My Instagram quote compilation is meant to touch on the multiplicity of my feminist identity. Throughout the course, I’ve had to unlearn my pre-existing understandings of what it meant to be an active participant in the process of re-education of limited mindsets. At the start of the semester, there was only so much that I understood about the concepts of decolonization and post-colonialism. Before this point I had a habit of focusing primarily on the actions of colonizers rather than focusing on how the affected bodies navigate and manage their lives and environments thereafter.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw_o-ZTHI2L/
The quotes I chose for my project were meant to represent the actions of reclamation of space, bodily autonomy after violation, and the multiplicity of identity. As a queer black woman that has endured the struggles of living with a body that was once not something I wanted to claim as my own, the quotes I chose from Remedios resonated with me and I felt that they spoke the loudest to me. The first quote I chose from Remedios was one of my favorites because it depicted the origins of man as a brown-skinned woman rather than the overused Eurocentric version. The fifth quote from Remedios resonated with me due to past experiences along with the empowerment that can be found as result of telling one’s story.
I interpreted the second quote by Lugones to be how we are conditioned to accept the racial conditions of our environments and that the internalized damage of these actions are not intrinsically our faults.
The third quote I chose because this piece resonated with me deeply as I truly believe that in order to be an effective and efficient feminist, one must be able to understand the experiences of others without imposing themselves upon someone else. The fourth quote I chose from Journeys of the Mind because it also fell in line with my multiple feminist identities, much like the sixth quote by Lugo-Lugo. For me, these two quotes represented the ability to engage in an intersectional mindset use one’s multiple identities to become a proficient social actor. I understood the seventh quote to be a call for a retelling of Native/POC stories and histories to combat the blatant omission of key elements and moments.
The eighth quote I chose was from the Through the Eyes of Rebel Women journal where there was a call for the ending of mutilation of POC, specifically Puerto Rican, female bodies. Far too often I’ve come across cases where women of color are not listened to about pains they endure with their reproductive systems and they end up dying as a result, but then on the flip side of this, women are having their autonomy stolen from them as a method of racialized population control.
The ninth quote also resonated with me as a survivor of assault and as someone that now finds power in sharing my experiences and stories with others who have had to endure similar hardships. My tenth quote was my favorite as a black woman and I felt that it most adequately portrayed the desire for black bodies to be proud of their histories and origins rather than being ashamed of them.
Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color edited by Gloria Anzaldúa (1990):
Waters, Anne. “Journeys of the Mind,” 159-161
Remedíos: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriquenas, 1-26 “Bisabuelas”
Remedíos: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriquenas, 55-102 “Discovery & Huracán”
Morales, Iris. 2016. “From the Frontlines,” in Through the Eyes of Rebel Women: The Young Lords 1969-1976, 181-211.
Pérez, Emma. 2006. “Agency through Decolonial Queer Theory” Conference Paper 1-25.
Lugo-Lugo, Carmen. 2018. “Getting to the Colonial Status through Sexuality: Lessons on Puerto Rico’s Political Predicament from Women Writers,” Centro Journal 30:2, 234-248.
