Buried in Women’s History Month is a single day, March 9, marked by a single state, California, to celebrate Latina history. As a Latina from California myself, I confess that, until this year, I had no idea that my home state had set this day aside. But now that I know, I plan to urge [...]
The impact of homegrown, San Antonio-based, all-woman band Girl in a Coma stretches far beyond the borders of Texas. Its fourth album Exits and All the Rest, recently named to NPR’s 50 best of 2011, shows the band’s range of talents–from the Morrissey-inspired “Smart” to the rough-edged anthem: Phanie Diaz, Nina Diaz and Jenn Alva bring renewed vitality and political charge [...]
By Nicole Guidotti-Hernandez On the opening day of Freedom University, located in a community center in Athens, Ga., students start trickling in 20 minutes before classes begin. The 28 eager collegians—three quarters of them women and the majority Latino/as—have come from Atlanta, Ackworth, Athens and other Georgia communities. Some are recent high-school graduates, others are [...]
In my Chicana Feminist Theory classes, there’s one text I never fail to teach: Alma Garcia’s 1997 Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings, a collection of newspaper articles, broadsides and essays by Chicana women activists of the 1960s and ’70s. Students identify with the sense of political urgency in these writings. Chicanas were struggling [...]
Since the Arizona state legislature passed the draconian anti-immigration bill SB 1070, other states seem to be in a race to catch up. Nebraska and Mississippi, with some of the nation’s smallest percentages of Latinos living within their borders, are nonetheless trying to pass some of the toughest anti-immigration laws we have seen to date, [...]
Arizonans committed to social justice can sigh with relief over Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva’s re-election to a fifth term in the U.S. House–something that conservatives fought tooth and nail because Grijalva supported a targeted economic boycott of the state over its draconian new immigration law. But that’s about the only good news out of Arizona. [...]
I can’t lie: I like Dora the Explorer, and I am 35 years old. My students bring me Dora paraphernalia and it adorns my office. Still, Dora and I have a complicated relationship. I’ve been following her career since I saw an ad about her in Latina Magazine in 1999, announcing the arrival of the [...]
The advent of the birth control pill and legalized abortion were watershed moments for the U.S. feminist movement. At the same time, these advances continue to be bound to the race, class and economic status of those who have access to reproductive technologies. U.S. Latinas and Chicanas, along with Native American and African American women, have [...]
Before I finished my Ph.D., I worked in the cosmetics industry for ten years as a makeup artist for Lauder Corp, which owns such prestige brands as Clinique, Estee Lauder, Bobbi Brown and MAC. The cosmetics industry is often a place where Chicanas and Latinas work their way through school, and I was one of [...]
On the heels of controversial immigration law SB 1070, which allows police to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant, Arizona’s legislature has passed a law targeting ethnic studies programs. The bill, which bans these programs because they supposedly teach “ethnic chauvinism”, represents another misguided effort by Arizona’s policymakers. As a professor of gender [...]
