women of color

Continuing along this guest blog series' theme of class, caste and slavery, let's look at a city run by women of color in Alaya Dawn Johnson's The Summer Prince.

The book's society, seen through the eyes of young main character June Canto, is a clear critique of class and race dynamics that exist today. As in our real world culture today, the people at the top of The Summer Prince's society refuse to recognize the oppression that exists their literally pyramid-shaped city.

In Karen Sander's dystopian young adult book Tankborn, the world is a stringent caste system where race and origins determine all status. Tankborn was a hit and the sequel, Awakening, just came out this April, which means now is a great time to discuss the race and gender angle of the book. 

I've never been attracted to books set in a world in which women have been stripped of their reproductive rights and function mainly as breeders. After all, I live in a very real society in which women's rights over their bodies are constantly being eroded. The right to family seems to not apply to those who are poor, of color and/or incarcerated. So why escape to a world in which all of these injustices have been magnified?

The cover of Dan Well's Partials depicts the back of a dark-haired girl of ambivalent skin color looking out over a wasteland. Nothing in the summary indicates that there are people of color in the book. To the jaded reader, Partials might very well be yet another book in which people of color have not survived the apocalypse. I wouldn't have picked up Partials for this blog series on race and gender in dystopia had my twelve-year-old daughter not read and recommended it, letting me know that the main character is <gasp> a girl of color. And she's not the only girl of color who's survived dystopia.

I don’t exactly remember  how I discovered the Empowering Women of Color Conference (EWOCC) in Berkeley, California but I first attended the event last year. Far from the stuffy conference rooms of a fancy-dancy hotel, EWOCC is a grassroots conference geared toward women of color, and open to all. 

Patricia J. Williams, James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University, published these words twenty-five years ago in her renowned essay on slavery, race, gender, and rights called "On Being the Object of Property":

There are moments in my life when I feel as though a part of me is missing. There are days when I feel so invisible that I can't remember what day of the week it is, when I feel so manipulated that I can't remember my own name, when I feel so lost and angry that I can't speak a civil word to the people who love me best. Those are the times when I catch sight of my reflection in stores windows and am surprised to see a whole person looking back.

In a symposium last week at Columbia Law School that celebrated her continued work in law, critical race theory, and intersectional feminism, she recalled the climate in which she wrote this reflection on the dispossession of black people in general and black women in particular.

In India, the roof is used as an economic indicator. Whether your roof is made of thatch, tin, or tiles sends a message about your place in society. 

Academia has a less-literal ceiling that serves as a symbol of status: the new book Presumed Incompetent describes the difficulty of Latinas climbing the ladders of academia as an  “adobe ceiling” (a reference, of course, to the traditional corporate "glass ceiling").

Recently, Latinas have been gaining a high-profile foothold in academia. Chief Justice Sonia Sotomayor—the court's first Latina—described herself as a feminist in a recent interview with Eva Longoria. And, despite the fact that it is much overdue, Yale finally gave tenure to its first Latina law professor. 

“When did Chicana studies become cool?” a friend of mine asked me, after looking at the website of our own Alma Mater, Pitzer College. I don’t know when exactly it was, but the field of study has become a topic of conversation on the heels of the news that America is a nation of “minority majority” babies.

Yet despite the increasing “coolness of Chicano studies” there remains a long way to go. In 2008, just 339 (3.1%) of a universe of 10,780 full-time faculty law Professors were Latino.

This weekend in Portland, Oregon, a house off East Burnside will be packed with folks coming out for two nights of amazing music brought to you by FOC Fest. Featuring women of color musicians from the Pacific Northwest, FOC Fest (short for Females of Color) started last year and was a total blast. As their 2011 zine stated, "we hope to bring FOC musicians together and recognize the awesome contribution they make to our respective music communities so that we can all support each other....It don’t matter what you look like, smell like, sex like, or dress like. FOC Fest holds a mission to recognize difference and feel empowered in this recognition." This inclusive, all-ages show is local, DIY music organizing at its finest, and you're invited! 

This year means a whole new lineup of acts, from the post-punk of Old Wars, to the genre-bending mariachi of Edna Vasquez, to the experimental sampling solo work of Amenta Abioto (and yes, a compilation album will be available at the festival!).

I spoke with Katherine Paul, one of the organizers and founders (and a member of Forest Park) about why FOC Fest is important, how she feels a year after the first one, and more. Read on for the Q&A and the full lineup of this year's festival. 

It's never a surprise when new shows on television lack diversity. Someone writes about how awfully white a show is, it stirs up some commotion on the Internet but people continue watching, (*cough* Girls *cough*) and that's about the extent of it. And it's not so different for Amy Sherman-Palladino's new ABC Family show, Bunheads (except maybe it's less addictive than Girls). I mentioned a few weeks ago in an On Our Radar post that Grey's Anatomy creator, Shonda Rhimes criticized the show (via Twitter) for its lack of racial and ethnic diversity. Totally relevant and very much called for. This has been blowing up all over the interwebs, and of course, Amy Sherman-Palladino responded, but it surely wasn't what anyone wanted to hear.

Yesterday, I wrote about one of the worst bisexual characters I’ve ever seen. By contrast, I want to spend today focusing on one of the best bisexual characters I’ve ever seen: Dr. Calliope (Callie) Torres on Grey’s Anatomy. I’m not a regular viewer of Grey’s; though I understand why many viewers love it, the show just isn’t my cup of tea. But I will absolutely give it credit for its excellent depictions of women, people of color, and queer people, all of which culminate in the nuanced depiction of Callie. Her characterization manages to avoid the stereotypes commonly found in explicitly bi characters, allowing her to be a positive, realistic, three-dimensional bi woman.

Bitch's series of interviews with webcomic creators, Beyond the Panel, returns with Arigon Starr, the multitalented force behind the comic-book-style webcomic Super Indian. After the jump, she tells Bitch about her history in comics, Native superheroes, geek culture, and what she'd like people to take away from her work.