In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Dis(missing) VoicesA Persistent Battle against Erasure
  • Ana Gómez Parga (bio)

Es que les falta leer el pensamiento del Sur para entender lo que es la libertad

—E. R.

Aquello de que tenemos que rescatar nuestras voces me resulta chocante porque implica que estas han estado ausentes cuando es todo lo contrario

—Clelia O. Rodríguez

We are living in times of survival, of extreme survival, of “surviving survival” as Raquel Salas points out. I am writing this introduction in the middle of a global pandemic, as an untenured professor with an overwhelming schedule full of teaching commitments, full of half-written research projects that I am starting to wonder whether they will ever see the light and full of personal self-care and wellness-related habits that I keep sacrificing for the sake of capitalist productivity.

“Es una exageración, estas cosas no pasan en la vida real”—said a man in the room to Sayak Valencia as she was presenting her dissertation. In the last couple of months, my schedule has been filled with requests for unplanned and coerced anti-racism workshops that have landed on my already crammed desk. These requests, of course, have landed on my lap due to my “unique” set of skills, “leadership,” and “expertise” that are needed but not to the point where they will be adequately compensated, or even compensated at all. But guilt is to Catholicism as service is to capitalism, and some of us are here, pushing ourselves to the limit, not because we believe in heaven but because we have seen hell.—“Ahora vienen hacia mí los latigazos”—I hear Clelia O. Rodríguez say. [End Page 33]

I am writing this introduction, while I am overwhelmed with responsibilities that include figuring out quarantine protocols for two elderly parents, five funeral arrangements (and counting), accommodations for COVID-positive students, and the stress of having a partner at the frontline of healthcare services who is serving as a midwife for “underprivileged” communities . . . the very communities that are disproportionally affected by COVID and lack appropriate access to any health services. I’m also writing as I am dealing with the occasional hypochondria that arises every time I sneeze and that gets worse whenever someone close to me receives a positive COVID test.

The timing for this collection could not have been more appropriate. On the verge of what looks like an Orwellian nightmare and an anti-feminist Huxley-inspired resurgence of Nazism, we are “surviving survival” as citizens of the global South, as womxn of color who are still educating, still writing, still thinking, still theorizing, still rising, and still trying to have our voices heard, one day at a time. In the face of increasing surveillance, policing, and precarity, we are facing the global rise of White supremacy; we are fighting the global fight against patriarchy; and we are trying to protect our planet and our bodies from the devastating effects of an imposed capitalism that sees us as nothing more than disposable labor.

Stories of “surviving survival” are not new, but telling them still represents a challenge because one must make sense of unbearable struggle through a language that feels foreign and allows no space for emotion. Our existence and the value of our struggles are not legitimate until they are translated, witnessed, and understood by those who presume rationality and promote a detached, “rational” intelligentsia.

Moreover, our observations are not valid if they can’t be located in predesigned categories that were created for our erasure. What kind of sensemaking processes and ways of understanding the world are we elevating when the thing that makes us human is denied and the things that make us unique are invisibilized? The main purpose of this collection is to bring light to the messiness, the rawness, and the realness of our endurance.

We refuse to be silenced or to have our stories stolen and retold. Retold by those who feel that we are “too close” to our struggles and retold by those who falsely claim to be us.1 This collection is an effort to amplify voices that would have been silenced by borders, by language barriers, and by...

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