1. What do you think about Maylei Blackwell’s approach in the book?
“The Telling is Political” is a perfect title for Blackwell’s introduction of her book. She discusses how what’s referred to as the Chicano Civil Rights Movement only tells one part of the story. Like many nationalist movements (especially of the mid-late 20th Century), the various role(s) of women within the movement are often forgotten or deemed unimportant. This is precisely why Chicana activists started branching off into their own organizations/groups that addressed women’s issues and recognized what Chicana’s brought to the movement as a whole. Blackwell focuses on archiving and retelling the experiences of Chicanas in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly on Chicana activist Anna NietoGomez and the members of the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc—one of the first Latina feminist organizations created. NietoGomez and the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc created a space for Chicanas, while the nationalist male-dominated Chicano Civil Rights Movement pushed their contributions aside. This all eventually led to the formation of Chicana & Chicano Studies programs within academia.
I feel it is important to share Blackwell’s definition of “Retrofitted Memory” to better understand what she is attempting to establish in the book’s entirety. “Retrofitted memory is a form of counter-memory that uses fragments of older histories that have been disjunctured by colonial practices of organizing historical knowledge or by masculinist renderings of history that disappear women’s political involvement in order to create space for women in historical traditions that erase them” (Blackwell 2). YES, YES, and YES. Blackwell isn’t only interested in re-telling the stories, experiences, and contributions of women that have been erased/untold within the Chican@ Civil Rights Movement, but also wants readers to understand the very political and systemic knowledge practices that produce them.
2. How may it be helpful in relation to the Occupy Movement and modern-day feminist activists?
The last half of the introduction, Blackwell writes about her experience and interview with Chicana activist and theorist Anna NietoGomez. I immediately saw the connections between involvement of women of color in revolutionary movements back then and now. NietoGomez described how many Chicanas became so involved in their activism(s) that they decided to quit school or found academia unnecessary because of the grassroots work they were doing in their communities. NietoGomez explained that much of this was because of the attitudes and treatment towards Chicana women in academia (as teachers and students), which led to many Chicanas voices/stories being erased or untold through academic research, lessons, and texts.
Although the gender divide is much more narrow now than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, it is much more hidden, subtle, and often harder to detect for those participating within movements. However, women are often still expected to take up space as the secretaries and cooks behind the scenes. From my experience as an activist in the Occupy Syracuse movement, I have been interrupted repeatedly, sexually harassed (online, not in-person), assaulted by a police officer, been told to “tone down my radical approach” numerous times. I also discuss in my first blog post my experience as someone who at first volunteered to take notes for the group, but was then quickly expected to. Still in 2011 and 2012, I had to work to make my voice heard and taken seriously within a modern-day social movement. As a “mixed” woman of color I am all too familiar with how males within nationalist/people of color movements can try to convince women of color that feminist issues only divide them from the movement as a whole and the males within them. Blackwell refers to this as “Double Militancia” or “Double Activism,” something that women of color activists/feminists often engage in. This is a perfect example of what Gloria Anzaldúa refers to as “constantly living on the borderlands,” having to deal with race, gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, etc...all at once.
Lastly, Blackwell emphasizes the importance of oral histories and living memories. She goes on to explain what she calls the “repertoire” of oral knowledge and memory by describing it something that can be performed. “Perhaps oral history is a hybrid that fits somewhere in between the archive and the repertoire, depending on how the narrator narrates, how the listener listens, and how the researcher wields the apparatus of objectivity that records or captures this performance” (10). As a scholar-activist, I find Blackwell’s valuing of not just oral histories, but the performance of them essential in the retelling of Chicana historie(s).
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