Peminism

And here is a post about the readings.

A few things struck me about this week's readings. First, the connections to other WOC feminisms (and particularly Anzaldua) were quite prevelant-- from Melinda de Jesus searching through Bridge for writings by Filipinas to the writers' tendency to incorporate poetry and autoethnograpy into their texts to the shared experience of feeling pressured to privilege racial discrimination over sexism.

Particularly because of the creative nature of these pieces, I was very struck by Catherine Ceniza Choy's statement that "after I had entered graduate school, I lost every creative bone in my body." (93) That is a feeling that definitely resonates with me; I feel like graduate school has disciplined me to be so critical and so formulaic in my writing that it is really difficult to write anything that expresses emotion or reflects my own inner world. And I'm becoming increasingly convinced that compelling writing needs to connect the reader to the writer's affective experience. Have any of you had a similar experience, and/or do you have have any suggestions for how to break out of this tendency?

Finally, I was really struck by the way that the dual colonizations of the Philippines have placed Filipina/os in an almost impossible situation. Their oppressions are so layered and intermingled; for example, Leny Mendoza Strobel recalls feeling alienated from her culture when she could not participate in the (Catholic) feistas. Is there potential for the kind of hybridity seen in Filipina/o culture to become political productive, perhaps by providing multiple fronts for coalition with other groups (Catholics, Asians, Latino/as, Third World people, etc.)?