Tag: Intersectionality

Statement of Solidarity

On Behalf of Our Critical Ethnic & Community Studies Program Students, Faculty and Staff

We join our voices to the multitudes across the U.S. and around the world, sharing our grief and outrage at the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others by law enforcement officers.

We protest the criminalization of Black lives and the murders that result from anti-blackness, racialized and militarized policing.

We are a program that builds knowledge for solidarity, social justice, and personal and political transformation. We work transnationally and engage transdisciplinary approaches in partnership with diverse students, communities and academic disciplines.

We affirm our determination to do everything in our power, as educators, advocates and organizers, to help end this epidemic of police violence directed at Black lives.

The most recent police killings come at a time when the COVID19 pandemic is causing disproportionately higher death rates in Black, Latinx and Native communities. Asian American communities have especially been the target of racialized attacks tied to fear mongering sparked by the pandemic. These are the neighborhoods in which our UMASS Boston faculty, students and community partners live, work, risk their lives, and strive for a better future. Mobilizing cultural heritage and inspiring strengths, our communities raise their families and achieve their dreams in the face of unacceptable racial, economic, gendered and anti-immigrant bias and oppression.

We affirm our determination as a program to center our work on uncovering, challenging and transforming the ways racism and other forms of intersecting inequalities operate as social determinants of convergent public health emergencies for cisgender and trans*  Black, Latinx, Native, Asian American and other communities of color.

Zine Culture as Reclamation, Resistance, and Resilience

Izzie Villanueva, TCCS Student ‘19

Editor’s note: In fall semester of 2017, Izzie Villanueva curated a zine for TCCS 610: Topics in TCCS offered by Aminah Pilgrim, Senior Lecturer of Africana Studie and core faculty of the Transnational Cultural and Community Studies program at UMass Boston. The following post is about this zine.

Playing off an abbreviation of “magazine”, zines are becoming an increasingly popular publication medium for artists, poets, and more. Zines are alternative publications to spread knowledge, narratives, and truths. Currently, many activists look to this platform to spread awareness on a variety of issues, combat inequities, and simultaneously advocate for their rights to exist and create communities. The presented zine incorporates the knowledge of community organizing and identity-validation to disrupt the oppressive ivory tower of higher education.

Colorful cover of zine created by Izzie Villanueva

I used the image from our TCCS handbook as the overall cover of the zine. By blurring the image (especially blurring the outlines of a cityscape and buildings that was there previously) and enhancing the opacity of the colors, I wanted to reflect on how the pieces presented in the zine have their own differences, but still come together to collectively create one tangible piece of art. Furthermore, this symbolizes how my cohort and I have all come from different walks of life but are now together in the TCCS program.

Two poems in the zine

I started this zine by incorporating poetry by my classmates Jimena and Taina (whose work appears above left and right, respectively) as they reminisce upon their homeland as they transition to the United States. 

For Jimena’s piece, the background is an image I found in a fashion magazine of woman of color shaving her armpit hair. After reading Jimena’s piece, I thought about how blue is socially constructed to be the opposite of red.

I thought about how femininity is socially constructed, influenced by different ethnic cultures, but usually automatically linked to womanhood. I also thought about the things that are supposedly unallowed on a woman’s body such as hair or menstruation blood.

Is a nation state inherently tied to womanhood as it is depicted as one’s ‘motherland’? If she is drowning will others save her or will they simply say the water is simply tears and she is being overly emotional?

For Taina’s piece, I envisioned a letter being sent thousands of miles away; not only does the letter supercede human-imposed borders, it travels through land, sea, and time. Taina had informed me this piece was written several years ago and no longer held much relevance to her current life.

I argue, this is the beauty of poetry and reclaiming one’s narrative; when each piece of poetry is created, it holds relevance and significance of a specific moment in time and life.

I used an actual cardstock letter to illustrate this stagnant moment, but also consider how one’s interpretation as person moving in the diaspora, is always changing.

Poems in the zine

Continuing, I incorporated pieces by Myles and Grace (above left and right, respectively) to critically assess the word ‘America’. The image behind Myles’s piece is a white man wearing a red and white shirt with blue jeans.

Although not explicitly clear, it symbolizes the secret pervasiveness of colonialism that fuels ‘American culture’ and white supremacy – just because one cannot see it, does not mean it is not there.

Grace’s photo is essential in showing what the Americas truly are and subverts what U.S.-centric media portrays it to be. Both pieces are held together by a question mark sticker and a sticker of the American flag to question the validity of ‘Americanness’ as depicted by the U.S.

Poems from the zine

Pieces by Jimena and Jeanette (above left and right, respectively) are incorporated to continue thinking about ‘Americanness’ and what is expected in regards to language.

Many of us first generation immigrants or second generation children might have grown up with the rule of not speaking English at home; yet, the education system of the United States imposes this language, leaving us either confused or forced to forget our native tongue.

For Jimena, she previously abhorred speaking in English in Costa Rica, but now is forced to use it as her primary language. Whereas for Jeanette, she felt strange speaking in Spanish in a classroom setting because of how ingrained European settler colonialism permeates in the K-12 education system of the United States. The background is scattered with stickers one might find given to assignments for (native English speaking, adhering to colonialism, aligning with the system) elementary school students.

Poems from the zine

These pieces by Fernanda and Juan (above left and right, respectively) demonstrate the stark contrast of how others perceive assimilation and how it actually is in practice. Assimilating to a new nation should be sweet and seemingly easy to transition into with new identities easily assigned and adhered to (the bunnies for Fernanda’s piece hold complacent faces as they take in their new environment and eat the sweets of capitalism, not daring to question the process). Yet, even when this is supposedly achieved, more confusion appears as navigating ones new identities is no where near simplistic.

Juan’s piece is on different pieces of paper that must be flipped up to be read fully and the background is a space galaxy.

This symbolizes the seemingly never ending quest to understanding nationality, ethnicity, and how they play into one’s understanding of lived experiences and identity.

Poems from the zine

I wrote these two pieces at the end of the summer, right before moving to Boston. For the first piece, I used images of some of the students I have worked with in the past as a physical reminder of some of the communities I am pursuing a master’s degree for. Throughout the semester I found myself having to look at old photos to help me continue with school.

For the second piece, I formatted the page to look like a letter I was sending back home to remind my home communities, as well as myself, I would be okay, and there were other communities outside of California that would support me just the same as they would.

I believe flowers symbolize growth and not only surviving in harsh environments, but also thriving. Despite the initial fear of facing the ivory tower and imposter syndrome, I believe I am now more confident and ready to thrive in graduate school as a queer person of color.

Photograph of students in the 2017 cohort of the TCCS program

I wanted to end the zine with something that encaptured the reason why my cohort and I are in TCCS – to make a change and be advocates of social justice. Samnang took a photograph of our TCCS 612: Community Formations class.

I believe the photo is essential in documenting ways we are disrupting traditional academic norms while creating and fostering community building among one another.

Allie’s quote is truly a reminder of how each of us in TCCS deserves to be in a seat, in a classroom, in graduate school: We will use tools outside of the master’s house in order to bring a better future for our communities.

 

I Got Ya’ll

Jeannette Mejia, TCCS ’19 student

There is no way, I guess no real way, to prepare one for the pain of higher education. I knew graduate school would be difficult, I was prepared for the difficulty of the technicality of it, but I did not know how painful the experience of learning would be.

I am a second-generation Dominican immigrant, I am an Afro-Latina, I am a first-generation college student, I am a Lawrence, Mass native, I am a woman, I am an unhealthy woman who is overweight and has high blood pressure, I am someone who has anxiety.

 

I share this, not to invoke pity, but because the intersection of these identities has shaped my experience as a graduate student, and needless to say, I wasn’t ready.

I sat in our Topics course, feeling the rage steaming on my face, feeling my heart beat faster than a ticking clock, my palms sweaty, the pain of the skin on my fingers after they started bleeding when I picked too much, the twitching in my leg because I could feel my anxiety seeping through my body not allowing me to sit still, my head hurting, I felt this anger deep deep down that I could not explain, I felt this feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that was not unfamiliar except this time it hurt a little more, almost as if my pain was punching my chest on the inside, and I felt the stinging tears starting to stream down my face, as we discussed Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.

When I read the readings that had been assigned for that week, I was mad. Not because I did not know how the system targets Black and Brown people, because that was almost innate, that fear was something ingrained into my upbringing. But because I did not know how just how much it was embedded into the functioning of the United States. It was almost as if someone had yanked the half-peeled band aid over my unhealed wound, and I did not know how to move.

Because when I read our readings, a lightbulb went off, and all I could do was playback the moments the men in my family were taken away from me due to incarceration, and suddenly it all made sense, it all became clear and there was no longer a grey area.

I kept thinking about this for the whole week, ruminating about it. I was so angry, and as I have come to learn, anger is a secondary emotion, so I guess if I am going to be open and honest, I wasn’t just angry, I felt despair and I felt hopeless. How can I protect the people I love when I know that I do not have that power?

Pain is not new to me, I think most of us know this undying feeling, but it was the kind of pain. I was sitting there discussing the very thing that was happening at home, my uncle sitting in prison headed for deportation, my nephew who was completing a five-year sentence, my partner who was unjustly stopped by the police that week, this was happening in real time, right at home.

There is something that shifts when you really understand something that you once thought you understood and then you go home to the very thing you just conceptualized/intellectualized in class, and I still haven’t quite learned how to do this, so I just sit with it not really knowing what else to do. I share this because my experience in academia has been one of the most painful experiences and I question my place here every single day.

I want those who feel what I feel to find solace in this post, you are not alone. I am not alone.

On the weekend of November 11th, I attended the Black Health Matters Conference at Harvard, and I felt it. The genuine love and support and happiness that has been able to help me continue this journey. I left the conference and I thought “Okay, Jeannette, you got this, you need to do this”. I feel this when I walk into my lab (shout out to Dr. Tahirah Abdullah & The Black Mental Health & Advocacy Lab) and when I meet with my advisor Dr. Aminah Pilgrim, and the new connections I’ve made in my cohort, their unconditional love and support that has been my backbone throughout this experience.
I want to share this because higher education is an isolating and painful experience that I was not prepared to take on and when I entered the new world of TCCS, I did not know how to work through this. I’m still learning, and I think it’s going to be a long journey, but I think I’m going to get through this and I am grateful to those who are right behind me cheering me on, thank you.

I hope if you read this you can find support in this post or someone who just understands, you are not alone, don’t quit. I want to take a moment to highlight the importance of support & representation, without this I don’t think I’d have the strength to continue.  

A painting depicting four African women in dance wearing long dresses in bright colors