Women’s History…why? :::brown suit asks with unfocused neurotic eyes:::

Maybe I’m not sure any more. I’m just sure that I need something to shift, and quickly.

I work two jobs as a College Advisor by day, and College Professor by night; Sounds like some super-hero script…and I love it and detest it all at once. I feel phantasmic and somnambulistic and I think I am developing an ulcer, but its probably something psychosomatic.

I am plagued by money and poverty, and a social class status in perpetual limbo transfixed between an elite-educated class and a poor boy from the Bronx on food stamps. Yes, I buy my lunch at Whole Foods sometimes with my Benefit card.

Whilst I sit transfixed between these borders, I turn to Gloria to get me through. She lets me know it will be okay…and tells me that I have a space.
But I do want to tell her that what I am really searching for is a home. Gloria said “homophobia is a fear of going home after a residency.” Well, where do we locate ourselves during a residency?
My home has been The Bronx for so long…but my dear friend, I think we’re headed for a divorce.

Last December, I spent countless dollars on applications to graduate programs in San Francisco, Toronto, and Montréal. I need(ed) to escape. Despite being accepted by a PhD program in San Francisco (I’m still awaiting to hear back from MTL almost 6 months later, but I doubt I would be able to secure a visa in time should I be offered acceptance), I decided that it was not my time to leave. I’m going to work out something with this city, I am going to find a space that doesn’t leave me jarred and marginalized on a daily basis.

Let’s see what happens.

I captured the message’s essence in my lens
Sitting atop of my dirty used bicycle seat with the flat tire named junker flirt
She was my axiom for freedom
Escape.

Hours later, substance lead me to a site downed in illusions of brown and white sullen hills.
The candle burned the lens
The image remained.

I remain.

Writer’s block is not the danger, somnambulist states colonizing our sexual liberations and libations is what I fear.

A precarious being of love and my grandmother’s stories.

I have joined the queer migration—the pervert infitatda.

I share my apologies with you for my absence. These lapses are familiar, but they serve as time of anti-capitalist production.

I am in the last moments of graduate school and I often fear what the future has in store for my mind-body-soul.

I have returned to a similar defense: running away.

Philadelphia is not far—two hours detached from what I call my home, but it’s a respite for the moment.

For the next few days, I will try to find myself once again in a space where I feel safe: the academy.

Roberto told me in Montréal that understands why I love to learn, why I live in the academy.
Tonight’s speech by Gayle Rubin will be my sermon, and she my leather-daddy preacher.
I hope to be able to internalize some trace of her presence. I am in search for inspiration and courage.

Saturday I climb on top of that tower and wave my bandera, like the boricua nationalistas.
I will be a panelists at a conference sharing my research into Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the woman who marked my life years ago.

I never met Ayaan, and may never will, but I will be offering an intervention into her position in Dutch politics in relation to Gender, Islam, and Multiculturalism in the Netherlands.

I don’t have the answer to writer’s block…the story has already been written.
I have been taken over by the fear: the prospect: no land of tolerance.

I share with you all my consciousness in motion, in transport to a place where I hope to begin to resist the orientalism of sexuality.

I’m going to rethink sex.

After we made the step to solidify our present, I am preparing to look forward and currently in the midst of  preparing for a huge change come September: my second-year of graduate school This has been one of the first relaxing summers in a long time, and I will be sad to see it go. But its time to return. I have a task to complete…now the issue here is: what form the product take?

As I discussed with you all a few months ago, my intentions for the next year of study were to return (volver) to my roots: Cuba. I proposed a thesis project on Queer Cuban Nationalism, and while the proposal passed…the project no longer seems feasible I have not had any luck securing access to university libraries and state archives. Considering that my project will be based in historiographical research, it is imperative that I employ primary sources. I KNOW they exist…but I have to accept that I will not have enough time to locate and analyze the sources.

This is where the shift…the change begins to come into focus…(or somewhat)

In Montreal, I visited the Gay Archives of Quebec and attended the Symposium on Queer Feminisms. These experiences provoked me to look north…and in a way return to a topic that I have been interested on studying for the past decade: Sexuality and Quebecois Nationalism. It is a perfect fit I fear speaking at length on the possible topic, as I don’t want to jinx this possibly.

but I will share with you another research project that I intend on pursuing independent of my work @ Sarah Lawrence. As most of you know, I am a native of the Bronx. I have lived elsewhere, but the Bronx (and specifically Parkchester) has always been my home. And in the past 10 years since I’ve “come out,” Parkchester and many parts of the Bronx have exploded with queer visibility. The Bronx now has Bronx Pride, a Gay and Lesbian Center, two HIV/AIDS organizations, a feminist/queer arts space, various queer nites at bars/clubs and damn, Roberto and I even registered our domestic partnership in the Bronx! Yet, in light of all these positive changes, a dense air of homo and transphobia continues to linger in this borough. I want to document queer lives in this borough…I want to engage with a history and enthnography of the queer Bronx. So if any of you have any resources, or directions for this project…please let me know.:-)

Because that is exactly what I will be doing–or rather, where I will be!

My first year of graduate school has officially ended, thereby my summer has finally begun!

I have not been able to go on vacation for some time, due to various financial and personal circumstances, but this school year certainly warrants a brief departure from the monotony of new york city. so, i’m escaping new york city for the entire month of june I may seem gloat-y, but, fuck it, I deserve it. I need a break For now, my homework is practicing French, Dutch, Spanish and learning some Catalan, since I will not be speaking much English for over a month! Here’s my (tentative) schedule:

27 to 30 Mai: Delaware and Washington D.C.–I will be attending one day of the NAFSA conference to network, find Ph.D information, etc.

2-10 Juin: Montréal, QUÉBEC–this is my second home: I will be conducting some light research at queer and feminist archives, and (hopefully) sitting in on the Queer Feminisms Symposium at McGill University. But, it will not be all work my Dutch roomie will be meeting us in Montréal from 6 – 8 June!

11-30 Juin: L’EUROPE!

Paris, FRANCE will be my home base, but I will be making day and weekend short trips to:

Barcelona, ESPAÑA

Provence-Marseille, FRANCE

Fez or Marrakesh, MOROCCO

Amsterdam, NEDERLAND

30 Juin: Arrive back to Montréal, QUÉBEC-

1 Juillet: La fête nationale du Canada!

2 Juillet : Return to NYC

3 to 6 Juillet: Independence Day in Dover, DELAWARE

and for the rest of the summer…who knows?

If any of you are in these cities, please send me a note. I’ve been to most of these places, but it is always nice consulting with a local or expat about must-sees’

I am so looking forward to it!

and, btw, I will definitely be photo-blogging this séjour au QUÉBEC et L’EUROPE!

a bientôt!

PREVIEW!:

btw, I strongly believe in intellectual property and collective knowledge–I think you get the point I am trying to make.

——————

Countermemorias: Queering Nationalism, Sexuality and Gender Performance in Revolutionary Cuba

It was rolling sounds of song and dance, cries of liberation, “¡Viva Cuba Libre!” that provoked Cubans to rise from their beds and toss off their rough American-made sheets to fill their balconies with the bodies of a new citizenry. January 1, 1959 marked a new year for Cubans all over the nation, but also marked an entrance to a new world: a liberated nation. The dream of José Martí was finally realized, a united Cuban nation under her own self-determination. Yet, as the citizens of Cuba were awoken from their dreams on that morning and arose to enter a half-century old dream, whose beds were they leaving? Whose bodies shared these citizens’ beds as nationalism broke through their windows? In order to work against the modern binaries of public and private, we must first begin to engage with “‘clandestine countermemories’ that bring into the present those pasts that are deliberately forgotten within conventional nationalists or diasporic scripts.”
Nationalisms in Cuba have produced some of the most salient social and political movements in our contemporary history. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 serves as the most documented example of contemporary social and political nationalist movements in Cuba; however, this is not to say that movements have to take on such grandiose forms. Movements in Cuba (and throughout the world) have often occurred underground, yet within a Cuban context, discourses on nationalisms have been quite influential. In a quest for social and political autonomy from various ‘outside’ influences, nationalist discourse has served as an ideological basis for various movements that call us to reconsider the past in constructing a foundation for the future. Nationalism can be understood as a project simultaneously involving construction(s) of memory, history, and identity. But how is this manifested upon the body? This project intends to consider the question of the body, but more directly on queer  bodies within the context of nationalism in Cuba.
This thesis will be an attempt in the direction of scholars like Joan Scott who call us to rethink the way that we consider the past. I will investigate a history of nationalism as parallel to a history of gender and sexuality in Cuba. In this manner, I work to excavate the ways that sexuality, gender, and nationalism are collectively part and parcel of Cuban history. In addition, I seek to not just write queer women and trans people into the Cuban historical record, but elucidate how they were and continue to be social actors in Cuban sexual discourse.  This thesis seeks to consider how nationalist struggles are also linked through paradigm shifts in sexuality and gender performance resulting in queer and feminist social movements from 1959 to 2000 .

Context:
January 1, 1959 was the birth of a new nation for Cuba and the beginning of revolutionary Cuba.  Within the first few months after Fidel Castro’s July 26th Movement seized power from General Fulgencio Batista’s regime, significant shifts in political power instituted a contemporary manifestation of Cuban nationalism. Yet, nationalism in Cuba was certainly not a new development.
In the 1820s, when parts of Spain’s empire in Latin America were galvanized by Bolivar’s dream of a united and sovereign Latin America and rebelled to formed independent states, Cuba remained loyal to the Spanish crown. But, as John Charles Chasteen suggest in Born in Blood and Fire,  “Cuban resistance to colonialism begun to take over parts of the island, and leaders were influenced by similar Bolivarian movements throughout Latin America.”  The power of nationalist ideology broke the boundaries of Cuba, and influenced a number of movements including an armed resistance to Spanish colonial rule during the Ten-Years War (1868-1878). While the first national struggle was physically defeated in 1878, the struggle for national sovereignty remained in the dreams of many Cubans.   During this time, the man who would later serve to be the father of Cuban nationalism, José Martí published a serious of articles and essays in Cuba, Spain and the United States on the wrong doings of Spain in Cuba. In April 1895, while in exile in the United States, José Martí, declared a new war against Spain and proclaimed Cuba an independent republic.
In the midst of this struggle, Martí was assassinated and in 1898 the United States suspiciously entered the Cuban battle for liberation. The United States blamed Spain for the explosion that destroyed the U.S.S. Maine, the United States under the guise of solidarity entered for war for Cuban nationalist struggle.  After a peace treaty was signed between the United States and Spain later that year, the United States acquired a number of Spanish territories, including Cuba. For the next ten years, Cuba remained under U.S. governance. It was only in 1908 with the Platt Amendment did Cuba finally assume self-governance—but with a number of limitations in foreign and domestic policy that maintained the centrality of U.S. economic interests on the island.  Yet, as Louis A. Pérez, Jr. suggests in  “Incurring a Debt of Gratitude: 1898 and the Moral Sources of United States Hegemony in Cuba”, for many nationalists in Cuba, the Platt Amendment represented a transfer in power from Spain to the United States and did not sufficiently allow Cuba to live up the dream of a sovereign Cuba. “The Cuban Revolution in 1959 finally cancelled the debt of gratitude to [the United States]”  for their involvement in freeing the nation from colonial rule, and rendered Cuba an independent nation—but were all citizens of the new Cuban nation free?

Historiography:
Scholarship on Queer Cuba can be traced back to the early 1970s when women and men of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) began to think critically about the situation of queers both nationally and internationally. A number of the members of GLF were strongly influenced by Marxism and Marxist academic-activist praxis, and this ideological lens shaped the form of their queer political projects. In 1972, two activist-scholars and members of the GLF, Karla Jay and Allen Young published Out of the Closets: Voices of the Gay Liberation, in which they provide a glimpse at the individuals and ideologies of the nascent gay liberation movement. In a section titled, “Gay as the Sun,” Allen Young expands the scope of the anthology to include the voices of queer Cubans.
In the spirit of the third-world and women’s liberation movements, Young includes the voices of queer Cubans to expand the struggle for gay liberation to address intersections of gender, sexuality and nation. Also, Young sought to form an alliance between queers in both nations while exposing the “anti-homosexualism of the Cuban Revolution and their commitment to creating a society which would have no homosexuals.”  In “Letter from Cuban Gay People to the North American Gay Liberation Movement” (1970) and “Declaration by the First National Congress on Education and Culture” (1971) Young offers readers two invaluable primary sources of early queer Cuban responses to the revolution, but fails to offer any analysis of the documents. In light of this lack of analysis, these documents offer an ideal entrée into scholarly discourse on sexuality in Cuba. In turn, these will serve as foundational voices to this thesis project. Moreover, Young offers no analysis of these documents and I have not been able to come across any published book or article analyzing these documents as primary sources.
In 1982, through historical and sociological research , Allen Young published Gays Under the Cuban Revolution. In this text, Young expanded upon his chapter on queer Cubans in Out of the Closets: Voices of the Gay Liberation. Gays Under the Cuban Revolution to mention the various ways how gay American organizations assisted gay Cuban refugees.  Young directly addresses the plight of queer Cuban men, and the lengths to which the revolutionary government would attempt to stamp out “sexual deviance.” Not only were gay Cubans sent to concentration camps, but so were any person that did not behave according to the “average” man or woman. On the other hand, Young counters his argument about the Cuban government by stating that criminalizing homosexuality was purely a Soviet import. This argument is highly problematic, and does not adequately engage with a history of colonial sexual domination in Cuba.
Over five hundred years after the arrival Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors, a lasting impression remains on the social and political situations of Latin America. The most obvious lasting colonial characteristic is the Spanish and Portuguese language, but, the influence of the colonizers is not limited to linguistics. Much of Latin American society is structured according to colonial standards. This includes heavy influence from the Roman Catholic Church and traditional gender relations regulated by machismo and marianismo.  This system of gender relations has often led to the repression and persecution of queers in Cuba (and throughout Latin America) shortly after arrival Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors.
In 1994, Ian Lumsden, a Canadian political scientist engaged with the history of the treatment of male homosexuality under Castro in Machos,Maricones and Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality. Lumsden links the cultural history of queers in Cuba, which is often textually based , with a social-political history of the differences between “publicly” or “privately” gay in Cuba. Lumsden also addresses the shifts in women’s roles and gender politics, and effects these have on gay men in Cuba. Similar to the ways that Gay Liberation movements in the United States were heavily influenced by the discourse developed by the Women’s Liberation movement, Lumsden claims that gay men in Cuba have also been consciously influenced by shifts in women’s gender roles in the Revolution. While Lumsden’s text assumes that gender and sexual discourses are not static, he, however, does not directly speak about the dialectic between nationalism and sexuality or gender performance. Finally, his project focuses entirely upon men, again rendering queer women’s experience to the margins.
At the nexus of cultural history and literary studies, Emilio Bejel ’s Gay Cuban Nation offers a textual reading of the topic I am interested in pursuing for my thesis: nationalism and sexuality. Through close readings of writers such as José Martí, José Lezama Lima, Reinaldo Arenas and others, Bejel shows that the anxiety of homosexuality is always lurking in the shadows of nationalist discourse. Often this is communicated though a discussion on gender performances, but his key focus examines “the relationship between the definitions of homosexuality and Cuban nationalism”  Yet, Bejel’s text focuses is exclusively based on literature, and while he does offer historical context to each work he discusses, Gay Cuban Nation is certainly more of a literary analysis of discourses on sexuality in Cuba.

Discourse:
The key conversation lacking from this discussion is namely how nationalism and gender performance affected the lives of queer Cubans. Nationalism often produces gendered discourses of the “new” woman and man that call for people to adapt their gender performance to acclimate with the new nationalist gender discourse. Considering this causal relationship between discourse and performance, it is only when the people allow these gender discourses to govern their gender performance do they become citizens-subjects. What I attempt to convey is that when people transgress gender norms in nationalist and revolutionary contexts, they are labeled deviant and anti-social. This was certainly the case for queers in Cuba.
In this conversation on queers in Cuba, the voices that still remain on the margins are those of queer women and trans people. In making female and trans subjectivity central to a queer nationalist project, it begins to conceptualize nationalism in ways that do not invariably replicate heteronormative and patriarchal structures of sexuality and gender performance.
At this point, most of my sources deal directly with queer men in Cuba. Nina Menendez’s “Garzonas y Feministas in Cuban Women’s Writing of the 1920” in Sex and Sexuality in Latin America offers some example of how I could engage in a textual reading of the cultural history of queer women’s experience in Cuba. Menendez’s text, however, does not directly speak to the salience of nationalism in 1920s Cuba and the author does not offer any indication of the post-1959 situation of queer women in Cuba.
I have yet to find any primary sources that address queer women in Cuba, with the exception of one. In appendix C of Machos,Maricones and Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality, Ian Lumsden includes the “Manifesto of the Gay and Lesbian Association of Cuba” (July 28, 1994). Like Young’s inclusion of the “Letter from Cuban Gay People to the North American Gay Liberation Movement” and “Declaration by the First National Congress on Education and Culture,” Lumsden does not offer any analysis of this document, and I have been unable to locate any published scholarship that analytically addresses the manifesto in Lumsden’s text. These three primary sources represent a valuable entrée to this historiographical discourse on queer Cuba. I hope to expand my catalogue of primary sources through archival research in Cuba in October and at other libraries, archives and depositories at the universities with a history of scholarship focused on Cuba. I will also contact the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York to gain access to any archival documents they may have on sexuality in Cuba. Finally, I plan to visit the Gay Archives of Quebec in June to the hope of locating possible primary sources that may not be located in the United States.   The three primary sources I have mentioned, nonetheless, represent a site for me to contribute to this discussion in tracing how discourses on gender and nationalism have contributed to the knowledge production of queer Cubans .

Too often do we view social stratification within binary confines; black-white, male-female, us-them…but what happens to the people that do not/cannot fit these categories? In academia there is an absence of these people and the stories that they can offer, specifically with regards to Latin@ LGBT transnational communities. Race is not a sole entity; issues of gender, sexuality, class and the many aspects that further parse our society affect and in turn become informed/inform it. How is sexuality affected by race and vice versa in Latin@ transnational communities? How can these communities negotiate these multiple identities, or do/can they at all? Within the strict interpretations of masculinity/femininity seen through the lens of “machismo y marianismo” that seem ingrained into Latin@ culture this negotiation is not an easy task.

RFS: How do you identify or within which groups do you identify? (race, ethnicity, gender, religious affiliation etc.) If applicable, briefly describe why you identify as such and since when?

GPRAJ: It is difficult to specify how I identify or to which groups I identify as I believe this process is highly contingent upon a number of variables, space and place being one of the most salient—Identification is a truly ambivalent process. At this moment, I most comfortably situate myself within a context(s) of a Queer Latino Feminist of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent and heterodox spirituality to fit within the parameters of your study, but I also see my economic class as being highly-educated and working-poor as also informing the way in which I engage with spaces around me. Yet, I also have various issues that I am working through with my gender identification. As a socially defined male, I am prescribed copious privileges that I am working to acknowledge in order to avoid practicing these privileges. I identify in the specific manner that I prescribed due to my engagement with activism and the academe. I am heavily influenced by social theory produced through histories of radical social resistance. So, in response, locating enabling epistemologies that speak strongly to affirm and challenge my social realities has shaped my identities. Also, given that I am the first in my family to reach higher education, much of my identity was developed in a context separate to my family, but I have learned to live with this.

RFS: Transnational communities are communities made up of individuals that have strong national ties to more than one nation in some instances incurring more deference for their “homeland” rather than their current home. Given this rough definition of Transnational communities would you consider yourself transnational? Why or Why not? what would you add or take away from this definition if anything?

GPRAJ: I consider myself as a transnational citizen. I constantly locate myself in a series of borders even when I am way from that geo-political space. My close family descent is one that encompasses Cuban and Puerto Rican genealogies, and I have a close relation to these histories despite my family’s thorough acclimation within a white American context. Until 14 years old, I always considered myself American—this was all that I really knew. I heard histories of living on the island, but they did not make any sense to me. It was when I was given the opportunity to travel abroad, I began to really think about myself in a transnational context. I lived in Canada for a number of months during my early years of high school, and from then on I have forged a connection with Quebec. I also feel a connection with various other places I’ve lived in my lifetime.

RFS: In your schooling, before college did you learn about Latin@ history?
GPRAJ: Yes, I attended a specialized high school focused on global studies, so I had the opportunity to learn some Latin American history while in high school.

RFS: What was it you learned? Wow did that make you feel then and now?
GPRAJ: I learned mostly colonial era Latin American history. I felt mostly detached from this history, as it did not really connect with my experience as a US Latin@.

RFS: Have you had a chance to discuss Latinidad and Latin@ history and issues in an academic setting?
GPRAJ: Yes. During my first semester in college, I immediately pulled myself into studying MYSELF. At that point, I was sick of not being able to find myself represented in history, literature or any other scholarship, but I had the immense luck of being able to come under the guidance of some amazing queer, feminist and Latin@ scholars. While I have moved on to other social groups in my studies, I also attempt to maintain a connection with Latinidad and Latin@ history. This often is accomplished through attempting to introduce Latinidad and Latin@ history whenever I feel that it is being over looked in a discussion or any other forum of inquiry. I attempt to exercise this behavior when queer, feminist and other marginalized topics come into play. Also, as an educator, I ALWAYS incorporate Latinidad and Latin@ history into my curriculum.

RFS: How about queer/LGBT history?
GPRAJ: When I began learning about Latinidad and Latin@ history in college, I also began learning about queer history. I have a personal and intellectual connection to queer and Latin@ history and I find them to be completely inextricable—queer and latin@ histories are part and parcel of lived social experiences and cultural memory—I don’t think you can have one without the other.

RFS: Have you “come out” to your family? How important is being out to your family?

GPRAJ: I came out to my family when I was 15 years old. At that time I began dating an ex-boyfriend…and I finally felt some security in my nascent relationship…so he gave me the support to come out to my family. Also, at this point I had already been sneaking around for 2 years and I was becoming exhausted. This situation coupled with my the independence I developed while living in Canada during the summer before coming out put me in an ideal position to come out at in August 1999.  Also, I scheduled my coming out just a few days before I departed to Germany for three weeks, so if things went bad at home, I would be thousands of miles away! While the above formed the foundation to my decision to come out, this decision was mostly catalyzed by my desire to be honest with myself, my boyfriend and my family. I knew that I could not live two separate lives with my boyfriend (or partner) and family because my family completes me in ways that I may never understand. In a way, I see my boyfriend/partner and family as two interlocking spheres that retain their subjectivity, but require each other to survive.

RFS: Are you familiar with “code-switching ”?
GPRAJ: Claro que yes! This happens when I speak to Latin@, queers, women, straight men..etc. I believe that language can be a reflection of your identity, so in order to connect with someone at substantial level, it is important to respect their codes of speech while also recognizing that it is important to not pretend in a disrespectful manner and retain your own sense of identity and politics.

RFS: Do you feel the need to “code-switch” between gay friends and straight friends? gay friends of color (specifically but not limited Latino) and white gay friends?
GPRAJ: Yes. Language has encoded into it a history of experience, knowledge, struggle and rebellion. So I find it important to have the information of these histories shape the politics of communication.

RFS: What is machismo? Has machismo shaped you or any of your decisions?
GPRAJ: Machismo is a colonized cult of male gender practices and orientation. It is completely oppressive as it is founded upon a history of domination of native peoples, women, queers..etc. It is all about locating power from a gender that is contingent upon robbing others of their agency.  It had definitely shaped me at one point….but, I’ve given that up years ago.

RFS: Do you consider yourself masculine? Would others agree with you?
GPRAJ: No I don’t consider myself masculine…or feminine for that matter. And I’m not sure how others read my gender performance: some certainly can place it in either for the poles I’ve mentioned, but some may see it as a mixture of both. I don’t think gender is ever static.

RFS: Do you feel race and sexuality inform each other? why or why not?
GPRAJ: Yes! But it is also important to recognize the specificity of race and sexuality. These two social locations are distinct, but also work together to construct dynamic experiences.

RFS: Is it possible to negotiate multiple identities, even when they may seem contradictory? Do you feel that you ever have to do this being a Gay Latino Male?
GPRAJ: Yes. Life is all about paradoxes, and that is what makes things interesting. I definitely need to negotiate being Latin@ and Queer…because Latin@s can be heterosexist and Queers can be racist, but I surround myself with a community of politicized queer Latin@s to keep me more grounded. But I also feel like I constantly have to negotiate my position as a socially-defined male and feminist—its a lot of fucking work…but after a while you learn to live the shift and it becomes more unconscious.

RFS: How do you feel about discussing these issues?
GPRAJ: It’s orgasmic. I think it’s important to always discuss these issues.

RFS: What do you think of the little to no visibility of gay latino’s in shows like Queer as Folk and DL Chronicles? Is there no need for representation? Are we under-represented? Why might this be? Does this matter? Would you watch a show that had an all latino gay male cast? Why or why not?
GPRAJ: Gay/Queer Latin@ are not represented on conventional queer media. I always think there is a need for representation…but representation is not ever enough. Often if we see a representation of us, some find it to be inadequate or fallacious and others may find it as very authentic. I would always support a show that had an all latino gay male cast, because it debunks the racial binary, but I think we need to de-center the power of the image produced by representation as a method for constructing knowledge of our experiences. Representation is always a problematic process because at the center of the project, it assumes that there is a singular authentic presentation or reality and I don’t think that is the case.

RFS: In discussions of race do you often feel that it is usually black v. white?
GPRAJ: In the United States, ALWAYS! But this is really connected to a history of slavery in the US that constructed our racial discourse into a binary of black and white.

RFS: Do you have any stories to share that involve race and sexuality?
GPRAJ: We’ll chat later. Read my work: race and sexuality are written all over it ☺

RFS: What would you like to add to this study?
GPRAJ: Good Luck! I’m very proud of you for taking on this endeavor.

Ambitious Child

My grandmother kept two small birds in her kitchen. As a child, I remember being completely in awe of birds. I did not understand how or why they could fly…or rather why I couldn’t. I, unlike those other stupid children I knew did not attempt to fly. I knew it was impossible for a human being to achieve self driven flight. But…I suppose the real question is: how did I know this? Although I did not break my arms, legs, head, neck or any other part of my body in any foolish attempt to soar with the birds, I carefully observed everyone else who did.
I suppose the ambitious child really had a fear of flying…

Without Notice

I.
I am the voice that remains lost in your revolution.
I  cannot be explained in objective or subjective terms: I exist beyond that limited understanding.

I am the wo/man who does not know
of my fellow sisters
of the struggle
of who I really am.

This voice remains absent from your revolution and
I am not cognizant of the possibility of  my own liberation.

Your ties beyond this space
Nicaragua, Cuba, Iraq
provoke to me wonder:
where do your interests lie
what is your revolution?

The revolution lies in my body
I gave birth to it
and there it should begin and end with me.
my body lies present with a voice
an open womb bleeding for your revolution.

disease, illiteracy and famine
do not mark the parameters of my struggle—it cannot be explained in a material vision of
development.
your image of
development
remains colonized
and my voice does not have a space.
it is imbedded in
silence—
silence
so sharp that the dogs howl in misery each fortnight.

On your second and third anniversaries
will you wish to hear my
voice
as you blow out the fire?
Oh, dear Bishop,
you can only see a connection to your colonizers:
their sneeze
develops
into your cold.
yet, Bishop, in your revolutionary position of authority and oversight,
cannot see that when you cough
I choke and suffocate while warm trade winds speed through my naked hair.

Your revolution has improved the condition of my being,
but has not addressed the substance.
I now live:
longer, healthier, richer.
but my voice continues
lost in your reforms.

The crisis you speak of truly affects us all
and yes, affects us like a leech—
but I no longer have any more blood
to feed its hunger for raw materials.

Your Revolution seeks to deepen
individual and collective
consciousness.
and you call us, your local congregation to move
forward ever, backward never!
I remain lost somewhere in between.
Your Revolution seeks to deepen
international consciousness
rendering me lost before I reach the ears of interpreters.
I know not of my sisters elsewhere, because I know not of my sisters here.

Your jewel, with its sheer brilliance
transfixes
and
renders me silent.

I have no voice.
I have no elections.

II.
I mourn for the 17
but from bereavement
I now have my voice:
or so I believe.

It has been a while since my last post. I have been really consumed by work these past few weeks, but I hope to get back as soon as possible–better to post quality work, then just copious amounts of trash, eh?

Please take a look at these upcoming events. I will be present at all of them. Please come out and support the work of these amazing activists, organizers, intellectuals and fabulous people.

In Solidarity,

Pablo

——-

http://intersextionsconference.eventbrite.com/

In the upcoming election, “Change” has been thrown around as a bit of a buzzword among the Democrats. This “change” promises to restore hope in government and address the neglect of citizens of the United States by the current dictatorship. For generations, the right wing has used divide-and-conquer tactics to impede liberation for women, people of color, trans & queer people, immigrants, youth, poor and low-income people, and countless others. For too long, this imposed division has prevented our movements from recognizing the points at which we intersect. At organizing at the InterSEXtions, we hope to focus and build upon these points of intersection – for example: educational inequality, gentrification, legislation that diminishes both the rights of LGBTQ people and immigrants (ie. Marriage rights and the REAL ID act), HIV/Aids as a health, socio-economic and political epidemic, and the war on Iraq. The SEX in interSEXtions is a commentary to copulate the issues, to rub our activisms and identities against each other, to grind together, to flirt with other political discourses, and to make love to the movement!

InterSEXtions is on a mission to create a “state” where NYC activists, students, and movement leaders of tomorrow come together from their distinctive backgrounds, with their diverse perspectives and skills, to investigate social injustices at the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, “citizenship” and ability and learn tools for grassroots organizing to develop a vision to further their activism. A central tenet to this conference is to build a network and solidarity among activists and students involved in intersectional social change. organizing at the InterSEXtions will be invigorating, critical, multilogical, and groundbreaking for movement building in NYC.

This conference will be held on April 19^th and 20^th, and will be a part of the larger “Building the Movement Weekend,” working in solidarity with ARKestra: Arts for Advocacy and Social Change and Zami, Like Me: Queer Womyn of Color CipHER.

Saturday

8:30-10am: Registration: Conference Resource Center, Lang Cafeteria

9am: Breakfast, Invocation and Libation: Julia Rhee, Leadership Academy Fellow with Young People For (YP4), Jamila Thompson, ARKestra and Women of Color Organization, Educator and Healer in training.

10a – 12:30p: Session 1

a. “Everyday Sexism and Modes of Resistance.”, Jamila Thompson, Women of Color Organization, ARKestra, Arts for Advocacy and Social Change.

b. “The Unexamined Whiteness of Teaching: The Challenge to Social Justice Education”, Bree Picower, Assistant Professor/ Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Teaching & Learning, Steindhart School of Culture, Education and Human Development, NYU., Core Member, NYCoRE.

c. “Afro-Asian Relations: Hip-Hop as a Platform*”, Julia Rhee, Leadership Academy Fellow with Young People For (YP4)

d. “Uses of the Erotic: In Activism and Scholarship,” Aih Djehuti Herukhuti Khepera Ra Temu Seti Amen, Ph.D.

12:30-2 p:

Lunch

and

Keynote: Kaila Story, Ph.D. The Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality, Assistant Professor Women’s and Gender Studies and Pan-African Studies, University of Louisville

and

Reflection and Harmonization: Jenn Ghost Bear

2p-4:30p: Session 2

a. “Learning & Media Pro(e)d(u)cation @ the Intersection of Literacies and Difference.”, 2008 Cohort, Educational Video Center.

b. “First, Class: Economic Justice and Class Issues in the LGBT Movement*.”, Kenyon Farrow, Board Co-Chair, Queers for Economic Justice, New York, NY

c. “Moving from Prevention to Intervention: HIV/AIDS Activism among Changing Times“, Michael Roberson, Executive Director, People of Color in Crisis (POCC), Frank Leon Roberts, Doctoral Student, New York University & Research Fellow, P.O.C.C..

d. Local Anti-War Movement Building: Students for a Democratic Society

4:45-5:45pm: Organizing Mixer: A meet and greet, mocktail hour for conference attendees.

6p-9p: Zami Like Me: Queer Womyn of Color CipHER

*Tentative workshop title/subject to change

Sunday

11a-12:30p: Roundtable Discussion: “Academic Justice: A conversation with folks who seek it and fight for it.” Aih Djehuti Herukhuti Khepera Ra Temu Seti Amen, Ph.D., Jan Clausen, Greg Tewksbury

12:30-2p: Lunch

1p-2p: “Love=Peace: Spirituality and Social Justice.”, Maya Hatch and Kumiko Endo, Love=Peace Project

2p-4:30p: Session 1

a. “We know what we’re “against” but what are we “for”? Defining our vision for a progressive future.“, Dennis Chin, Program Associate, Movement Vision Lab, Center for Community Change, New York, NY

b. “Using Independent Media to Support Grassroots Organizing: Eugene Lang and Beyond.“, Eleanor Whitney, Lang Alumni, co-founding editor of New School Press Press (formerly Inprint), co-editor of riffrag.org, museum educator and freelance journalist, Irene Villasenor, youth organizer with P.O.V./American Documentary, Vani Natarajan, young adult librarian with the Brooklyn Public Library and member of Radical Reference.

c. “[Re]Visions of Public Schooling: Grassroots Organizing for Educational Equity.”, Amita Swadhin, Sunset Park Education In Action Community (SPEAC) Collective

d. “Queer Diaspora: How might the cartography of a queer diaspora offer alternative narratives of globalization and its effects on subjectivity, culture, and kinship?”, Sadat Iqbal, Queer Union, NYU

5p: Closing Ceremony, Julia Rhee, Jenn Ghost Bear, Jamila Thompson, Maya Hatch

6p-9p: Zami Like Me: Queer Womyn of Color CipHER

*Tentative workshop title/subject to change

questions? email us at intersextions@gmail.com

conference produced by Joaquin Sanchez Jr and Harper Keenan,

the women of color organization, New School’s OPEN, Lang Student Union, Lang Dept of Education Studies, Lang Office of Community Activism and Participatory Citizenship

illustrations: Martin J. Fitzpatrick

and for a breakdown of Zami Like Me: Queer Womyn of Color CipHER:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/101221757/emailinvite

“Does our sexual or racial identity compel an activist intersection with such a horrifying status quo or not? Is it sexual or racial identity that will catapult each of us into creative agency for social change? I would say, I hope so.” – June Jordan

Put on by The CipHER Project and co-sponsored by the New School Women of Color Organization and OPEN, the gay/straight alliance at The New School, Zami Like Me is a social, political, activist, artistic, educational and entertainment two day event that will serve lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, non-conforming, and two-spirited women of color and allies in celebration of our multiple identities, works and talents. It will be a one to two day women’s cipHER, a sharing space of skill, wit, talent and gifts that will run full circle, 360 degrees, with love and support. In reaching out to the New School community as well as the outside community, I hope to bring in artists (in many forms) and academics, youth and elders, to join in this two-day event to educate and learn about the issues that are prevalent to these women. This event will be on Saturday, April 19th and Sunday, April 20th.

[Please join us Saturday April 19 from 5:30-9 pm and Sunday April 20 from 6-9pm.]

SATURDAY, APRIL 19 5:30-9PM

3 FILM SCREENINGS:

black.womyn.:conversations with lesbians of african descent by tiona.m.

I Look Up to the Sky Now, created by Barbara M. Bickart and 11 young queer activists.

Like a Boy, Like a Girl by Ash. S. Tai and Cleopatra N. LaMothe

FOLLOWED BY 3 SMALL CIPHERS AND THEN 1 LARGER CIPHER LED BY KAILA A. STORY, AUDRE LORDE CHAIR AND ASST. PROFESSOR AT LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY.

SUNDAY, APRIL 20 6-9PM

ART EXHIBITION BY LGBTQTS WOMYN AND ALLIES!

LIVE PERFORMANCES!

LIVE ART BY THE AGYTATORS!

$5 to $10 suggested donation will be requested at the door. All proceeds are going to the Audre Lorde Project and the Youth Enrichment Services (YES) at the LGBTQ Center. NO ONE WILL BE TURNED AWAY BECAUSE OF MONEY. There will also be a raffle foe a gift bag of goodies!

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