Chasejamison Akilah Manar-Spears #16
CCS 100/1
Prof. Del Castillo
The Revolution Begins at Home: A Societal Projection of One Joto’s Quest for Identity
“In Search of My Queer Aztlán” by Luis H. Román Garcia is a beautiful and vulnerable piece of autoethnography: a mix of introspective, narrative, and academic writing that ties his personal experience to the larger social issue of homophobia in Chicano culture. Garcia defines and narrates his own struggle with the concepts of home, school, and sexuality due to his queer Chicano identity. These written experiences introduce the reader to the process and multi-dimensionality of identity, and reveal deeply entrenched family trauma. Analysis of his story, as well as its impact on his sense of …show more content…
This description is informed by transnational feminst Chandra Telpade Mohanty, who believes home is ‘profoundly political’(487). She suggests that home is not just a place but a state of mind, which creates the foundational logic that conceptualizes “home” as quest. This concept validates Garcia’s chicano queer identity through his realization that by carrying his spirit with him into all spaces, he refuses multi-layered oppressions hidden within them. This, however, is a hard task for most queer men of color who remember their own physical home as a space of rejection. This reality is especially true for the author, evidenced by the raw and emotional letter he writes to his …show more content…
His subjugation and identity is three fold: for his ethnicity, immigration status, and sexuality. His stories vividly describe his politicized trauma and psychological discomfort, all targeted at his identity. From experiencing internalized racism, bullying in school, being kicked out of his house for coming out, and selling his body to white men: everything he went through can be traced back to the societal box people wanted him to stay in because of who he was. These experiences, alongside the Combahee River Collective’s multi-faceted analysis of patriarchal processes in the black and chicano communities, construct Garcia’s opinion that oppression is multi-layered. He states that, “Because Chicano/as are oppressed in this White Supremacist….” (317). He is even reminded of his own privelege as a gay chicano, who can have sex with white men as a form of assimilation and disassociation from other queer chicanos. Because queer chicanos often find themselves at the bottom of the oppression totem pole, they are often stuck in Neplanta: a metaphysical state coined by Anzaldua. Those within it are exposed, more open to other’s perspectives, and have holistic awareness. The mapping of identity in this was is also found in Kimberle Crenshaw’s writings on Intersectionality, as a source of development for our political identity. It is something those who don’t fit the
CCS 100/1
Prof. Del Castillo
The Revolution Begins at Home: A Societal Projection of One Joto’s Quest for Identity
“In Search of My Queer Aztlán” by Luis H. Román Garcia is a beautiful and vulnerable piece of autoethnography: a mix of introspective, narrative, and academic writing that ties his personal experience to the larger social issue of homophobia in Chicano culture. Garcia defines and narrates his own struggle with the concepts of home, school, and sexuality due to his queer Chicano identity. These written experiences introduce the reader to the process and multi-dimensionality of identity, and reveal deeply entrenched family trauma. Analysis of his story, as well as its impact on his sense of …show more content…
This description is informed by transnational feminst Chandra Telpade Mohanty, who believes home is ‘profoundly political’(487). She suggests that home is not just a place but a state of mind, which creates the foundational logic that conceptualizes “home” as quest. This concept validates Garcia’s chicano queer identity through his realization that by carrying his spirit with him into all spaces, he refuses multi-layered oppressions hidden within them. This, however, is a hard task for most queer men of color who remember their own physical home as a space of rejection. This reality is especially true for the author, evidenced by the raw and emotional letter he writes to his …show more content…
His subjugation and identity is three fold: for his ethnicity, immigration status, and sexuality. His stories vividly describe his politicized trauma and psychological discomfort, all targeted at his identity. From experiencing internalized racism, bullying in school, being kicked out of his house for coming out, and selling his body to white men: everything he went through can be traced back to the societal box people wanted him to stay in because of who he was. These experiences, alongside the Combahee River Collective’s multi-faceted analysis of patriarchal processes in the black and chicano communities, construct Garcia’s opinion that oppression is multi-layered. He states that, “Because Chicano/as are oppressed in this White Supremacist….” (317). He is even reminded of his own privelege as a gay chicano, who can have sex with white men as a form of assimilation and disassociation from other queer chicanos. Because queer chicanos often find themselves at the bottom of the oppression totem pole, they are often stuck in Neplanta: a metaphysical state coined by Anzaldua. Those within it are exposed, more open to other’s perspectives, and have holistic awareness. The mapping of identity in this was is also found in Kimberle Crenshaw’s writings on Intersectionality, as a source of development for our political identity. It is something those who don’t fit the