Critical Reading List

The readings here are provided as a portal or entryway into engaging hegemonic discourses on Latinidad; the readings compiled here are meant to problematize and disrupt the many state-sanctioned forms of violence Indigenous, Latina/o/e, and Afro-diasporic subjects are forced to navigate. I hope these readings bridge the connected violences that Latina/e peoples, living across the diaspora and living within the belly of the beast are forced to contend with. If I have one wish, reader, it is that you come away recognizing  gender-based violence (GBV) as inextricably linked to the violence of borders, economic violence, ecological and environmental violence. Systems of domination–such as cisheteropatriarchy and capitalism–necesitate a body/land to colonize. This structure of power (and its accompanying violences) create the historical conditions that force disparate subjects to re(locate), to flee, and to seek refuge; heartbreakingly, these subjects flee violences (economic, civil, ecological, and gender-based violence) and encounter even more on their path to freedom. Hopefully, as you read this, you get to ponder: when and how do my people get to rest?

I am less interested in recapitulating Latinidad as a celebratory, multicultural term that makes room for a seat at the master’s table (Lorde). Instead, I would like to deconstruct and problematize Latinidad–often positioned as singular, coherent, and homogenous racialized term within the States–to instead make way for the various expressions that have been silenced: the queer, the femme, the Black, the indigenous, the aberrant. If we take the readings here further–how has gender-based violence been structurally omitted from the cannon of Afro-Latina/e and Indigenous experiences? This, too, is yet another form of violence, because how do we begin to heal if we cannot recognize the historic injustices people have suffered? 

Lastly, I hope these readings illuminate the rich sites of resistance and creativity despite the compounded violences our communities must face and navigate. I borrow Maria Lugones and Yomaira Figueroa’s tactic of Faithful Witness to read against the grain by politically and strategically valuing the silenced archives of the aberrant–in this context, most often the immigrant survivor of gender-based violence. 

I hope these readings are engaged as a starting point rather than a definitive end: please engage, contribute, and critique: what is enriching and what is missing? I create this with the humble offering: If we move to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, then everyone will collectively move forward.