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South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
No abstract provided.
Towards Women’S Minor Cinema In Socialist Yugoslavia, Dijana Jelaca
Towards Women’S Minor Cinema In Socialist Yugoslavia, Dijana Jelaca
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This essay theorizes the concept of women’s minor cinema in socialist Yugoslavia, conceptualized through examples of cultural texts that circulate within the so-called women’s genres: romance films, “chick flicks,” and TV soap operas. Women’s cinema is here not defined solely as films made by women, but rather, films that address the spectator as a woman, regardless of the spectator’s sex or gender. I argue that, in the context of Yugoslavia, such works frequently articulated emancipatory, feminist stances that did not demarcate a dichotomous opposition to the socialist state as such, but rather called for the state to fulfill its original …
Editorial, Cheryl Sterling
Editorial, Cheryl Sterling
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
In thinking about this volume, questions that come to light are: how does transnationalism redefine aspects of feminist engagement, cultural forms, political causes, (hetero)patriarchal discourses and issues of sexuality and sexual difference? Conceptually, theoretically, and pragmatically, what is the potentiality and trajectory of the literary voices and creativity of African and African Diasporic women writers and artists in their trans-portation, transformation, incorporation, and dissemination as subjects within this movement, who authorize its formative constructs, indexical lens, and its range of permutations? Following the logic of such inquiries, transnationalism trajectory alongside postmodernity constitutes an important underlying rubric of the engagement with …
Deconstructing The Ivorian Vestimentary Traditions: New Fashion, Contemporary Beauty And New Identity In Marguerite Abouet And Clément Oubrerie’S Aya De Yopougon, Richard Oko Ajah, Letitia Egege
Deconstructing The Ivorian Vestimentary Traditions: New Fashion, Contemporary Beauty And New Identity In Marguerite Abouet And Clément Oubrerie’S Aya De Yopougon, Richard Oko Ajah, Letitia Egege
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper adopts an eclectic framework of semiotic, postmodern and postcolonial theories to interpret the representations of dressing as an aesthetic activity in Aya de Yopougon 1-3 and to investigate how Yopougon dwellers use their fashion sense to establish both a group identity and a form of everyday resistance. Characters’ bodies are remade, through dressing, to contain emotive qualities and to play symbolic functions with their everyday choice of dress. Their sartorial obsession is supported by psychic inferiority and pop culture; all characters engage in “disciplinary practices” for the clothing culture of their bodies that are ornamented surfaces for display.
Bastardly Duppies & Dastardly Dykes: Queer Sexuality And The Supernatural In Michelle Cliff’S Abeng And Shani Mootoo’S Cereus Blooms At Night, Rahul K. Gairola
Bastardly Duppies & Dastardly Dykes: Queer Sexuality And The Supernatural In Michelle Cliff’S Abeng And Shani Mootoo’S Cereus Blooms At Night, Rahul K. Gairola
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper explores the ways in which the "duppy," or malevolent spirit, circulates the fictive landscape of the queer novels of Michelle Cliff and Shani Mootoo. I explore the ways in which the unhappy ghost is a figure which comments on the sexual pathology of postcolonial queerness in the Caribbean. I focus on the characters of Clare in "Abeng" and Mala in "Cereus Blooms at Night" in a bid to elucidate the ways that Caribbean lesbianism invokes, on the one hand, what M. Jacqui Alexander calls "erotic autonomy as a form of decolonization politics" in the material eroticism of women …
Gendered Ecologies And Black Feminist Futures In Ibi Zoboi’S “The Farming Of Gods,” Wanuri Kahiu’S Pumzi, And Wangechi Mutu’S The End Of Eating Everything, Amanda Renee Rico
Gendered Ecologies And Black Feminist Futures In Ibi Zoboi’S “The Farming Of Gods,” Wanuri Kahiu’S Pumzi, And Wangechi Mutu’S The End Of Eating Everything, Amanda Renee Rico
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper addresses how the works of three female authors and artists from various parts of Africa and the Diaspora — Pumzi by Wanuri Kahiu, The End of eating Everything by Wangechi Mutu, and “The Farming of the Gods” by Ibi Zoboi — imagine a black feminist future through ecological imagery. My argument is twofold: first, I take my cue from Mutu’s assertion that imaginative forms of world-building must connect systemic corruption to consumptive practices. Second, I claim such Afrofuturist works use geographical spaces marked by ecological abuse (poisonous spores, pustules, desert landscapes), displacement (discarded objects) and violence (human limbs) …
Exploring The Gendered Nature Of National Violence: The Intersection Of Patriarchy And Civil Conflict In Tanella Boni’S Matins De Couvre-Feu (Mornings Under Curfew), Janice Spleth
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Placed under house arrest during a period of civil conflict, the fictional narrator of Tanella Boni’s Matins de couvre-feu uses this time of enforced solitude to review her personal experiences as a woman in relationship to the instability now threatening the country. This reading of Boni’s work examines the narrator’s perspective on war in the context of feminist theories on the gendered nature of violence in order to better situate the narrative within a more extensive transnational discourse on the role of gender in the waging of war and the preservation of peace.
On Memory And Resistance: Motherhood, Community And Dispossession In Zora Moreno’S Coqui Corihundo Vira El Mundo (1981), Stephanie Gomez Menzies
On Memory And Resistance: Motherhood, Community And Dispossession In Zora Moreno’S Coqui Corihundo Vira El Mundo (1981), Stephanie Gomez Menzies
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper examines Zora Moreno’s play Coquí corihundo vira el mundo (1981) as an alternative to the identitarian investment in the patriarchal myth of the gran familia puertorriqueña. I argue that by offering a feminist rewriting of Adolfina Villanueva through the protagonist Anastasia, Moreno combats the privileging of Puerto Rican identity as a light-skinned, male figure. Moreno critiques these colonial vestiges of racial discrimination through her interrogation of the spatial politics of home. Coquí corihundo vira el mundo problematizes the construction of a Puerto Rican identity that would erase Afro-Puerto Rican identity and thereby replicate a racialized hierarchy. Thus, in …
Rupturing The Genre: Un-Writing Silence In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’S Americanah, Felix Mutunga Ndaka
Rupturing The Genre: Un-Writing Silence In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’S Americanah, Felix Mutunga Ndaka
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) and it’s troubling of the silencing and policing of black female migrants. Focusing on the salon/hairdressers and Ifemelu’s blog, I argue that the former represents an intimate and politicized narrative space whose production and habitation invites us to engage with migrant/feminine interactions and non-normative feminine aesthetics. In addition, I read the virtual site of Ifemelu’s blog as a space that transcends the circumscribed nature of interracial relations and dialogues. By portraying these spaces’ cultivation of heterogeneity and polyvocality, Adichie’s text advances an alternative politics of inhabiting racially and patriarchally hierarchized foreign spaces.
White Innocence: Paradoxes Of Colonialism And Race By Gloria Wekker, Duke University Press, 2016, Jakki Forester
White Innocence: Paradoxes Of Colonialism And Race By Gloria Wekker, Duke University Press, 2016, Jakki Forester
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race by Gloria Wekker, Duke University Press, 2016
Dutch Caribbean Women’S Literary Thought: Activism Through Linguistic And Cosmopolitan Multiplicity, Florencia V. Cornet
Dutch Caribbean Women’S Literary Thought: Activism Through Linguistic And Cosmopolitan Multiplicity, Florencia V. Cornet
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
In a select group of works by late 20th and early 21 st century Curaçaoan women novelists and poets such as Nydia Ecury (1926- 2012), Diana Lebacs (b.1947), Myra Römer (b.1946), Aliefka Bijlsma (b.1971), and Mishenu Osepa-Cicilia (b.1978), we see through what is often an autobiographical subjectivity, a “transnational collective plurality and difference” that describes the empowering physical and psychological possibilities that come with cross-national travel, immigration, cosmopolitanism, and linguistic multiplicity. This paper will present the politics of Curaçaoan-Dutch Caribbean women’s cosmopolitanism and linguistic multiplicity as transformative tools for personal and collective agency and activism for autonomy.
Aids And Masculinity In The African City: Privilege, Inequality, And Modern Manhood By Robert Wyrod, University Of California Press, 2016, Miriam Kyomugasho
Aids And Masculinity In The African City: Privilege, Inequality, And Modern Manhood By Robert Wyrod, University Of California Press, 2016, Miriam Kyomugasho
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
AIDS and Masculinity in the African City: Privilege, Inequality, and Modern Manhood by Robert Wyrod, University of California Press, 2016
Living A Feminist Life By Sara Ahmed, Duke University Press, 2017, Alonso Peña
Living A Feminist Life By Sara Ahmed, Duke University Press, 2017, Alonso Peña
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed, Duke University Press, 2017
Silently Crying Out Loud, Chris None
Silently Crying Out Loud, Chris None
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
The expectation to do the absolute impossible is so overwhelming. The majority of us are working toward change. It’s a terribly slow process. I personally don’t feel it would be so slow if we received the help and encouragement we were promised upon being sent to prison. I have written a series of letters that discuss some of our thoughts and feelings to the people who affect or are affected by the prison system. These letters range from the prisoners all the way up to the President of the United States. They are not directed toward any one prison, but …
A Life Unraveled, Jessica Jade
A Life Unraveled, Jessica Jade
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
[...] My family, besides my mom, has had its fair share of incarceration. If it wasn’t one, it was the other or none of us at all. Even though I am now the one imprisoned, my family’s support is amazing. Life-changing events happen on the daily, but it’s how you handle them. You can be on the grind, but which grind you pick up is what counts. They are a constant in my life for better or worse. When they were addicts I had to grow up extremely fast, but now, with their help I have been able to grow …
On The Run, Teresa Hart
On The Run, Teresa Hart
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
I sit here a prisoner, an inmate, property of the state, a number. I live in a cell with a number and a letter above my door. A picture of my cellie and a picture of me, both stuck to the door with Velcro. These are the only things that signify we live there. Many of us inmates like to call this place “Camp Cupcake.” This facility is comparable to a girl’s school. It is safe here, but there is no rehabilitation. If we don’t work hard on our own to grow, it can be a place where women’s bodies …
The Wound May Heal, But The Scar Will Remain, Latasha Lynn Lebeau
The Wound May Heal, But The Scar Will Remain, Latasha Lynn Lebeau
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
As I lay here on my bunk in my six-foot cage, trying to get past all my hate and rage. Wondering will my kids ever forgive me for being in this prison of Hell that I’ve created within myself? Hoping that they will understand my addiction has nothing to do with them. It’s been a demon that I once called friend. Only because she is always there waiting for me to give in. Please know I’ve been dealing with this demon long before I ever dreamed of having them. Yes, my four sons mean so much more than this demon …
Ignorance Is No Excuse, Sara Bueller
Ignorance Is No Excuse, Sara Bueller
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
There was a time that I knew exactly who I was, and in my over-inflated sense of self, I thought that I had an awesome life and that the rules didn’t apply to me. This is a true story, a snapshot of how I once lived my life. Although I was not a heavy drug user, I was nevertheless an addict. My addiction? A relationship. This is a story of how a disillusioned single mother single-handedly changed her and her son’s lives forever, and how her actions sent them down a road to hell they will never forget.
Sissy, Sissy Pierce
Sissy, Sissy Pierce
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
I’ve been incarcerated for 16 years. I will be 70 years old in August of 2018. I have been here at the Wyoming Women’s Center for the last nine years, and the seven years before that were spent out-of-state in private prisons. On December 28 of 1999, I shot my husband and, I was told, killed him instantly. It didn’t mean that I didn’t value human life or that I didn’t care about him. I did. I had never been in trouble with the law in my life. I was a child bride with four children by the time I …
Hard Won Lessons, Darla D. Rouse
Hard Won Lessons, Darla D. Rouse
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Right now I’m in an orange prison uniform sitting at a desk in a cell of the Wyoming Women’s Center. It should be called Wyoming Women’s Prison. Do not get confused by the word “Center.” It is a prison. People see “Center” in its name and get a glossed-over idea that it’s not really prison. Prison is meant to keep you away from life as you knew it. You don’t get to be with your family. You don’t get to raise your kids, or go grocery shopping, or drive your car, or use your cell phone. No career, no home, …
What Doesn’T Kill You Makes You Stronger, Kendra Leigh Horn
What Doesn’T Kill You Makes You Stronger, Kendra Leigh Horn
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
My name is Kendra and I’m a 27-year-old writing from the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk, Wyoming. I would like to tell you about my life experiences as a teenager and adult. I want to help you understand that you can overcome your hardships. I want to encourage you to never give up. I want you to empower yourself to be better than you are. I want to help you understand that you deserve the best in life if you have the courage, confidence and strength to make life great. Here is my life story to help you understand. There …
Her Name Was Flor, Cassandra Hunter
Her Name Was Flor, Cassandra Hunter
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
During this process of helping the women draft their memoirs, I wholly admired them for their ability to share such damning and alternately courageous moments that shaped their lives, but I was also scared for them. There is such a stigma attached to the notion of incarceration and because of this I have hid my own story for years. Thus, I was left with the belief that if these women are strong enough to help each other and help other women then I should also be willing to tell my story. The purpose of this special issue, in my view, …
Inside This Place, Not Of It: Narratives From Women’S Prisons By Robin Levi & Ayelet Waldman, Verso, 2016, Julia Dohan
Inside This Place, Not Of It: Narratives From Women’S Prisons By Robin Levi & Ayelet Waldman, Verso, 2016, Julia Dohan
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Inside this Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons by Robin Levi & Ayelet Waldman, Verso, 2016
Captive Gender: Trans Embodiment And The Prison Industrial Complex, Edited By Eric A. Stanley & Nat Smith, Ak Press, 2015, Jess White
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Captive Gender: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, edited by Eric A. Stanley & Nat Smith, AK Press, 2015
Memoir & Memory: A “Telling My Story” Focus Group, Jess White
Memoir & Memory: A “Telling My Story” Focus Group, Jess White
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
For the final class session, we conducted a focus group to invite the women to share their own perspectives on the “Telling My Story” class and the collaborative anthology they had produced. Our intent was to give the women in the class space to discuss the writing and workshop process. Since the workshop was designed to offer the women at the facility a creative outlet, we wanted to elicit their feedback on class structure and curriculum. In this narrative summary, the women are generally referred to by the names they chose to publish under in in order to preserve confidentiality …
Heaven.Hell.Repeat., Bdk None
Heaven.Hell.Repeat., Bdk None
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Hell Through the Eyes of a Young Child
Secret Storm, Deedee None
Secret Storm, Deedee None
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
The story of what brought me to prison is one of abuse. I lived with domestic violence for many years. I could see no way out as I was blinded by fear—fear of breaking up my family, fear of failing in my marriage, fear of my husband. My story is one of many behind these walls. Currently, the Wyoming Women’s Center does not offer domestic violence support groups or classes to teach the skills necessary to educate and empower women in order to prevent them from continuing this sort of relationship. It is what I call a secret storm.
Editorial, Susan Dewey
Editorial, Susan Dewey
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This special issue features the dynamic results of feminist collaborative work undertaken as part of Wyoming Pathways from Prison (WPfP), a trans-disciplinary and trans-professional statewide collaborative that aspires to support currently and formerly incarcerated people in navigating the waters of higher education and life more generally. WPfP works in close collaboration with the Wyoming Department of Corrections (DOC) and is co-coordinated by Susan Dewey, Alec Muthig, Katy Brock, and Rhett Epler with the primary goals of: offering college credit to incarcerated people at no cost, mentoring University of Wyoming (UW) students in teaching and leadership, engaging in valuable service to …
A Photo-Essay, Lorna Barton
A Photo-Essay, Lorna Barton
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Dr. Dewey asked me to document our journey from Colorado to Lusk, Wyoming in photographs for this special issue I was extremely excited at the prospect. She gave me the freedom to take photographs of what I felt represented the journey for many women who have and will take to the prison, the Women’s Center in Lusk. The photos selected by Dr. Dewey are solely a handful of what was taken but are a full representation of the journey, and I wanted to introduce the photographs by highlighting my feelings and reflections on them. I do not feel that my …
Reducing Recidivism Through Education, Katy Brock
Reducing Recidivism Through Education, Katy Brock
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Over the last two and a half decades, the population of incarcerated women in the United States has dramatically increased (Carver & Harrison, 2016). In 1980, 26,300 women were incarcerated in the U.S., while 215,300 were incarcerated in 2014 (The Sentencing Project, 2015) and the rate at which women are being incarcerated does not appear to be declining. A positive impact on women’s recidivism could be made by making more educational opportunities available to women in prison.