Gloria González-López - Böcker

The inspirational writings of cultural theorist and social justice activist Gloria AnzaldÚa have empowered generations of women and men throughout the world. Charting the multiplicity of AnzaldÚa's impact within and beyond academic disciplines, community trenches, and international borders, Bridging presents more than thirty reflections on her work and her life, examining vibrant facets in surprising new ways and inviting readers to engage with these intimate, heartfelt contributions.Bridging is divided into five sections: The New Mestizas: "transitions and transformations"; Exposing the Wounds: "You gave me permission to fly in the dark"; Border Crossings: Inner Struggles, Outer Change; Bridging Theories: Intellectual Activism with/in Borders; and "Todas somos nos/otras": Toward a "politics of openness." Contributors, who include Norma Elia CantÚ, Elisa Facio, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, AÍda Hurtado, Andrea Lunsford, Denise Segura, Gloria Steinem, and Mohammad Tamdgidi, represent a broad range of generations, professions, academic disciplines, and national backgrounds. Critically engaging with AnzaldÚa's theories and building on her work, they use virtual diaries, transformational theory, poetry, empirical research, autobiographical narrative, and other genres to creatively explore and boldly enact future directions for AnzaldÚan studies.A book whose form and content reflect AnzaldÚa's diverse audience, Bridging perpetuates AnzaldÚa's spirit through groundbreaking praxis and visionary insights into culture, gender, sexuality, religion, aesthetics, and politics. This is a collection whose span is as broad and dazzling as AnzaldÚa herself.

Erotic Journeys is a fascinating, revealing, and respectful examination of the romantic relationships and sex lives of the fastest-growing minority group in the nation. In a series of in-depth interviews, Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez investigates the ways in which sixty heterosexual Mexican women and men living in Los Angeles reinvent their sex lives as part of their immigration and settlement experiences. Defying a broad spectrum of preconceived notions, these immigrants confirm in their vivid narratives that sexuality - far from being culturally determined - is fluid and complex. Gonzalez-Lopez explains that these Mexicans enter the United States with particular sexual ideologies and practices that, while diverse, are regulated by family ethics and regional patriarchies. After migration, a range of factors - including employment, the risks and dangers of resettlement, social networking with other immigrants, and the new demands of a fast-paced industrialized metropolis - begin to transform the immigrants' intimate lives in deep and unexpected ways. The remarkably candid interviews show that these men and women are skillful negotiating agents of their own sexuality.The author's incisive analysis of their narratives sets the stage for a nuanced and compelling understanding of this complex topic and its many social implications.

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.

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.

"My breasts stopped growing when my grandfather touched them," confides 'Elisa', a young woman who recounts the traumatic incest and sexual abuse she experienced in childhood. In Family Secrets, Gloria González-López tells the life stories of 60 men and women in Mexico who, like Elisa, saw their lives irrevocably changed in the wake of childhood and adolescent incest. In Mexico, a patriarchal, religious society where women are expected to make themselves sexually available to men and where same-sex experiences for both men and women bring great shame, incest is easily hidden, seldom discussed, and rarely reported to authorities. Through gripping, emotional narrative, González-López brings the deeply troubling, hidden, and unspoken issues of incest and sexual violence in Mexican families to light.González-López contends that family and cultural structures in Mexican life enable incest and the culture of silence that surrounds it. She examines the strong bonds of familial obligation between parents and children, brothers and sisters, and elders and youth that, in the case of incest, can morph into sexual obligation; the codes of honor and shame reinforced by tradition and the Church, discouraging openness about sexual violence and trauma; the double standards of morality and stereotypes about sexuality that leave girls and women and gender nonconforming boys and men especially vulnerable to sexual abuse. Together, these cultural factors create a perfect storm for generations upon generations of unspoken incest, a cycle that takes great courage and strength to heal from and overcome. A riveting account, Family Secrets turns a feminist and sociological lens on a disturbing trend that has gone unnoticed for far too long.