Lara Medina in Kansas City for the Day of the Dead 2019 Celebration at the Writers Place

Lara Medina in Kansas City for the Day of the Dead 2019 Celebration at the Writers Place

Por Xánath Caraza

La celebración de Día de Muertos en el Writers Place en Kansas City será el 25 de octubre de 7 a 9 p.m. Día de muertos en el Writers Place se ha celebrado desde 2010 y para este año tendremos una serie de eventos que llenarán la noche de cempaxóchiles y humo de copal. 

Nos acompañaran el grupo Calpulli Iskali para abrir la noche.  Calpulli Iskali se define, a través de las palabras de Arelis Flores, como: “A family that continues to grow as we search for knowledge of our ancestors to find our identity through traditional Mexica dance and prayer.”

Tendremos dos altares para compartir con el público, además de comida tradicional para Día de Muertos.

Este 2019 es particularmente especial porque nos acompañará Lara Medina para presentar la antología Voices from the Ancestors que la University of Arizona Press recientemente publicó. Lara Medina y Martha R. Gonzáles son las editoras de esta importante publicación.  Espero y nos acompañen.

“Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge.

This wisdom is based on the authors’ oral traditions, research, intuitions, and lived experiences—wisdom inspired by, and created from, personal trajectories on the path to spiritual conocimiento, or inner spiritual inquiry. This conocimiento has reemerged over the last fifty years as efforts to decolonize lives, minds, spirits, and bodies have advanced. Yet this knowledge goes back many generations to the time when the ancestors understood their interconnectedness with each other, with nature, and with the sacred cosmic ­forces—a time when the human body was a microcosm of the universe.

Reclaiming and reconstructing spirituality based on non-Western epistemologies is central to the process of decolonization, particularly in these fraught times. The wisdom offered here appears in a variety of forms—in reflective essays, poetry, prayers, specific guidelines for healing practices, communal rituals, and visual art, all meant to address life transitions and how to live holistically and with a spiritual consciousness for the challenges of the twenty-first century.”

—University of Arizona Press

Lara Medina, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge where she teaches courses in Chicanx history and Chicanx spirituality and religious diversity.  She earned her doctorate from Claremont Graduate University in American History and a MA in Theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Her first book, Las Hermanas: Chicana/Latina Religious Political Activism in the U.S. Catholic Church (Temple University, 2004) won a Choice Book Award. Her recent co-edited book is titled Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx/Latinx Spiritual Reflections and Healing Practices (Arizona University Press, 2019). She also has several published writings on Días de los muertos in Chicanx communities and Chicana feminist spirituality. She is first generation college educated and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and now resides in Los Angeles.