Reclaiming the Matriarchy: Chicana Feminism and Revolutionary Mothering
August 15, 2020 | 10am-12:30pm PST/ 1pm-3:30pm EST
2.5HR ONLINE WORKSHOP
*This workshop is reserved for femme-identifying BIPOC only (women of color, Indigenous women, Latinas, transLatinas, queer Latinxs and queer people of color who identify as femmes).
Description:
Are you curious about Chicana feminist theory but haven’t had a chance to engage in a deep exploration? Are you the child of a Chicana/Latina mother? Are you mothering a girl of color? Are you on a healing journey of a mother-daughter relationship? Do you want a deeper understanding of how patriarchy influences Latinx culture and Latinx familial and romantic relationships? Are you looking to incorporate women of color feminisms into your parenting practices? This workshop is for you!
This workshop is reserved for femme-identifying BIPOC only (women of color, Indigenous women, Latinas, transLatinas, queer Latinxs and queer people of color who identify as femmes).
This workshop will explore the possibilities of woman of color, queer Latinx and Latina self-healing through a decolonial feminist lens. Chicana feminism provides a toolkit for decolonization based on Indigenous philosophies, embodied remembrances of survival and imagined collective futures that are more liberatory than the present. The workshop will critically engage the challenges of supporting, nurturing and raising empowered Latinx/Chicanx people in a heightened xenophobic environment that continuously renders Latinxs as criminals, refugee children as subhuman and Indigenous people as invisible. Applying creative learning and leveraging inter-generational conversations, this workshop will help participants utilize Chicana feminist theory in their healing journeys and/or their parenting practices. Delving deeply into theory and offering testimonio, the workshop will address how to connect decolonial feminism to career, activism, self-growth, healing, revolutionary motherhood and creative work.
Workshop participants will gain:
- A better understanding of Chicana feminist theories through engagement with the classic texts.
- An understanding of how colonial gendered violence can impact parenting children from marginalized identities.
- Philosophical knowledge of Mesoamerican goddess reclamation to help us access an ancestral Xicanista feminism.
- Strategies to rematriate a home through the institution of a matriarchal partnership and parenting philosophy.
- Strategies for decolonizing and overcoming the virgin-whore dichotomy in our worldview and in our child-raising.
- Practice in owning and using the power of testimonio to document and decolonize.
- The opportunity to create poetry for self-healing through a trauma-informed Xicanista poetry exercise.
Once payment is received, you will receive a PDF with further instructions.. Email eri@birthbruja.com if you do not receive your confirmation email.
NonRefundable: All payments are nonrefundable.
Scholarships:
There are limited scholarships available for BIPOC.
To apply, email Eri@BirthBruja.com with a short share about who you are and why you want to attend and be sure to add "Reclaiming the Matriarchy Scholarship Request" in the subject!
About the Facilitator:
Dr. Gabriela Spears-Rico is a Pirinda-P’urhepecha Indigenous feminist poet and scholar who
serves as an Assistant Professor of Chicano Latino Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Her research explores how representations of indigeneity in Mexican popular culture inform understandings of race and ethnicity among Mexicans and Chicanxs. Dr. Spears-Rico is currently working on her first book, Mestizo Melancholia and the Legacy of Conquest in Michoacan. This work engages performance theory, critical race theory and feminist theory to examine how ‘going native’ functions in Mexico and what instances of cultural appropriation reveal about the technologies of mestizaje among people of Mexican descent. She authored “Decolonial P’urhepecha Maternalista Motherwork as Pedagogy,” in The Chicana Motherwork Anthology (University of Arizona Press, 2019) and “Transnational Indigena Mothering from Michoacan to Mni Sota Makoce” in Transnational Latinx Perspectives on Ana Castillo (forthcoming with Pittsburg University Press). An award-winning poet and performance artist, her poetry has been published in Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (University of Arizona Press, 2011), Poesia mexicana en la frontera norte (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Editoriales, 2011) and Agenda (Unisa Press, 2019). She mothers a fierce Ojibwe Dakota/Xicanita named Miskozi and currently serves as the Chair of the Women’s Indigenous and Native Caucus for MALCS.