Description
Inspired by a legacy of pleasure activists and mothering-conscious thinkers, healers, and scholars, a Queer of Color Maternalista stance is that of life-sustaining work against systems of oppression, with a particular goal of healing body/mind/spirit/sexuality splits through w(ho)leness and pleasure activism. Using Anzaldúan autohistoria-teoría, I initiate dialogues with self through poetry, dream journals, and self-portraits to document movidas in the midst of a global pandemic, family separations, break-up, and Black Liberation uprising. By mapping the intimate moves and collaborations, I archive the small scale movidas that help create a counter-story to the many binaries, including virgen/puta, queer/mother, mother/scholar, and child/adult. I ask: In what ways do Queer of Color Maternalista movidas resist and/or reject normative institutions? How do Queer of Color Maternalista movidas imagine and/or create spaces that uplifts one’s w(ho)le selves? What strategies and themes emerge? In chapter two, I map out movidas through creative pleasure reports, including 1) poetry about rebirth, 2) dream journal reflections about mothering my child in a police state, 3) storytelling of a cerrada de caderas ceremony through a queer of color gaze, and 4) photo journaling the fluidity of my gender expression as I released my hair. In the next chapter, I demonstrate creative and subversive movidas through the collaborative organizing of the “MamaScholars: Mothering in Academia Series” that sparked when occupying the “third space” in between being in academia and being pushed out of academia. By writing in detail about the Mothering in Academia as a Queer of Color Movida, I archive a holistic and inclusive academic space for mothering people to serve as a model for future scholar organizers to center care, love, and healing.
