Introduction

The pieces in this issue do not share a common theme nor do they all differ. About half (four of the five articles) analyze resistance; the remaining pieces (an article, a non-fiction narrative, and two art submissions) can only be loosely linked together as studies of subjectivity, the self, and/or identities. Yet the two sets of themes—despite and because of their differences—speak to and illuminate each other. Those that examine resistance emphasize fruitful actions, the creation of new meanings, identities, and communities, while the other set questions purposeful activities, stressing meaninglessness, ambiguities, and alienation. To enhance conversations between these sets we intermixed the pieces, layering them so that each is wedged against the other, perpetually questioning each other.

The pieces that examine resistance share common concerns. They all look at the overlap of the cultural and political, take seriously the importance of time and place, and study the impact and implications of various strategies of resistance. Although these pieces share these similarities, they are also strikingly diverse. Catherine Ramírez turns our attention to the slang of Mexican American youth who participated in the Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots during World War II. What happened, she inquires, when this slang, long understood as a sign of resistance when used by a male zooter or pachuco, was spoken by a female zooter? Did the slang-speaking pachuca also become an icon of resistance? Brian Norman examines a consciousness-raising document written by the Black Women's Liberation Group of Mount Vernon, New York, that was one of the few black-authored documents included in the most famous anthology of the American Second Wave women's movement, Sisterhood Is Powerful. He asks if the consciousness-raising document and the feminist anthology supported and/or did not support African American women's efforts to build a race-conscious women's movement and a gender-conscious black liberation movement.

The next two studies of resistance take us outside the United States. Elizabeth Nichols places us in Venezuela. In this nation, deeply divided by class and race, the small elite is mostly white and the many poor are black, Indian, and mestizo. Nichols asks if a marginalized religion of an indigenous goddess, María Lionza, a faith popular with the poor and filled with women religious leaders, can influence and be influenced by contemporary poetry written by affluent women, if both are seeking to increase women's voice and power. Shirin Edwin also focuses our attention on religion, in this case, Islam as practiced and perceived by women in Africa. Edwin asks us to read the texts of Nigerian novelist Zaynah Alkali in a manner subversive of much of the thinking of African feminists. Many simplistically portray African Muslim women as voiceless victims; but Edwin asks what happens to this assumption when we read Alkali's portrayals of Muslim women in northern Nigeria, women whose lives are based in Islam and who speak in complicated ways about compliance and resistance.

The submissions that do not address resistance are diverse in topic and medium. While they all speak of the impossibility of knowing the self, they also all link the struggle for this knowledge to our efforts to understand place. In the images produced by Shreepad Joglekar and Heather Anderson we see women engaged in activities we cannot understand but standing in environments—a domestic place and a snowy landscape—that seem familiar and thus appear to offer us clues, to invite us to speculate about the meanings of the images and our selves. Monique Jonaitis, in a non-fiction narrative, takes us on what seems to be a dangerous pilgrimage to her father's homeland, a place that perhaps challenges her physical and psychological self. Finally, Shelley Armitage examines the construction of place and self in the daily journals of Peggy Pond Church, a poet and nonfiction writer in the mid-twentieth century. Church's continuous efforts to give voice to the Pajarito Plateau of northern New Mexico were simultaneously writings that created and re-created herself, her beloved landscape, and her relationship with the land.

If, dear readers, when you...