MALCS Archive

(MALCS) Women Active in Letters and Social Change

CFP: Word Images: A Norma Elia Cantú Critical Reader

Although ethnography is defined many times as “the study of the Other,” in Norma E. Cantú it becomes the study of the subjective self and the others who relationally define the self.

Author Norma E. Cantú’s writing describes a border culture not only because it speaks Spanish, is bilingual and bicultural, and is mostly located in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, the U.S. and México, but also because it depicts a bicognitive reality. Sara García has pointed out that Cantú writes about “the border from within the border,” what Mary Louise Pratt calls “the contact zone.” In her work, Norma E. Cantú depicts the internal, moral, and linguistic borders that Chican@s cross continually throughout their lives in various and diverse manners.

With its mixture of writing and orality, past and present, all mediated by memory, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, Cantú’s first groundbreaking novel, could also be read as testimonial literature if defined by Margaret Randall as “the possibility to reconstruct the truth.”  We invite submissions on Norma E. Cantú’s oeuvre and vision, including but not limited to her criticism, folklore, theory, and literature, as well as her newspaper articles. We welcome academic papers about Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera and all other works authored by Norma Elia Cantú, including poetry, short stories, opinion pieces, etcetera. [Read more…] about CFP: Word Images: A Norma Elia Cantú Critical Reader

Catching up with Aurora Guerrero

From your webjefa:

I’ve been following the production and success of Aurora Guerrero’s Mosquita y Mari for  a while now. I was fortunate enough to meet Aurora back in the late 90s when she screened one of her first short films, Ixchel, for my class in Chicana Feminisms at Occidental College. It’s been a pleasure to see her career blossom, and see her newest project, Mosquita y Mari, take multiple honors including Sundance and the SF International Film Fest.

Mosquita & Mari is a Chicana coming of age that was recently reviewed in the New York Times as “unassuming indie jewel, [that] resists all of the clichés that its story of the fraught friendship between two 15-year-old girls invites.”

Here’s a recent interview with Aurora by Melissa Silverstein at Indiewire. Here she talks about how worked to make her film a community project, and gives advice to other women filmmakers:

WaH: You were very deliberate in putting together grassroots partnerships like the one with Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) to help get the film done. Talk about that experience and what you learned from it?

AG: I didn’t want to do what so many entitled people do to marginalized communities. I didn’t want to just take from this community and not give anything in return. Ideally, I think there should be a partnership between you and the community you’re documenting. If they open up their doors to you, then in what ways can you be of use to them? That’s the question I came to CBE with. I wanted to make sure Mosquita y Mari was somehow beneficial to the community of Huntington Park. Together, CBE and I developed a hands-on mentorship program for the youth in the area. Anyone interested in media was brought on to the film and mentored by one of the department heads, depending on the interest of the young person. CBE and I also talked about making the film available to the community however possible, especially because it can serve as a tool to talk about identity within an immigrant community. I went into this partnership with CBE a firm believer in its potential to make filmmaking a positive and powerful experience for many. I guess I walked away re-affirmed that collaborating in this way is how I’m meant to work as a filmmaker.

WaH: What was the one mistake you made that you will do differently next time?

AG: There were a couple of times I didn’t trust my instinct and paid for it. No more of that!

WaH: What advice do you have for other female filmmakers?

AG: Don’t shy away from telling the story you want to tell. I think we often look for permission to be able to make the films we deep down want to make. Give yourself that! I bet if you allow yourself to create freely you’ll probably end up with something unique.

Read the complete interview at Indiewire

Special issue: “Chicana/Latina Testimonios: Mapping the Methodological, Pedagogical, and Political

Equity & Excellence in Education 45:3, 363-72 (2012)
Dolores Delgado Bernal, Rebeca Burciaga & Judith Flores Carmona,

While the genre of testimonio has deep roots in oral cultures and in Latin American human rights struggles, the publication and subsequent adoption of This Bridge called My Back (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1983) and more recently Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (Latina Feminist group, 2001) by Chicanas and Latinas, have demonstrated the power of testimonio as a genre that exposes brutality, disrupts silencing, and builds solidarity among women of color (Anzaldua, 1990). Within the field of education, scholars are increasingly taking up testimonio as a pedagogical, methodological, and activist approach to social justice that transgresses traditional paradigms in academia. Unlike the more common training of researchers to produce unbiased knowledge, testimonio challenges objectivity by situating the individual in communion with a collective experience marked by marginalization, oppression, or resistance. These approaches have resulted in new understandings about how marginalized communities build solidarity and respond to and resist dominant culture, laws, and policies that perpetuate inequity. This special issue contributes to our understanding of testimonio as it relates to methdology, pedagogy, research, and reflection within a social justice education framework. A common thread among these articles is a sense of political urgency to address educational inequities within Chicana/o and Latina/o communities.

–from the introductory essay by Dolores Delgado Bernal, Rebeca Burciaga & Judith Flores Carmona [Read more…] about Special issue: “Chicana/Latina Testimonios: Mapping the Methodological, Pedagogical, and Political

Chicana por mi Raza fundraiser: Get VP to EP!

We posted here earlier about the Chicana por mi Raza (CPMR) Archival Online Database project co-directed by Maria Cotera of University of Michigan, and Linda Garcia Merchant of Voces Primeras.  The project seeks to provide “broad-based public access to oral histories, material culture, correspondence, and rare out-of-print publications for use in both scholarly research and the classroom.”  MALCS leadership is currently considering organizational  sponsorship of the CPMR project.  Chicana por Mi Raza projectMeanwhile….

The Voces Primeras production team is seeking support for their travel to El Paso, Texas for the 4oth anniversary celebration of the Raza Unida Party Convention.  The team will be recording interviews with the Women of the Partido as they share their memories of their involvement in the party and throughout this movement. These women participated as not only political candidates, but also as caucus chairs, precinct captains, and organizers. This is an unprecedented opportunity to record this reflection as it happens.  The Indiegogo campaign here seeks financial support to fund their travel, lodging and airefare.

The production team would appreciate your donation at the Indiegogo site, and are offering various small incentives.  Or, they write, “Share our link! We don’t have a lot of time to gather these funds, so let your friends and family know about our campaign! If you would like to donate but would like to mail us a check, here is our information:  Voces Primeras, 47 West Polk Street, Suite 100-275, Chicago, Illinois 60605.”

Please don’t miss Maria Cotera’s comment below – click on “Comment”

Rest in peace, Chavela Vargas (Apr 17, 1919 – Aug 5, 2012)

La voz áspera de la ternura, Chavela Vargas (via Lina Murillo)

From the Associated Press:

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Chavela Vargas, who defied gender stereotypes to become one of the most legendary singers in Mexico, died Sunday at age 93.  Her friend and biographer Maria Cortina said Vargas died at a hospital in the city of Cuernavaca, where she had been admitted for heart and respiratory problems.

Vargas rose to fame flouting the Roman Catholic country’s preconceptions of what it meant to be a female singer: singing lusty “ranchera” songs while wearing men’s clothes, carrying a pistol, drinking heavily and smoking cigars.

Though she refused to change the pronouns in love songs about women as some audiences expected, many of her versions of passionate Mexican folk songs are considered definitive.

Born in San Joaquin de Flores, Costa Rica, on April 17, 1919, Vargas immigrated to Mexico at age 14. She sang in the streets as a teenager, then ventured into a professional singing career well in her 30s.  “I was never afraid of anything because I never hurt anyone,” Vargas told the audience at a Mexico City tribute concert in June 2011. “I was always an old drunk.” [Read more…] about Rest in peace, Chavela Vargas (Apr 17, 1919 – Aug 5, 2012)

UCSB graduates first three Chicana/o Studies Ph.D.s

By Patricia Marroquin at the UCSB Grad Post (submitted by Aida Hurtado):

image of first three Chicana/o Studies Ph.D.s

UC Santa Barbara’s Chicana and Chicano Studies Department made history this summer, and it’s an achievement that has been at least 30 years in the making. In June, three students participated in Graduate Division’s Commencement ceremony, becoming the first graduate students in the world to earn Ph.D.’s in Chicana and Chicano Studies.

The students are Jessie Turner, Thomas Avila Carrasco, and José G. Anguiano Cortez. Jessie received a spring 2012 degree, while Thomas and José are filing for summer 2012 degrees. For Jessie, José, and Thomas, this degree is a “family accomplishment,” “a collective achievement,” and one that instills “great pride.”

The idea for a Chicano Studies Ph.D. program at UCSB has multiple origins….

Story continues at UCSB GradPost