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Cindy Cruz awarded 2012 AERA Article of the Year
Congrats to MALCSista Cindy Cruz who has been selected as the recipient of the 2012 Article of the Year award by the Queer Studies Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Her publication, entitled “LGBTQ street youth talk back: a meditation on resistance and witnessing,” has been lauded for its strong theoretical and counter-colonialist research frames. Â Cindy is currently a fellow at the UC Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California (CCREC).
To access the article, click here.
Abstract:
In this ethnography of LGBTQ street youth, I argue that despite the regulation and containment of their bodies, queer street youth consistently create spaces of resistance that move them away from the tropes of infection, contamination, and deservedness that are inscripted onto the bodies of queer youth. Using the work of feminist philosopher Maria Lugones, this essay articulates a framework for resistance researchers – scholars who enact a “faithful witnessing“ in solidarity with the communities they are describing, a movement away from the radical othering that often happens in social science research. It is in this positioning as a faithful witness that researchers can attend to the deconstruction of the discursive climates of deficit tropes that obscure the gestures and maneuvers of resistance. The tropes of contamination and irresponsibility intersect many of the experiences of LGBTQ street youth in ways that implicate not only LGBTQ street youth, but also other marginalized bodies.
Cruz, C. (2011). “LGBTQ street youth talk back: a meditation on resistance and witnessing.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 24(5): 547-558.
New book: Presumed Incompetent, eds. Gutierrez y Muhs, Flores Niemann, Gonzalez & Harris
“Presumed Incompetent is undeniably a path-breaking book full of stories of resilience and survival. The editors of this magnificent collection attest to the power of storytelling and add to the testimonios of women in academia such as Telling to Live and Paths to Discovery. Each and every one of the authors survived and in telling their stories they offer hope and solace for young women scholars entering the academy.”
—Norma E. Cantú
Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and concrete recommendations, and provide a window into the struggles of professional women in a racially stratified but increasingly multicultural America.
To be released in May 2012.  Reviewers needed; please contact Gabriella  at ude.uelttaes@greitug.  Also coming in 2013 is Rebozos de Palabras: An Helena MarÃa Viramontes Critical Reader, edited by Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs.  Reviewers and “blurbs” also sought.
Co-Editors Yolanda Flores-Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Angela P. Harris, and Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs 
Angela Harris
Book Release Party for Earth Wisdom: A California Chumash Woman
DR. YOLANDA BROYLES-GONZÃLEZ BOOK RELEASE & SIGNING
The University of Arizona’s Native American Red Ink Magazine is proud to host the launch event of Professor Yolanda Broyles-González’s new book Earth Wisdom: A California Chumash Woman, written in collaboration with Chumash native elder Pilulaw Khus. The event will take place 7:00 p.m., Friday, February 3, 2012 at Antigone Book Store located at 311 N. 4th Avenue in Tucson, Arizona.
Broyles-González gathered the oral history of Pilulaw Khus for over ten years. This book provides a new vision of California history and an important vision for the survival of our planet. This is a groundbreaking Indigenous women’s history volume.
In Earth Wisdom: A California Chumash Woman, Khus narrates the history of California and of the state’s Indigenous peoples’ from a native woman’s perspective. She includes her personal story of over four decades of activism in tribal, environmental, and human rights issues. That powerful history is both deeply spiritual and political; it constitutes an important segment of the Civil Rights Movement.
Yolanda Broyles-González provides an extensive introduction, carefully providing context to Khus’s narrative, as well as to the periods before, during, and after European colonization of California. She challenges many of the widely held assumptions put forward by anthropologists and historians, as she unfolds an Indigenous understanding of gender, of history, of the universe. The book is the first to document 20th Century Chumash re-emergence struggles, such as the yearlong Point Conception Occupation (1978).
Reviewers of Earth Wisdom sing its praises:
     “This is one of the most extraordinary collaborations between a scholar and Indigenous activist     that I have read.†–Prof. Greg Cajete, Director of Native American Studies at the University of       New Mexico
“Yolanda Broyles-González’s book on the Chumash of Santa Barbara is superb.†–Rudy Acuña,   author of Occupied America and professor at California State University Northridge
“Exemplary meeting of activism and scholarship brings the reader a wealth of accessible    information that penetrates well beyond surface gleam (. . .) Partake in the earth wisdom of a      people who revolted and revolutionize still.†–Allison Hedge Coke, author of Blood Run
Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González is an elder of the Yaqui Barrio Libre ceremonial community in Tucson, Arizona and Professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona. Pilulaw Khus is a Chumash ceremonial elder and clan mother of the northern Chumash Bear Clan.Eart
We Will Not Comply: Youth Activist Mayra Feliciano
Here’s the latest installment in WordStrike’s multi-part series on Saving Ethnic Studies in Arizona. Jeff Biggers speaks to Mayra Feliciano, a leader of the student group UNIDOS, about turning her school’s struggle to defend ethnic studies into a nationwide grassroots movement for educational justice.
As one of the co-founders of the student group UNIDOS in Tucson, Mexican American Studies alumna Mayra Feliciano has played a key role on the frontlines of the education and civil rights battle in Arizona.  As a high school student last spring, Feliciano took part in numerous school and community forums, protests and direct actions, including the historic takeover of the TUSD school board.  UNIDOS launched a “School of Ethnic Studies†last week, as part of an on-going campaign to defend TUSD’s banished Mexican American Studies program (MAS).
Raised in Tucson, Feliciano credits courses by former Mexican American Studies teacher Jose Gonzales with empowering her to graduate and pursue a college degree, and deepen her connection to the community. “Before I took these classes I was ashamed of my culture,†Feliciano noted in an earlier interview. “Born in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico, I felt very different–I was darker than a lot of my friends and I felt like people were always prettier than me. I didn’t care about learning more about my culture; I didn’t even pay attention to what was going on around me. I took the Mexican American Studies course and my life turned around for the better. I was struggling to graduate, but this class taught me that we all live in a society where we all struggle and that knowledge and facts are what help to get you through.â€
Now at Pima Community College, on a path to law school and a career as a civil rights attorney, Feliciano discusses the role of MAS and UNIDOS in her life and study, as part of our multi-part series on the Ethnic Studies crisis.
Jeff Biggers: Describe how and why you are involved with UNIDOS.
Mayra Feliciano: The reason why I am involved in UNIDOS was because the TUSD Social Justice Education Project put together activities back in February, 2011 to help me and other groups of people become better organizers. We all came to the common realization that the Ethnic Studies classes were under attack. So we all came together to fight HB 2281.  UNIDOS was created by students, for students, and has always been organized and independently run by students. I was there from the beginning; I remember coming up with the name and what each letter stood for. I stuck to this group because I had the same passion to fight against discrimination. I was tired of not doing anything for my community. I was willing to fight for this, not just for me, but my family. Not only that, for those who fought for these classes in the past.  From the beginning I began handling the media along with other members. I would type up letters, I would help with press releases and media packets. I continue to do that. I help organize events and do the basics in just trying to make sure things go well. I am not taking all of the credit–I couldn’t do this just myself.
JB: How do you see your UNIDOS organizing as part of a longer struggle for education and civil rights?
MF: I know that problems aren’t going to end in this world. There will always be something wrong. But as I get older and leave my youth stage I will pass down my knowledge. We have so much going on. As long as people like Superintendent John Huppenthal and TUSD board members are afraid of well educated Latinos, they will try to take away our successful courses and studies.  Right now there is an attack on Mexican American studies, tomorrow it can be Native American Studies. This will be a longer struggle and they aren’t going to stop.
Interview continues at WordStrike
Submitted by Francisca James Hernandez, Pima Community College.
This Entry excerpted directly from Wordstrike.net at https://wordstrike.net/we-will-not-comply-youth-activist-mayra-feliciano
Cherrie: Whew! We did it! Deep thanks!
From Cherrie L. Moraga:
Estimado/as Supporters,
True, we were not going door to door with donation cans, but the vigilance it took by so many of you, to encourage your friends and colegas to pledge, to keep sending out the word, posting and posting, felt as demanding as that. And I thank you. I thank all of you here who have supported this campaign. Some of you, I know, really pledged beyond your budgets. It meant a great deal to me, to us.In our *52-*day campaign (the NEW FIRE number), we raised over $27,000! And, in the process, you have helped to fund actual jobs for people of color artists — musicians, visual artists, designers, and choreographer — in a Xicana/Indigenous/Queer project. (There is a kind of timely and connected importance to this, I think: this show of an alternative approach to capital-raising in solidarity with young people in Oakland hell-raising in opposition to capital greed.)
[Read more…] about Cherrie: Whew! We did it! Deep thanks!
Introducing the Association for Joteria Arts, Activism & Scholarship
Forwarded from Nohemy Solorzano-Thompson:
Dear Comunidad,
On October 14 and 15, 2011, we took steps toward building an organization that brought together JoterÃa arts, activism and scholarship. After years of community dialogues and three JoterÃa conferences, which took place at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (2007), California State University, Los Angeles (2008) and the University of Oregon (2010), the need for institutional spaces that support, affirm and manifest JoterÃa consciousness surfaced.
[Read more…] about Introducing the Association for Joteria Arts, Activism & Scholarship
