Clelia O. Rodriguez – författare

Poetic, confrontational and radical, Decolonizing Academia speaks to those who have been taught to doubt themselves because of the politics of censorship, violence and silence that sustain the Ivory Tower. Clelia O. Rodríguez illustrates how academia is a racialized structure that erases the voices of people of colour, particularly women. She offers readers a gleam of hope through the voice of an inquisitorial thinker and methods of decolonial expression, including poetry, art and reflections that encompass much more than theory.In Decolonizing Academia, Rodríguez passes the torch to her Latinx offspring to use as a tool to not only survive academic spaces but also dismantle systems of oppression. Through personal anecdotes, creative non-fiction and unflinching bravery, Rodríguez reveals how people of colour are ignored, erased and consumed in the name of research and tenured academic positions. Her work is a survival guide for people of colour entering academia.

This is not a conventional book because the seed comes from the depth of the volcanic cauldron that awaits silently underneath the Lake Ilopango, the umbilical cord of our Humanity and yours. It is a scream, it is an offering, it is pain and it is love. It is a collective offering to those who are responding to a call of Liberation based on Indigenous Principles to protect and defend the land beyond theories, beyond rhetorical and metaphorical questions. This is a tiny-tiny glimpse into Lak'ech.A living testament that today, there are people buried on sand, on water, on air, on blood, among carcasses of bodies eaten by vultures—literally and metaphorically—a living testament of open wounds that heal and are traumatized again and again because you, the reader, the listener, the writer, the transcriber, the colonizer, the upholder of patriarchy and caste and class, the translator and the guardian of the door of the Master's House refuse to listen politically.