Summer of Feminista

Veronica Arreola, the blog mistress at Viva La Feminista, deemed this the “Summer of Feminista.” She put out a call for any Latina feminists out there to write a guest post about their experiences with feminism–the good, the bad, the different.

Summer of Feminista is a project where Latinas are sharing what feminism means to them. Positive. Negative. Academic statements. Personal stories. Learn more or how you can join the Summer of Feminista.

What has emerged is an incredible patchwork that depicts the varied experiences of the folks in our community, and how being Latina impacts our feminism.

I contributed a post, along with a bunch of other amazing Latinas.

Here are a few quick excerpts from some of my favorite posts:

My grandmother was very traditional: It would be hard to call her a feminist. But having said that, the interesting thing is her daughters are. So maybe she was some sort of stealth feminist, secretly plotting the emancipation of her daughters from the “just learn to be a good housewife” mantra. –Silvia Martinez

“So call it whatever you want, just let it grow inside of you. I’ll keep calling it feminism and my mother probably won’t, and we’ll still agree more often than not. Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying to make her read Anzaldúa.” –Sally Mercedes

“Even though I first learned the true essence of feminism from my mother, she does not consider herself a feminist. Sure she’ll say “I’m a feminist about some things, but not all. Men and women are different! I don’t agree with feminists when it comes to that”. That is her typical answer. And she only considers herself a feminist “about some things” thanks to my influence. Before that, she never even mentioned the word. So why is this? Why do we, especially Latinas, fear this word?” –Natalie Knowlton

Check out all the great posts here.