Harmonizing Latina Visions and Voices: Cultural Explorations of Entornos (Environment and Religion in Feminist-Womanist, Queer, and Indigenous Perspectives)

This book reimagines what it means to be Latina beyond borders and the "baggage" of cultural categories, definitions, and labels. Harmonizing Latina Visions and Voices: Cultural Explorations ofEntornos discursively challenges the erasures, stigma, and silences imposed on women by functioning as a harmonizing choir, a collection of voices to testify on mujerismo, its vision, and its promise for (our) future. This collection puts “on the record” a pathway toward liberation that pushes back against white supremacist projects unleashed by academia, our families, official narratives of the State, and immigration. This book does not seek to equate the experiences of all Latinas or envision a one-size-fits-all response. We harmonize these diverse voices, understanding that these stories, poems, and essays are invoking different spaces, times, and experiences. We offer them as an intergenerational, intellectual, and spiritual dialogue. As a practice, this work centers and contextualizes how women's resistance is articulated and expressed. The stories reflected in the chapters that follow are often matricentric, transnational, and queer. Some recurring themes center on the policing, policies, and legislations that govern Latina's bodies and the entornos (social/environmental worlds) in which they move, are detained, or embodied. Contents List of Figures Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction WHO IS A LATINA? A Letter to Black Womxn of Abya Yala and Turtle Island The Formula for Visible Latin(a)dad Cultivating a Pleasure Practice Beauty in Isolation Las Cosas Pequeñas A Poetics of “Ser Latina” and “Do You Touch Yourself?” MOTHERING Grandmother Gendered Intergenerational Trauma “My Mother, Myth, and Monster” Magaly Pineda Remembered Not My Mother’s Eyes Verde Abuela Elsa Dolores AND THE BODY “Rerooting” and “You’ll Still Be Fine” Interrogating Intimacies Children’s Laughter Crafting Social Justice The Narrative of the Body Conquering the Freshman 15 Wielders of Ancestral Magic Index About the Contributors