La Bloga: WOMEN, MUJERES, IXOQ: REVOLUTIONARY VISIONS

Monday, December 25, 2017

WOMEN, MUJERES, IXOQ: REVOLUTIONARY VISIONS

WOMEN, MUJERES, IXOQ: REVOLUTIONARY VISIONS
Xánath Caraza

Bloguera invitada: Claudia D. Hernández

WOMEN, MUJERES, IXOQ: REVOLUTIONARY VISIONS is a photography book that will be published by Conocimientos Press by the end of the year. This book depicts stories of resilience by artists, activists, writers, and poets from across the United States. The book aims to empower and inspire women, especially young women.

I began this project on October 11, 2012. I was a thirty-four-year-old navigating through the roughest phase of my life. At my lowest point, when I was scraping my knees off the floor, women came to my side—my mother, my sisters,This is when I realized that when women experience life challenges from discrimination, inequality, misogyny, abuse, abandonment, postpartum depression, or other life difficulties, we forge sisterhood. Inside the trauma of our lives we seek each other out for comfort inspiring and encouraging one another along the way. It was then that I committed to document women’s lives. I have amassed over fifty interviews and now the project has given birth to this photography book in color.

Today’s Revolutionary Women of Color Project has taken me on a journey of which I never dreamed. I consider it a gift to photograph and gather together these women’s poetry, prose, and paintings. Replete with stories of hope framed inside narratives of sexism, racism, sexual molestations, harassment, incest, domestic violence, bigotry, mental illness, immigration, motherhood, language, gender and identity issues, through their stories they contest the adversities that women experience. These women are survivors who have endured many hardships, but have found ways to heal through their art and community service. Their stories of resilience truly reflect the human condition.

This project has given me the opportunity to meet more than fifty community leaders who make a difference with their art. These are everyday women who are successful and whose very existence is revolutionary by their accomplishments and experiences. They are not perfect, but I consider them the fiercest warriors I have met; they are agents of change whose art empowers young women; they are influential, creative women whose art has inspired me; their vision and art healed my heart, soul, and mind when I most needed it.

WOMEN, MUJERES, IXOQ: REVOLUTIONARY VISIONS will publish forty revolutionary women including a powerful forward by Norma Elia Cantú. The book will be available to purchase on Amazon and www.conocimientospress.com

Claudia D. Hernández was born and raised in Guatemala. She’s a mother, photographer, poet, translator, and a bilingual educator residing in Los Angeles. She writes short stories, children’s stories, and poetry in Spanish, English, and sometimes weaves in Poqomchiʼ, an indigenous language of her Mayan heritage. Hernández holds an MFA in Creative Writing for Young People, with an emphasis in poetry from Antioch University Los Angeles. Various online literary journals and anthologies throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Mexico, have published her work. She was named a finalist for the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize in 2017. She is the founder of the ongoing project: Today’s Revolutionary Women of Color

http://www.todaysrevolutionarywomenofcolor.com/news-and-events.html

https://www.facebook.com/TodaysRevolutionaryWomenOfColor/

https://www.facebook.com/Conocimientos-Press-1541699272509777/

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Monday, December 25, 2017

WOMEN, MUJERES, IXOQ: REVOLUTIONARY VISIONS

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