Snapshots of a Past
In the dream, you are a passenger inside a car that turns right onto the sleepy cul-de-sac of Bierenberg Place. On the left, you recognize the two-story brick house that sits behind a low-picket wooden fence against the backdrop of green hedges filled with bird feeders. With conviction and a sense of urgency, you walk up to the front door, ring the doorbell. You hear it vibrate through the closed windows. A few seconds later, you hear the click of a door unlatching.
***
Read online at Minerva Rising (Oct 20, 2022) here
Harmonizing Solatude at 35,000 Feet
2:55 pm Pacific Standard time (11:55 pm Paris time):
At the boarding gate, I was asked to remove my glasses so that the facial recognition machine could do its job: validate me as a passenger of Air France Flight 0085 bound from Los Angeles for Paris. Could the machine detect the overwhelming uncertainty that was swelling in my brown eyes? My thoughts seemed lost in sounds and flurry of travel crowding the air - loud announcements of departing and arriving flights, wheeling luggage and crying children.
Read online at Minerva Rising (Jan 12, 2021) here
JOMR Vol. 4, No. 2
Invisible Labor in the Academy
"Se Tienen Que Poner Listas": Testimonio of an (In)visible Truth.
Your early years were spent speaking and swaying to the cadences of Spanish. Then, in the English-only classroom your presence seemed more ethereal than earthly. You were slow to learn to read, as your attachment to words was insecure. As a young Latina, you knew that you would have to labor twice as hard to catch up.
Read online at The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics (Winter 2021).
Book Review: Of Women and Salt, by Gabriela Garcia
California Review of Books
From what corners of our lives do we summon the will to survive the wickedness of life? This seems to be a central question in Of Women and Salt, the debut novel by Gabriela Garcia. And like in life, the novel does not propose a single answer.
Read the full review here. (May 2021).
Sagewoman Vol. 96 The Passion of Fire
Dancing with Fire: Rekindling Passion in a Changing Body
I have come to cherish the fire in my blood that is joined to the native intelligence of my ancestral roots, powered by the moon, sun and by the earth. I tend my flame as I recognize that it is the spirit of inner-fire and Goddess Coatlicue’s dualism, as both creator and destroyer, that urges me to stand strong in my own voice, in my own dark skin.
Read the essay at Sagewoman #96 Passion of Fire. (Fall 2021).