When asked about her recent creative-academic publication by Dr. Mazawi, Sonia shared:
Having three of my spoken-word poems published in the Spring 2019 Vol. 18, Issue 2, of Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, has me feeling all sorts of thankful, because it is not just another academic journal whose priority is rankings—its focus has always been building community and university bridges, transforming higher education and supporting-promoting new paradigms and methods. It features the women luchando. It was also started and is led by Chicana/x and Latina/x women who began resisting or were students of those original guerrerxs across the Americas, as early as the 60s. They have historically and continuously fought oppression in their own words, and on their own creative, community and scholarly terms. I started reading these women in my teens, long before instructors labelled them to me as ‘theory’ or ‘methodology’. A couple of years ago, I began performing spoken-word in conference and community settings when I was asked to introduce myself, as a form of resistance and celebration. The series published is one of three related projects on survival-refusal, resistance-healing, and contempothriving. This creative-academic publishing process has taught me the immense power of always connecting with the movimiento sources, of acknowledging their efforts to nurture new generations. I am happy to form part of a movement of Latinx peoples in Canada that are shouting loud and clear that we have histories of complex decolonizing-decolonial work (just like in the US), but above all, that our Latinx identity is plural, beautiful and resilient. Gracias C/LS MALCS for establishing space for our perspectives and welcoming my Spanglish words! The hard copy issue is out; and you will soon be able to access the online version here (and hopefully through the UBC library): http://journal.malcs.org/
Artwork by Jesmil M. Maldonado Rodríguez, detail of To The Newlyweds.