and deepen my understanding.
Reading @celinecelines A woman is a school, alongside Learning by heart by Corita Kent is so fantastic.
In one moment, I’m reading a testimony about the ripple effect that Corita’s teaching had on her students who became teachers who then passed her teachings onto their students ….
“As artists we work everyday, we make our own lives every day, we care for our family every day. it is hard daily work, this creative process. We are asked to take care of for others as well, helping them to create their lives as we were helped. our work is GLOBAL. We are asked literally to help make the countries of the world fit together in new ways.”
Moments later I am reading about radical care, and generational healing.
“ the only way to heal our mother’s mother is by becoming aware of what it is we are healing, and how we can stop perpetrating harm on one another. a woman can unwittingly become an extension of the oppressor.”
These days are a roller coaster of ecstasy and agony. Seeing my Mexican Brush sage push out soft purple velvet flowers-ecstasy. Opting in to bearing witness to the horrors of humanity, and trying to understand the wounds, and learn histories, and try to figure out what-if anything-I can do…agony.
Helping my daughter find relief from an ingrown toenail-ecstasy. Knowing that the tree I just brought home for my garden will take decades to reach its full splendor, and hoping I live to see that-ecstasy And agony.
Altar Thoughts
The Garden
This next project explores gardens in every sense: literal gardens, connecting with the earth; figurative gardens, like motherhood; and spiritual gardens, where we connect with our creator.
Our first home was a Garden, in this garden we had everything we needed and there was everlasting life.One day, curiosity got the better of us, and in our desire to know as God knows, we ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, poisoning ourselves with the power to judge. In the eyes of the creator, our judgment made us unfit to stay in this perfect garden, and we were cast out into a new world—a new garden where death was now part of the cycle of life.
At first, this ability to judge proved useful; it helped us preserve our lives in the new world. Yet, with a few early successes, hubris began to grow in us, and humanity started to misjudge its ability to truly discern between good and bad. Armed with this newfound “expertise,” we arrogantly applied labels to everything we encountered, trying to fix or eliminate what we deemed "bad" and hoarding what we labeled "good."
This was especially true when it came to life and death. Humanity’s fear of death, and our labeling of death as "bad," led us to hoard life, sometimes violently. There came times when, in hoarding life, we brought death to others.
Our judgment prevented us from understanding that we could live peacefully in this new garden—if only we accepted that there is a time when the garden feeds you, and then a time when you feed the garden.
Tus huesos son semillas.
Garden thoughts:
Every version of my child is a person I have met, and lost. A mother is an altar to every iteration of the child she loves.
Can it be sight specific?
Can it be interactive? Inviting others to engage?
Material qualities - purposely “cheap”
Showing up for my students
the day after the election
You all have know since day 1, that I am not the kind of professor who believes that the realites and conditions of the world outside of my teaching spaces, and the affects they have on the everyday lives of the people—people in this room that make up our learning community can be separated from the work we do here together.
My approach to design is wholistic, pluralistic, and I deeply value equity inclusion and visibility in the spaces I have the privilege to lead.
In that spirit I want to acknowledge that today, and the next four years are going to be hard for those of us who occupy identities and experiences that have been marginalized by design—or excluded, vilified and targeted as a means to consolidate power, and at the same time yesterdays election reflects an idea of America that the majority of people who voted strongly believe in.
If this was your first time voting, I want to say thank you for participating in our democracy. If this election did not go the way you wanted it to, I want to send you encouragement. Do not give up on your right to participate in this project we call America—do not enable your own disenfranchisement.
I am about to enter my tenth year as an educator, before my career in education I ran a design agency that serviced arts and education based non-profit organizations where I designed info graphics, created presentation research decks for national conferences, I designed books that amplified the marginalized voices of youth in America, and all of this information began to illustrate how the erosion of public education that began in the 80s was designed toward a specific goal.
To make Americans less knowledgeable and easier to manipulate, to sew division among the ignorance.
As the elder, the auntie, the person with lived experience my advice to every person in this room is to keep seeking education, to keep using the beautiful brain god gave you to seek knowledge and understanding—put those qualities to good use. It is your ultimate form of power and protection.
As a Mexican American Woman, who lives with a chronic medical condition and neurodiversity, as a sister to a gay sibling, prima to gay cousins, and friend of MANY queer, trans and non-binary folk, as a mother to a child who has epilepsy, and another who also has ADHD, as a intersectional feminist, as an educator, as a person who has lost a family member to policing when he needed healthcare, as a follower of the Christ of Social Justice—I am saying to you that my teaching spaces will always be a safe place for those who also find themselves on the other end of planned marginalization (which is the majority of people—because the consolidation of power isn't just about race, gender, sexualtiy or ideology—it’s mostly about money.) You are always welcome to be your whole self in my space, to speak your truths, to know I am your ally. I also welcome those who want to challenge themselves, and even challenge me to respectful conversations—in the form of office hours over a cup of coffee at the outdoor kiosk—my treat.
What will not be permitted in this space, is the same as it has always been, and in alignment with the College of the Canyons Student Conduct Code
The thought parking lot
Write about “Talk Story,” the power of storytelling, and it’s practice in multiple indigenous cultures as a means of creating community and reaching consensus.
Write about “Hospitality”
Refine the Colorism Project
Offer a critique of the Imago DEIsign framework as a way of illustrating potential mis-application of framework
Warpaint -Zine What Chicanas can learn from the early Movidas in the fight to liberate our latino fam from themselves
Critiques of Decolonization - response - this is a preservation of culture, ways of living that are rooted in spirit, land and community -There is a difference between preserving your culture and preserving oppressive power.
We’re gonna be stuck in this until white people realize that they’re at the bottom too (this include white liberals)