SJZ.2
a state of emergency
Social Justice Zine vol. 2
CONTENTS cover
Vessels of Love
Cassandra Dixon
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“A Litany” Embracing Visibility
Katy Stuckel Fabiola E. Silva
ink & watercolor poem essay
6 7 8 10
“Like Home” A Story of Me & Hair [Miss]Gendered “Magical Girl Maternity Leave” “Witness” “Don’t Be Quiet Diptychs
Electra Hunzeker Julia Vulcan Tabitha Collins Lisa Marie Nohner
poem comic essay poem
Cassandra Dixon Melanie Sweeney Rubén Ulises Rodriguez “ “ “ ” ” Abby Current
mixed media essay
Cassandra Dixon Danielle Stanard Lisa Marie Nohner
mixed media poem poem
11 12 15 16-17 18-19 20-21 22-23 24-25 26 27 28 29 32
“Sombrero” “Virgin” “Hooker” “RRR” “Boots” Matters of Representation “Falling” “Breaking Strings” “Revival” ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
photography photography photography photography photography essay
A Litany Katy G. Stuckel Wanted The soft dream of security in the last winters of the world. Forgiveness of those whom we have harmed. Warm salty soup, and mittens. Wanted A breeze of cardamom at summer’s end, while waiting for a train that will carry us to the edge of the sea Where we will offer it our only possession. Wanted A bucket of rapture. Wanted 11, 12. And 15. Wanted Werewolf shoes tap dancing with a honey clad swimming partner. 24 days of rain, and toast. Wanted Umber twine to seal a certain fate in a chrysalis of autumn. Wanted Indian summer hide and seek under the protection of the singing cicada. Wanted A plate of crow. Wanted
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A magic tongue to pierce the marrow of the intellect in exchange for 50 pushups to strengthen the muscle of the soul. Wanted Lemonade liquid breath, laser lightning, fingernails, a flamingo swamp. Wanted A sound shepherd, flying hopes, and window screen. Wanted An Amber tea for cleaning clocks and graven images. Wanted A private joke. Wanted A wake up call at noon to wear a nightcap to the neighbor’s pot luck dinner, swan dive into equilibrium, Backstroke from memory. Wanted To meet evenly. Wanted Elbow grease to prevent stainless steel from melting, vibrating moss, and prayers. Wanted A letter from Santa explaining hope to the civilized world. Wanted Thunder mistletoe and feet of leather with a silly putty future. Wanted To rest my eyes on the edge of nothing. 3
Embracing Visibility Fabiola E. Silva Do you celebrate Thanksgiving? What tribe are you from? What is Chihuahua? Mexico has states? I’m sorry but I really don’t like soccer (neither do I). You speak very good English for a foreigner. How do you pronounce your name? I bet you cook really good Mexican food. Hide Fabi, the Border Patrol is driving by (fieldwork in NM)! These were some questions and comments I received while living in Oklahoma, I moved to Norman in 2009 to pursue a Masters in archaeology; ironically to conduct research in Chihuahua, Mexico. Relocating from a border region to the Midwest, I quickly realized how uncomfortable it was to be the only brown girl in the room; the constant feeling of otherness was hard to shake. My cohort was composed of all white, mostly middle to upper-class students. I recall after the first Christmas break everyone talking about their trips to Hawaii, or the abundance of presents they bought/received. Meanwhile all I could think about was my mom and I walking across the border in to a highly militarized Juarez to buy dough (masa) for tamales. As a graduate student and TA my visibility was inevitable. I had to teach, present, and participate in seminars that forced me to critically analyze texts and verbalize interpretations. I went from blending in to the background to inescapable and unpleasant visibility. The insecurities that normally arise in graduate school regarding your abilities and intelligence were 4
heightened by “Am I their token minority? Is that why I’m here?” Then there was the day my visibility became unbearable. I was in a seminar discussing how history classes were taught across the country. I offered my experience with acquiring U.S. citizenship and receiving a gift bag with a pamphlet on U.S. history, which omitted women, Native Americans and people of African descent, and a small flag that was made in China. A fellow graduate student followed my remarks with “Then why are you here? Why don’t you go back to Mexico? If you feel the need to complain and criticize this country, then why don’t you leave? I hate hearing people that are benefiting from the system complain about the U.S.” I was in complete shock. I looked around the room waiting for someone to say something, perhaps defend me or say anything, but was met with a deafening silence. My visibility rendered complete vulnerability, I felt naked, stripped and alone. What did I do you ask? Exactly what graduate school had taught me, hold back the tears, voice my critically analyzed interpretation and own the fuck out of my visibility! I’m no longer the only brown girl in the room, I’m back living in my beloved borderland, but the impact of visibility and the importance of owning my “otherness” remains crucial. The social and political climate in this country are flushing out the underlying toxicity towards minorities, and any “other” in our society. It is imperative, now more than ever, to embrace our visibility, our “otherness”, and to inhabit space with protest!
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Like Home Electra Hunzeker
The woman from the student loan company sounds like home. "May I ask what part of the country you're calling from?" "Madison, Wisconsin," she says. She sounds like Fargo. She sounds far north of Madison. She sounds like driving on the ice & eating jello in a Lutheran church basement. I close my eyes & for a moment, I think everything will turn out okay.
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[Miss]gendered Tabitha Parry Collins
“Miss!” I hear my student call, in an attempt to get my attention. There is a sense of urgency in her voice as she calls me over to her table for clarification on the group’s assignment. I try to focus, but in the back of my head the word ‘Miss’ is a grating sound, echoing in my mind, reminding me that I will never be seen for who I really am. It is a constant reminder that no matter how much I ask, plead, or beg people only see me in terms of a binary that they understand. This body: prominent breasts, wide hips, full ass, decidedly feminine hip to waist ratio betrays me regularly. While I pay attention to how I clothe this body, striving for a more masculine, or at least androgynous look, I find it almost impossible to fit this seemingly feminine figure into clothes designed for a less curvy, more angular frame. This body was not built to pass or blend in—it was made to take up space and become a physical manifestation of everything that I am not, to echo the descriptions given about it: voluptuous, curvy, beautiful, womanly, and feminine. When I cut off most of my hair I thought it would reduce the anxiety and cultivate an image that aligns with who I am inside. Instead, now people view me as all those things but also as dyke. It takes everything inside of me not to scream I do not consent to those labels… instead, I am silent. I can’t uncomplicate my queerness for people who have already made a decision about who and what I am; I move on with my life, slowly adding wardrobe pieces hiding the most feminine of features in a vain and futile attempt to create an accurate 8
reflection in my mirror. I need the world to allow me to choose my own labels, to decide what I can and cannot be called, to see my gender identity as separate from my gender expression. Expression of gender isn’t real. I am limited by what society thinks a body like this is: feminine. I may change my clothes, but I don’t want to change my name. I love the way it rolls of the tongue and how it sounds on the lips of those I love and those who accept me. But sometimes I think I should. Perhaps a more masculine name would reinforce the identity that is mine. It might help them remember I am ‘them’ rather than ‘her’. Perhaps it would cut down on the number of times someone calls me ‘Miss’ throughout the day. Because of all the names you can call me, I’d take most of the derogatory ones over ‘Miss,’ that slithery, sneaky title. It creeps into my brain and causes the anxiety to rise. It reminds me that as many times as I ask, as often as I tell, I will always be distinctively ‘she’ to most of the world.
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Magical Girl Maternity Leave Lisa Marie Nohner All at once the Magical Girls got pregnant and their tummies inflated like marshmallows or pink clouds Mabe pearls and moon balloons They unwound their fluorescent hair as their ankles swelled so big those patent leather knee highs had to be sliced from their supple calves They flicked their wrists to solemn absence-No more sexy boudoir fashion sequence Or flashing disco laser lightshow No capes of lace and no electric ribbons to swirl the curves of their new bodies Every nursery A galaxy-Of mobile planets and treasure chests twilight burp rags and diamond studded changing tables Walls papered with birthing plans Lips working names like Selene, Phoenix, Egregia Gone The pink pop guns that blasted rose petal bullets Down The serpentine swords with lunging blades 10
They stopped looking for trouble Entirely Never did my belly feel so empty As the day I raised my glitter ax And turned to find myself Alone Amid the starless vacuum of a foreign space that had once been my home
Cassandra Dixon Witness
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Don’t Be Quiet Melanie Sweeney I'm not there when his father hurls the TV remote at him. I'm in the bedroom, where we had sex the night before while his parents and little brother slept because he likes to feel like he’s getting away with something. He yanks me from the too-small bed, his childhood bed but not his childhood room, and we are charging away, one sidewalk slab per stride, me stuttering half-steps to keep up, and he is shaking, red, an animal whose leash I am holding but not with any kind of control. We are far from the house, from his father, when he tells me about the remote and the sarcastic thing his father said. I won't remember it later. It disappears behind the next thing he tells me, that this has happened before, though it has been a long time, and it has been worse. Never to his mother. Never to his brother. Only him. The remote is nothing, but it is an echo of something, and he splinters apart right in front of me. "Don't be quiet," he says, pressing my thighs apart with his long fingers. They are always curled against my flesh in the same grip he holds a baseball, the forefinger and middle finger curved, slightly spread, pressing hardest. He was a pitcher in high school. His father coached him growing up. "Tell me what you like." I'm embarrassed. I want to close my legs. I want to do this the boring way. I want him to go slow. Sometimes he does, but now, I can tell, he wants to make me scream. After, he cleans himself with toilet paper. While in the bathroom, he plucks any tissues I have wiped my nose with from the wastebasket and flushes them down the toilet, like he can't stand to look at even the smallest piece of trash. I leave in the middle of the night. A decade later, my son, who is four, asks me if I will ever die. I want to say no. I haven't prepared for this conversation. I thought I had more time. I tell him, "Eventually, yes. But you don't need to worry." 12
I tell him our bodies let us know when they are sick, and then we can usually fix them. When I ride in an ambulance after puking my insides out all day, and the EMT stops looking for a vein to start an IV, I think of my son, how he loves ambulances but is scared right now with his dad in the van. I am wheeled into an ER, where I sit waiting on a stretcher long enough to know I must not be dying. A little girl keeps turning to look at me, and I keep trying to look like I am not dying. I almost tell her, "I'm okay, honey." His father is sick. His father's body is not in his father’s control. His family has spent years telling his father what he cannot or should not do in order to stay healthy, watching him after an attack with I told you so's on their worried faces. His father regains his strength, and he is there, a little too arrogant, probably, and his father -His father teaches him to pitch. His father plays videos from when he was four or five, his first year playing, and points out that he was not a fast runner. His father laughs. His father asks me who is right, was he the slowest kid on the team or not? His father says, "It’s okay. You got better as you grew up." He loves his father. He laughs at himself and lets it go. His father gets sick, and the family manages. They manage his father and each other. His mother tells him, "There is always someone worse off than you." This refrain applies to everything. His father's illness. His father's -My son asks me if we're all going to die. I tell him, "Yes, but..." I think of my concept of heaven as a child, one I no longer believe in, and I want to give it to him. "I want to hear you," he says, and I cannot breathe. I am folded in half. He is pressing so hard against me. I might throw up. I might pass out. I manage to say, "I love you." 13
My son plays out elaborate emergencies with his Hot Wheels. Often, someone is drowning. He looks to me for solutions. The Coast Guard. A helicopter. A friendly whale. Every time, he says, "Oh, no, now the Coast Guard is sinking! Now the helicopter is going down! Now the friendly whale is eaten by shark!" My solutions never work. But he still keeps turning to me, expecting an answer, and I keep giving them, and he keeps undoing them, and I keep giving them. I try to imagine his mother, after. I try to hear her tell him someone else is worse off. I try to picture her in his childhood room. Does she hold him? Does she wipe his face? Does she stay in the doorway, where she can not be quite right there? Does she coach him? We are not victims. Before I leave his place in the middle of the night, I am quiet, and he knows something is wrong. He either falls asleep or he presses me. I either insist I'm just tired or I tell him, "I don't like it so hard." His face says I'm funny, adorable. He kisses me and tells me I'm still such a baby about sex. He holds me, gentle now, and I stay a little longer. My son's chin trembles as he enters my hospital room. He doesn't know where to stand. I haven't tried to sit up. I have been too weak to even move my head. But I can now, and I pat the bed, drawing my legs up to make space. He climbs on, and I don't know what to say. I don't even want him to be here, to see me like this. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say, so I don't.
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Diptychs Rubén Ulises Rodriguez In these diptychs the impetus was to re-appropriate the canons of masculinity, femininity and religion as they fit into my gay identity. Canons that have negated my identity or told me that who I am is not right. Where a straight man can have as many women as he chooses before he gets married, a gay man cannot. Laws are enacted against him because in the end, his deviant sexuality will never create an offspring. My culture has created the macho stereotype, a rigid structure that negates men’s femininity and creates this hyper idealized version of a man that can’t cry or show his emotion. In these images I’m showing how a man’s style reinforces the paradigm of masculinity. How a straight man can wear gold chains, a shiny belt, not be called a “puto or a joto” for being extravagantly dressed. Artifacts that reinforce his masculinity, the gold chains with pistols inspiring violence or the shiny belt that entrances and guides the eye to look down at his groin area. With my selfies, by focusing on myself, I am subverting all of this. I am using my body, my poses, and traditionally girly colors to create something that’s uniquely mine. This creates a safe space for me to embody both masculine and feminine notions of reality that help me navigate a culture that negates my existence
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RubĂŠn Ulises Rodriguez
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“Sombrero”
RubĂŠn Ulises Rodriguez
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“Virgin”
RubĂŠn Ulises Rodriguez
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“Hooker”
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RubĂŠn Ulises Rodriguez
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“RRR”
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RubĂŠn Ulises Rodriguez
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“Boots”
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Matters of Representation Abby Current What does it matter, someone says (a teacher, a friend, an aunt), if they use a Japanese name? If the story is good, someone says, then does it matter whether Karl or Kamal or Kyung wrote it? If the actor is talented, if they put in their hours and do Their Best, then so what if the skin goes pale, if their color is bled from their body? Doesn’t that make them Everyone? (My brother told me that he did not read stories with girl protagonists because he knew he could not understand them. I said then why do you think girls read Harry Potter, why girls can understand boy protagonists? and he said Well everyone understands boys.) What does it matter, someone says (a straight man, a white woman) if the love-lives of our movies remain Straight and Narrow? If the colors never touch? This, I am assured, represents Reality, the Real World where I must not live. I am asked and asked and asked why I am so upset over fictions and worlds that aren’t real. Why push around on my plate Hollywood and the publishing industry and the demographics of fiction when there are children starving in Africa? (My mother once said I just don’t understand that lifestyle. I don’t want my entertainment to be political. I wanted to ask her, I do not ask her, if she thinks that my life, lived, private, is more political than hers when I am her blood, her younger mirror in all but this one way.) 26
What does it matter, representation? I read and view and dive into worlds in order to understand. In stories, people are brave and they love, they are strong and I want to believe that I can be as they are. They are complex and fascinating and human in these stories, and their lives become my roadmaps, ways to Understand. I want to understand everything, I want to see in color and in rainbows. The world is colorful, the world is soft and rainbow-lit and expansive, and it Matters that the storyworlds we love are mirrors into which anyone can see, can seek to understand. Cassandra Dixon Falling
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Breaking Strings Danielle Stanard I knew a woman who held her violin too tightRain on the windowpane the glisten of her collar bone the heave of her chest like a tiny cello but not between the knees pressure and heat pressure and heat when she played, those strings didn't singthey'd moan and scream she tried to hold back, I'd whisper, Let it go.
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Revival Lisa Marie Nohner It is autumn now in Illinois And Judith’s memory Dangles in the air like a soap bubble Like the last vestiges of a summer dream My sister, Pretty sister, With her sun bleached hair and dirty feet Ankles laced with strands of glass beads— She had a 3.9 GPA And two Heaven-blue eyes that Pinwheeled to the sky Every time Michael brought down the knife Judith smelled of toadstools Head and Shoulders and Pall Mall Cigarettes When her body fluttered over me like a white cotton sheet Judy Judith Blue Eyes Blew her soul like smoke rings Into the air And she tied up my hair With wet coils of red ribbon To keep Michael’s blade from my heart 29
We grew up with a stump Where Judith’s initials used to be And I traced its rings with my fingers Each year on Halloween Judy Judith Blue Eyes, The Myers Girl with Haunted pom-poms Ra-Ra-Raing the hallways of Haddonfield High Just Easy Enough Breezy Enough A Cover Girl that never dies On the 31st Homeroom is full of Judiths Bursting out of bloodstained letter sweaters Tugging up their bobbysocks Girls with deep gouges Where hickies should be Look, people put my sister on Like Wet and Wild lipstick from the drug store Or a sticky, sodden thong My sister-Your sister-Could have been valedictorian but In the yearbook Judith was voted 30
most likely to fuck Every body owns her now. Dead girl for a day, Whore for a lifetime— Guess it all depends who is watching At nightfall I stretch my body Along the length of Judith’s grave Dig my fingers into the dirt to Whisper the thank yous that she’ll never hear And when the shape Himself casts his shadow over me I do not wonder who is watching
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About the Contributors Tabitha Parry Collins is a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Education at NMSU who spends a fair amount of their time thinking about ways to get the world to talk about gender identity and LGBTQ+ issues. They don’t write a lot anymore, but you can find them talking about gender and queerness at conferences, in classes, and sometimes to the cats. Also, they have a weird fascination with octopuses (octopi?). Abby Current is a writer, feminist, MFA candidate, wife, and dog mom, among other identifiers. She's from rural Ohio and misses snow, but loves the mountains in Las Cruces. She might have been a selkie in another life. Cassandra Dixon was born and raised in Las Cruces, NM. She graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2009 with a BFA in Illustration. She graduated in 2016 from NMSU with an Master of Fine Arts. She currently lives and works in Patagonia, Arizona. Electra Hunzeker has an MFA in Creative Writing (fiction) from NMSU. Her work has been published in Puerto del Sol, the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Mom Egg Review. She lives in Las Cruces in a vintage trailer with an elderly cat and a mischievous kitten. Lisa Marie Nohner was grown in a half empty bottle of Prozac and raised by a pack of screaming TVs. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from NMSU and currently teaches English at LSU where she screens movies about Shower Girls and Scream Queens. Her work is crumpled up beneath your bed. So is she. Don't turn on the light.
Born in Parral, Mexico, RubĂŠn Ulises Rodriguez is student at New Mexico State University living in the border region between El Paso and Juarez. Fabiola E. Silva is a contract archaeologist for a local military base. She earned a BA in Anthropology from New Mexico State University and an MA in Archaeology from the University of Oklahoma. Her research 32
interests include looting and the antiquities market across the U.S./Mexico border, material culture studies (ceramics), and ethno-history. Danielle Stanard received her MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles where she studied fiction and poetry. She is a pop culture critic and superhero scholar who is put to best use on a sci-fi convention panel. She currently teaches at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. Katy Stuckel received her MFA in Art from NMSU 2016. An artist and a longtime resident of the southwest. Stuckel is resistant to borders and domination of any kind. Melanie Sweeney holds an MFA in creative writing from New Mexico State University. She lives and makes things in Spring, Texas. Julia Vulcan drew this comic to illustrate some of the things she heard people say after she cut her hair. She is currently finishing undergraduate degrees in Microbiology and Gender & Sexuality Studies at NMSU.
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SJZ: Social Justice Zine vol. 2: a state of emergence/y Spring 2017 sjz is lovingly cut and pasted together by the academic program in Gender & Sexuality Studies at New Mexico State University. Its current iteration is a collaboration between undergraduate students, graduate students, alumni, and faculty. We would like to also include voices from our larger community, region, and beyond in future issues. This second annual issue centers on a state of emergency—how the term and the feeling can signal both a sense of vulnerability and precarity as well as a possibility of creativity and emergence.
Gender & Sexuality Studies at New Mexico State University offers a B.A., minor, and graduate minor in the interdisciplinary, intersectional study of gender and sexuality. Our major, minor, and courses are offered both online and face-2-face. Gender & Sexuality Studies is deeply connected with examining the social from decentered, decolonized positions and skills gained from our degree and courses translate into vital career resources. Did you know that many people choose to double major and minor with us because the distinct knowledge and experience gained from our field not only make them more competitive on the job market, but that it also makes their life and job experiences more vital and richer? We are dedicated to social justice issues, feminisms, and works focusing on issues connected to gender, race, gender identity, dis/ability, migration, LGBTQIA*, borders, the Borderlands, and transnational positionality. We are open to entries from current NMSU students and alumni as well as people in the community and beyond. genders.nmsu.edu