Biography

The Hungry Woman

Synopsis: The Hungry Woman is a dystopian adaptation of Medea in which the U.S. government has been overthrown, and the land is divided into race/ethnicity groups. With communities organizing around race, the society’s undercurrent of patriarchy leaves women as subcitizens. LQBTQ people are segregated to Phoenix, Arizona, where Medea, her son Chac-Mool, and her girlfriend, Luna, live. Medea’s ex-husband, an organizer, tries to convince her to let Chac-Mool move in with him, but Medea is afraid Chac-Mool will adopt the same patriarchal habits as his father.

The Hungry Woman is a perfect challenge for students who have some experience discussing race, ethnicity, and sexuality. It can be used to teach about intersectionality, dystopian fiction, adaptation of Greek tragedy, social movements, sexuality, and Chicanx, Aztec, and indigenous heritage.

Appropriate for audiences 16+. Explicit language and imagery.

Identity Walks

Adapted from a workshop with Marta Esquilin.

Purpose: This activity is designed to enable students to begin to explore the various communities with which they identify. We tend to identify ourselves primarily in terms of race or other obvious markers. This activity will challenge participants to think about the multiple communities they may identify with, how they conceptualize community, and the assumptions they may hold about each other in relation to community.

Instructions: We are going to do an activity called identity walks. In this activity we will be exploring social group membership and the various communities that we identify with. I will ask you to get into groups based on different categories. When you have found your group, I want you to separate from the crowd. (note: some categories will be processed more than others) These categories are open to interpretation. Therefore, if you do not find a group that represents you, you can stand alone and represent yourself. I need everyone to begin walking around the room and mingling with each other.

Warm-up Example: Get into groups of people wearing the same color shirts….

Same gender identity

Same political ideologies

Same racial or ethnic group

Same religious perspective

Same sexual orientation

Same socio-economic Class

Process Questions after high risk categories:

What group are you? How did you define this group and why? How did you find each other? How do you feel about being part of this group?

General Process Questions:

Reactions to the activity? How did you feel about being told to get into groups? Were some categories more difficult than others? Which categories and why? What was it like for those of you who stood alone? How did you make decisions about which people to get into groups with? Is this process reflective of how we form communities? Does the environment you are currently in influence which identities are most salient for you? Why or why not? What identities do you feel should have been included/addressed?

Watsonville

Synopsis: It is the 1990s, and workers at the Pajaro Valley Cannery in Watsonville, California strike for rights and better wages using protest theater and hunger strikes. The Latinx community faces divisions as anti-immigration legislation is proposed in California. Politicians deliberate on Bill 1519, which is intended to separate the workers into legal residents and illegal immigrants as a way to prevent them from organizing. The characters in the foreground of Watsonville are the people who are typically in the shadows of labor organizing: women, mothers, LGBTQ people, and youth. By bringing marginalized characters to the center of her play, Moraga highlights their invisibility and how social movements are often willing to make human sacrifices. Many characters are forced to leave parts of their identities at the door in order to assume various roles in their lives and in the movement.

Watsonville opens the door for discussions about social movements, intersectionality, international policy, LGBTQ+ identities, workers’ rights, and undocumented immigrants’ rights.

Circle in the Dirt

Synopsis: Based on a series of interviews conducted and watched by Cherríe Moraga, Circle in the Dirt takes place on the day two buildings in East Palo Alto are scheduled to be demolished. Residents of the Coolie apartments gather around a projected screen to look at photographs of the people who have been forced to leave East Palo Alto: business people, local activists, and families, all people of color. The community is fraught with tension as they discuss the of two buildings and the closing of a local school.

Circle in the Dirt is an example of community-engaged interview theatre and can be used to teach students about community, gentrification and universities’ roles in it, internalized racism, and the school to prison pipeline.

Third World Feminism

Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review. 43 (6). 1241-1299.

Moraga, C. & Anzaldúa, G. (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. New York, NY: SUNY Press.

Latinx & Chicanx Studies

Aparicio F., & Chávez-Silverman, S. (1997). Tropicalizations: Transcultural representations of latinidad. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.

Butler, J. (2011) Color-line to borderlands: The matrix of american ethnic studies. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

Calderón, H. & Saldivar, J.D. (2009). Criticisms in the borderlands: Studies in chicano literature, culture, and ideology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Delgado, R. & Stefancic, J. (2011). The latino/a condition. New York, NY: NYU Press.

Oboler, S. (1995). Establishing an identity in the sixties: The mexican-american/chicano and puerto rican movements. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 44-79.

Romero, M., Hondagneu-Sotelo,,P., & Ortiz, V. (1997). Challenging fronteras: Structuring latina and latino lives in the u.s.: An anthology of readings. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

U.S Imperialism

González, J. (2000). Harvest of empire. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

González, R.M., & Fernández, R.A. (1979). U.S. imperialism and migration: The effects on mexican women and families. The review of political economics, 11(4), 112-123.

Montejano, D. (1987). Race, labor and the making of texas, 1836-1986. Anglos and mexicans in the making of texas. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 75-99.

Colonization of Latin America

Andrien, K. (2002). Andean worlds: Indigenous history, culture, and consciousness under spanish rule. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Crosby, A.W. (1972). The columbian exchange: Biological and cultural consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, INC.

Del Castillo, R.G. (1992). The treaty of guadalupe hidalgo: A legacy of conflict. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Keen, B. (2003). Latin american civilization: History and society, 1492 to the present. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Knight, A. (2002). Mexico from the beginning to the spanish conquest. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Lockhart, J. (1983). Early latin america: A history of colonial spanish america and brazil. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press

Smallwood, S. (2008). Saltwater slavery: A middle passage from africa to american diaspora. New York, NY: Harvard University Press.

Web page compiled by Sherill-Marie Henriquez (2017)