Terri de la Peña Got Me Into Ancestry Research

Hi everyone,

I hope this Monday finds you well. I know it's a rough time in the quarter but I hope you're using that facultad and survivin'! I wanted to post about how much Terri de la Peña's visit affected me. I enjoyed her "Actor's Studio" interview very much and as an avid fan of Margins  and her other novels, I appreciated her candor on why she writes and her more current life project of looking for her family ancestry. This last part was something I was not prepared for. I myself have been putting off researching my ancestry for lack of time, and honestly making excuses that there just wasn't enough information for me to go on. To begin my oversharing session I'll let you know that I practically grew up fatherless. My father struggled with drug addiction and alcoholism from his teens, and left my older sister, my mother and I before my 6th birthday. So, as far as looking for my paternal ancestry, the trail is pretty cold there. My mother's family on the other hand is warm, open to questions and loves to brag about ancestors. My grandfather is notorious for boasting that he hid Catholic priests in his family barn during the Cristero Wars of Mexico (1926-1929). although these stories of bravery and family histories remain, my mother's side and its trail goes cold after my grandfather shared that his mother left him also before his 6th birthday, and I'm left wondering what I can do to trace my roots beyond the 1920s. See what I mean about excuses? It wasn't until Terri's admittal to having had a DNA test done with her cousins that I realized I didn't have to lament my family's lack of info and I could have a DNA test done to sort out at least some questions about my heritage. 

Although it's been a few weeks, my decision to partake in a test of my DNA reminds me of Cherrie Moraga's essay "La Guera" and of our discussions on her writing. You could say that I too yearn for family, for "tribe". Except in my case, I'm happy to explore my identity beyond my pale skin. My "Guera-ness" only says so much. It tells strangers that I can enjoy some amount of white privilege (although I can problematize that in a minute), but what my pale skin tells me is that I can't live with just the assumption that somewhere down the line European blood mixed with Indigenous/Black blood. I'd like to use science to tell me a bit of what I can't assume. Finally, I write to you because I feel that this speaks to what Chicana lesbians have theorized in their own writings, a need to look deeper into their own selves, and ask for what they need and want despite their culture telling them the opposite. 

I posted a link of the test that I got in case anyone is interested, see you tomorrow!

Sincerely, 

Angelica

http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/browse/productDetail.jsp?productId=2001246&code=NGHPFO94239

On Empathy and Intuition: Challenging Masculinist (read Patriarchal) Thinking in the Academy.

Recently, I have obsessively been trying to solve the "empathizing" conundrum. Now, I must admit that the reason for why I am so ardently attempting to wrap my head around this issue, is because I was about to loose it. I was about to loose my corazón in my rat-race towards "academic thinking." Objective thought, reason, logic, good judgment, unbiased thinking, empirical epistemology, la razón! Disregard the fact that I am attempting to achieve a doctoral degree because of a subjective and very personal matter: to empower my people, mi gente fronteriza, latina, mexicana y chicana; Jota. Y como mis padres lo hicieron (y continúan haciendolo): to inherit the future generations a better present. To help pave their ways into success and growth, and to help them help others make a brighter tomorrow. 
But as I said previously, in my attempt to achieve the Cartesian logic of cogito ergo sum, I was in my journey towards personal failure, that is, complete disconnection with my emotions, intuition and sensibility. 
Previous to the end of the former quarter, I was emotionally intervened by my doctoral peers, most of them wanted to get the feelings out of me. My robotic engagement los asustaba. Shoo Shooo decia mi vibra. Too much sense, not much sensibility. And that was fine, right? Because, that is, after all how we have been schooled to think: like a man. Like a white, privileged, heterosexual (or at least, tapandole el ojo al macho), college educated, middleclassed, Protestan Christian, married, with two and a half kids, a golden retriever (the picket fence, etc.) and a complete disregard for others' ways of living and knowing (except when studying the infamous OTHER of anthropological queries, of course). And so if I followed the manual correctly, I was doing everything right. Except, I was unhappy, angry, and unempathetic. I had built a brick, sweat, tears, blood, skin, and cement wall that would disconnect my sensibility from my sense. Apathetic... disengaging... not there... toc toc, ¿Hay alguien ahí?". But frustrated. Perhaps all the years of meticulous indoctrination got to my system, there was a system overload, and my program failed. 
But after all that darkness.. all that obscurity in a lonely corner, I began to slowly and progressively come out of my emotional shell. Yet, I wanted to first understand, why I had stopped being self-empathetic. And a new journey began: towards empathy. 
With Empathy as my target, and "sensical" sensibility lens, I observed the world, read a variety of text, and listened to sounds and messages. And then, I stumbled upon with la güera's words. In Loving in the War Years' chapter, "La Güera," Cherríe Moraga's shares her experience trying to create empathy with a white, male, gay friend on women's subjectivity, and poses:" You are not a woman. Be a woman for a day. Imagine being a woman" (45). To which the white, male, gay friend responded to having feeling raped. For him, feeling like a woman, being a woman, was embodying la chingada. To which Moraga adds, "what grew from that discussion was the realization that in order for him to create an authentic alliance with me, he must deal with the primary source of his own oppression. He must, first, emotionally come to terms with what it feels like to be a victim" (45). And Eureka!!! I found my first clue to creating empathy: sympathize with the internalized oppression of the other (as both are mirrors of oppressions, although sometimes, we are reflecting ourselves through tinted windows). 
Within that week, I had the opportunity to sit in a discussion with one of the leading facilitators of the Nashville Sit-Ins of the Civil Rights Movement, Rev. James Lawson, and throughout his narrative, I rescued and puzzled together Lawson's teachings on nonviolence, and the grand role that empathy had in the political movement's (")success("). Later, in our Chicana Lesbian Literature seminar we began to debate about "women's ways of knowing" versus male knowledge; reasons versus feelings; head versus heart; sense versus sensibility; instinct versus intuition. And I left the room and hours with that question stuck to my head. 
Today, along a large group of UCLA graduate students, we had the opportunity to chat with two of the main black activists of the Nashville Sit-Ins, Lawson and Rev. Barnard Lafayette. Both shared the story of how they met, when, where and why: they were both in for the same cause, to overcome Jim Crow racism through the practice of love. And I ask Rev. Lafayette, on how was he able to create empathy with the oppressor. He responds, "Whenever that White Police Office would kick me on the face with his boots, I would search in my soul for the last ounce of love. I would think where he came from, what was his upbringing like, what white privilege meant to him. I put myself in his shoes. But always, looking at him in the eye. And little by little, he stopped beating me." I was awed by his answer, as not only he had shared a new political activist strategy (for males) through the use of sensible tactics; but he had given me a clue in my empathy quest: to allow it initially to grow from within oneself. He finalized the conversation by saying that what had led him through a painful, brutal and violent life of constant internal and external warfare was intuition. 

INTUICIÓN, I translated. 

But there is silence in the room. Out of the almost thirty people, nobody had a reaction to such a revolutionary loving approach to a contemporary event (in an era of increased corporatized militarization). Some of us (that is, the students of color), those who had suffered oppression and knew what being kicked in the face by the boot of dirt, sun, spit, blood, rock; punched by a fist was like, felt empathy for their experiences and were grateful for their time. For what they had taught us. For flying 5 hours weekly with a decaying body of eighty y contando. I scan around the room and instead of finding faces lit up by appreciation and gratitude, I see arrogance, petulance and boredom. As Lafayette continues to elaborate on "knowing from intuition," my fellow academic colleagues are to a near point of physical repulsion. Their bodies cannot handle what they have oppressed for so long. La olla exprés va a explotar. But before it explodes, they will try to feed on their mental judgements, congratulate for their lack of sensibility and much sense. Bravo!! Bravo!! You made it!! You have reached total disconnection (from others, but most hazardously, yourself)! And let me reiterate myself, I know so, because I did (do?) so. The academics-in-training mimicking the WASP Ivory Tower ethics, refute with their bodies and mala vibra the experiences that others have to share about the usefulness of love. The pragmatics of love. 
I sit quietly after seminar and ponder, how can we do things differently? how can we all try to be happy? how can we be ourselves? how can we get to be our real serves? 
So far, my limited answer is: listen. To yourself, to what other's have to say, or not say. To our pasados. To our very pasados that we sometimes ignore, but are lying underneath the cells of our bones. To the pasados we are yet to discover, like historiographers. 
One way to approach a new methodology of producing teorias y conocimiento, is following our facultad. Dejándonos guiar por las enseñanzas que solo pocos se atreven a compartir o a (re)descrubrir. Pero esos pocos, como profetas incomprendidos, nos asustan porque nos ofrecen un manual para conocer a nuestra Shadow-Beast. Because we fear the pains that the Beast will inflict upon us. Because we fear vulnerability. We fear the loss of our control. Yet, we can only be in full control until we have put all the parts of ourselves into la vida. To re-member who we are.              

   

An Attempt to Overcome the Heteropatriarchal Slippery-Slope

How have I internalized oppression, and how have I oppressed is a question that would literally take me a book-length text to answer thoroughly and up to date (I would of course need yearly editions to rework the answer). But for the purpose of a blog post, I will state the prevalent and most eminent oppression (both enacted and suffered): heteropatriarchy. Since early age, I have been constantly struggling to not fall prey of what I can now name as heteropatriarchy. Before, and that is, back in Mexico, I identified it as a naturalized machismo mexicano.  Although I identified from an early age with Sor Juana's feminist poetry, Michael Jackon and Prince's androgynous personas, Danny Zucco's feminine masculinity, and Juanga!, I was still immersed in a world where gender transgressions was an extreme sport called "walking over egg-shells." My allegiances with the above mentioned jotos y jotas was a coveted personal matter, not public, not political. I have desired women since I discovered my sexuality. Nonetheless, I have always been extremely cautious of how I navigate heteronormative spaces, aka, the world. I have never been as open as I am now about my sexuality and identity. So to answer the question shortly is to say that I have been complacent and complicit to heteropatriarchy. Throughout the majority of my life, I have been skeptical to social norms, and defeatedly assumed that there is nothing I can do. But, doing nothing is just that, not doing anything for or against, it is being stoic. But, in this case, the stoic and conformist attitude is counterproductive as it feeds the hegemony with our complacency to the heteronorm. Do you all think that by our inactions against patriarchy, does that place us in agreement with the norm? I ask because I understand this is not a black-or-white subject, it is complicated complex and it can have various answers. This slippery-slope conundrum reminds me of the rape-consent argument, that if one does not resist, one is assumed to have automatically consent, and I want to step away from such type of fallacious thinking. I would like to hear what we all have to say about whether or not our complacency to the norm is agreeing with the hetronorm? 
Because heteropatriarchy is such a vast and overwhelming system of power operating at all levels of society, I would like to propose that we all think of one, just one way we can overcome or challenge heteropatriarchy in our daily lives. James Scott describes these minimal acts of political resistance as “infrapolitics,” the daily struggles embarked by oppressed members of a society which are visible only if we see beyond of what our traditional understanding of political acts of resistance is (protest, rally, picketing), and is invisible as a tactical approach “born out of prudent awareness of the balance of power.” What will be your infrapolitical activity challenging heteropatriarchy?  

-Kendy Rivera 
        

Reflecting on "The Cynic" side of "The Mixquiahuala Letters"

Hi all, I hope the weekend was restful and good to you. 

I'm writing this because I felt compelled to share my thoughts on my reading thus far. If you didn't guess it by the title, I'm quite digging Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters. I was assigned the "Cynic" portion of the letters, and so far I'm making several connections to what we've discussed in class. I thought I'd give you the inside scoop on the Cynic reading since I know we're all reading the letters in a different order. The relationship between the two women, Teresa and Alicia, in this epistolary novel made me think of one of the quotes Profesora Gaspar de Alba handed out to us the first day of class. It was the following:

"Lesbian describes a relationship in which two women's strongest emotions and affections are directed toward each other. Sexual contact may be part of the relationship to a greater or lesser degree, or it may be entirely absent. By preference the two women spend most of their time together and share most aspect of their lives with each other."- Lilian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 17-18.

I'm aware that on that day we deconstructed this quote, it appeared to be inadequate for most of the class, since we pointed out that it left no room for the erotic and that as my notes reveal it provided a "middle-class, not women of color perspective". However, I'd like to come back to it for just that reason. The very walls we hit on that quote on the first day, I find are the walls that Teresa described but did not explicitly name in her letters to Alicia. The walls of patriarchy, of male privilege, of their  being constantly disappointed by men in life, of not 'fitting in' as independent self-sufficient women. The deep closeness and affection between them was by all means a relationship that the quote describes but reading from Teresa's perspective, their relationship could not be named "lesbian', they could not afford the luxury to explore their desire for each other. As this novel so eloquently puts it, there is a tension, not only between the two women but between them and the entrenched patriarchy and male privilege that has harmed them so. In my "cynic" reading, I read the love that Teresa expressed for Alicia, this love, the energy so "directed to each other" was so strong that at times it broke away from the letter format, into poetry and colorful memories of how much they both survived together, while traveling, while meeting up after a break-up with their respective male lovers. One of the most telling letters for me, was Letter #19, in which Teresa recalls how both of them were perceived whilst traveling alone in Mexico. Here, Teresa states,

"How revolting we were, susceptible to ridicule, abuse, disrespect. We would have hoped for respect as human beings, but the only respect granted a woman is that which a gentleman bestows upon a lady. Clearly we were no ladies."(65)

Here, Teresa describes the illegitimacy of two women's affection toward one another, two women who have committed to being companions in travel, and as the letters reveal, companions in life. The sight of two women traveling without a 'gentleman' means that they are vulnerable, "revolting" to look at and disrespected, their love for each other illegitimate within Mexican society. As Teresa succintly puts it later in the letter, "The assumption here is that neither served as a legitimate companion for the other" (66). And that, conveniently brings us to the quote I began with. The assumption in Lillian Faderman's quote is that the two women are seen, accepted and respected as companions for one another. As Teresa reveals in her correspondence to Alicia, this isn't so. A cynic is one who "believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest"(Merriam-Webster dictionary),  in other words, a pessimist. The order in which I read the letters is intensely pessimistic, showcasing the hardest struggles that Teresa and Alicia have endured. Adopting my role as the "cynic reader" I wonder why Teresa didn't act on her love for Alicia more, why she didn't explore her desire for her further. I also doubt that the letters were even sent, some of them left unsigned, and all of them a one-sided correspondence. This reading left me with many questions, some of the material I'm still processing. I look forward to discussing it tomorrow with you all. 

Happy, cynical/conformist/quixotic reading!

-Angélica Becerra

Working out my issues!

The questions posted by la profe are ones that I have explored all of my life. I will have many posts for these two questions. One of the sources of my oppression is my biological family. I must use the descriptor "biological" because as a queer person of color, I have my own queer familia, one that I have constructed. This includes my cohort, whom I love dearly. My traumas begin with my parents. My mother because of her actions, my father because of his inactions. I have read "Loving..." several times, but Moraga's words haunt me. Am I a traitor because I desire men and, thus, will not procreate? Not to the extent that Moraga and other Chicanas are because as much as I work at discarding my male privilege, I must concede that I will always have it. How do I work at being the most radical woman-centered feminist man? I never say the "b" word. I never use another derogatory term for women popular in the gay male community. I do what I can for women-specific causes, e.g. I donate to Planned Parenthood, I have participated in a breast cancer run, I educated myself about the mujeres de Juárez (with the help of la profe), I teach my students about patriarchy and male privilege, and I worship lesbians of color. I know I should be doing more, but I have no time. That is no excuse. What I can do is to theorize a non-patriarchal, feminist-centered masculine identity. We need to teach men, particularly young, straight men, not to rape. That's all for now. I love this class!

Welcome to the Shadow Beast's Blog

This year we're going to try blogging on a real blogsite. Moodle, unfortunately, can't sustain these more creative ventures. So we're all going to use this blog for team posts and other postings related to the class that I might ask you to write.

Instructions: once you know what team you're going to be on, you should always LABEL your post according to your team's name. The labels must not have any spacing in them. For example, if you're in the Rubyfruit Jungle team, you would label your post TeamRubyfruitJungle. Or TeamZami or TeamGildaStories--all depending on which book you've chosen for your Midterm Report. Important: in order to earn Extra Credit points on your team's blog, you MUST label each team posting. You should also sign your full name to each post. The more material you add to your team post--such as photos of the author, a scan of the book cover, a book trailer or clips of the author reading from the book, and reviews of the book you're reading-- the more extra credit your team can earn. Exercise your creativity here.

You can also blog on this site just as an individual member of the class, which will have nothing to do with your team. Your Extra Credit work (an event or exhibition you attended, a play or movie you saw, which I've okayed as Extra Creidt) can be posted to the Blog. You should sign your name to each post, regardless of whether it's a team post or an individual post.

Graduate students, of course, may also post to this site, which you should label Grads. Guest speakers and others invited to view and comment on the blog should label their posts as Visitors.

Email me if you have any questions.

-- La Profe