Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social

Webjefa’s prerogative/Occasional nuggets found on the web:

A brief statement from Elisa Facio’s faculty bio

Works by Gloria Anzaldua, Ana Castillo, Emma Perez, and the anthology, Building with Our Hands: New Directions in Chicana Studies, have been most influential in my development as a Chicana sociologist. As racial/ethnic women scholars, I feel our works are attempts to explore our realities and identities (since academic institutions omit, erase, distort and falsify them) and to unbuild and rebuild them. Our writings and scholarship, built on earlier waves of feminism, continue to critique and to directly address dominant culture and “white” feminism. However, our works also attest to the fact that we are now concentrating on our own projects, our own agendas, our own theories, in other words on our own world views. This process is recognized by racial/ethnic scholars as “de colonization of the voice.” For others, it is considered unscholarly, unscientific; words of colonization associated with a monocultural society.

Chicana scholarship reveals our struggles as Chicanas in the United States, and expresses in a society which attempts to render us invisible. Historically, Chicana voices have not been chronicled. They have gone largely unnoticed and undocumented. In spite of the academic claims of “value-free inquiry,” Chicanas have not been deemed worthy of study. When they have been studied, stereotypes and distortions have prevailed. Yet Chicanas have spoken out around kitchen tables, in factories, labor camps, in community and political organizations, at union meetings. Rooted in the political climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s, our scholarship, like other currents of dissent is a Chicana critique of cultural, political, and economic conditions in the United States. It is influenced by the tradition of advocacy scholarship, which challenges the claims of objectivity and links research to community concerns and social change. It is driven by a passion to place the Chicana, as speaking subject, at the center of intellectual discourse.
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NORTHRIDGE, Calif., Oct. 24 (AScribe Newswire) — Growing up in rural Los Angeles County in the 1960s, Cal State Northridge biology professor MariaElena Zavala routinely encountered teachers and other authority figures who scoffed at her dreams of becoming a scientist. (more…)

Penn State – Laura Pérez kicked off the first event in the Latina/o Studies Initiative yesterday with a speech on Chicana and feminist art as part of the “Engaging Latina/o America” lecture series.

This series is intended to mark the inauguration of the new Latina/o studies program, Roselyn Costantino, professor of Spanish, women’s studies and Latina/o studies, said.

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From the L.A. Weekly, 10/4

Rocks in my Salsa – Writer-performer Cristina Nava says she remembers working to create atmosphere for a romantic evening by blending salsa in a molcajete bowl she had just bought in Tijuana. Unfortunately, what she didn’t do was eliminate the tiny stone chips loosely lodged in most such basalt bowls. Her boyfriend chipped a tooth, and the rocks in the salsa have emerged as a metaphor in her first solo performance for the tiny, pain-inducing obstacles that accompany being a Chicana in Hollywood.

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This is another overdue post asking for good thoughts and prayers for MALCSista Luz Calvo and her partner Catriona Esquibel as they deal with Luz’s now-vanquished breast cancer. In recent months, Luz has been diagnosed with breast cancer, had a double mastectomy, undergone chemotherapy, and is now taking tamoxifen. Luz and Catriona have made it through with the support of family, friends and their own chingona personal strength.
Luz writes:

I am doing so much better now that I am done with chemo. I’m on medical leave until Winter Qtr. so I am really trying to come up with a good plan for self care and rebuilding… Thanks for offering to post on the MALCS blog. I am totally OK with people knowing what I have been thru

If you’d like to send Luz a note, email luz@malcs.net and your note will be forwarded to her.

You all probably know that Latinas and lesbians are at significantly higher risk of developing breast cancer, and cervical cancer, and significantly less likely to have health insurance (only 51% of Latinas had it in 1998). See “A National Latina Agenda for Reproductive Health” (pdf file) at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and the Mautner Project at the National Lesbian Health Organization.

Have you done your breast self-examination (video) today? Had your mammogram lately?

Claudia Huesca writes:

“I am currently working for New Win Publishing and its imprint, WBusiness. We are in the process of writing a book about Latinas entrepreneurs in the U.S. The author will be a Latina entrepreneur, Maria de Lourdes Sobrino, founder and CEO of Lulu’s Desserts. I would like to ask for your help in finding a Latina co-author for this book.”

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Wow. Columbia senior Karina Garcia, Political Chair of the school’s Chicano Caucus, appeared on NPR’s Democracy Now to debate Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist. Gilchrist had been invited by the College Republicans to speak on campus, and Garcia’s group was one of many that staged an active protest at the event. On the radio show, after Garcia gave her explanation of the event, Gilchrist fled the studio.

Apparently, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly has picked up Gilchrist’s version almost immediately, gaining a questionable response from Columbia’s president (“a serious breach of academic faith”). See the transcript and/or audio at
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/11/1430231

See Garcia’s comments below….

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Here’s a great photo and feature article on la muy Distinguida Doctora Deena J. Gonzalez from the LMU/LA home page. Deena, Chair of LMU’s Department of Chicana/o Studies, has been recognized as one of the 50 most important living women historians in the U.S. as part of the Smith College project, “Living U.S. Women’s History, 1960-2000: Voices from the Field—an Oral History Archive.”

–submitted by Antonia Castañeda