Overview

Writings from feminist scholars of color about their experiences during the pandemic. Bringing uncertainty, fear, and change, the COVID-19 pandemic shook the world, altered people’s lives, and sparked a wave of introspection. Underserved communities-people of color, women, and queer people among them-were affected the most, and their experiences, in turn, reflected hope and opportunities to reinvent themselves individually and collectively. Drawing on Gloria AnzaldÚa’s use of nepantla-the NÁhuatl word meaning “in-between space,” the en medio and a liminal space between worlds imbued with change-World Making in Nepantla collects writings about the hurdles feminist scholars of color faced during the pandemic years. Contributors explore how COVID affected feminist scholars of color while recognizing the ways in which inequality influences experience and also celebrating the resilience of communities all over the world. Dispatches from classrooms and quarantined homes and introspective essays on disability, mutual aid, and borders are included among the essays here. These pieces serve as a concrete record, capturing an ephemeral time already being lost to memory. Created during the heart of the pandemic, World Making in Nepantla is an honest and intimate recording of how feminist scholars of color navigated struggles and found strength during an era that forever changed the modern world.

Full Product Details

9781477332993

Table of Contents

Reviews

World Making in Nepantla is a balm. It demonstrates the seismic shifts that COVID has wrought and the damage done as many institutions behave as though the shifts have not occurred. The fierce trio of coeditors has gathered a range of truth tellers, across genres, generations, and geographies, who make space for soul-deep expressions of solidarity, grief, and--importantly--improvisation/innovation. The essays, photographs, poems, and critical personal narratives housed here do much to remind us that truths must be expressed in the forms they demand. The tenderness and grit, the clarity and possibility offered in World Making in Nepantla bodes well for a world where we can confront the hard and fragile places with wisdom, love, and generosity. This book can guide us there.--Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, University of Texas at Austin, author of Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àse, and the Power of the Present Moment

Author Information

Gloria GonzÁlez-LÓpez is an award-winning author and a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Sharmila Rudrappa is professor and head of the department of sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Christen A. Smithis an associate professor of anthropology and African American studies at Yale University. She is a Black feminist and African diaspora anthropologist.

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