Monthly Archives: March 2022

In the Fall, Jason de Leon visited campus and gave a truly impactful talk about his work in the Sonora desert that left many of us in the audience in tears. As such, I knew what to expect when beginning … Continue reading →

Being queer and black in a society that may not accept you is very challenging and very interesting also. It was interesting to read how Dr. Maurine discusses her POV and own situations in her book. Although it was a … Continue reading →

I absolutely love the concept of the body-land as described by the author in the fifth chapter. In other anthropology classes, I have been introduced to the concept of the body as a site for structural violence, a carrier of … Continue reading →

Lara talks about how the experiences of being Queer are distinct across cultures, identities, ethnicities and races. When she brings up the erasure of Indigenous Queer folk (64-65) in particular, it made me think about how Indigenous Queer folk are … Continue reading →

In Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty, author Dr. Ana Maurine Lara provides us with a powerful ethnography that proved to be extremely thought provoking in reflecting on her fieldwork in the Dominican Republic. Here, she explains her engagement in different religious … Continue reading →

I will be perfectly honest here, this was a difficult one for me, not out of rejection, but more misunderstanding. I began by reading the 2 poems contained in the introduction, and was well ready to get into the reading. … Continue reading →

Dr. Ana-Maurine Lara’s Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty is a poetic ethnography of queer, Black, and Indigenous people and spiritual practices in the Dominican Republic. These entanglements offer a complex understanding of Caribbean Black, Indigenous, and queer communities. Lara argues for and uncovers … Continue reading →

One of the aspects of this ethnography that stood out to me the most was how ofter the word “we” was used in the chapters we read this week. In the chapter about war, when Lara is discussing how she … Continue reading →

Lara brings up the concept of body-land which emphasizes that bodies are built from nature and therefore are not separate from it. In an excerpt at the beginning of the chapter Cherríe Moraga describes land as “the common ground for … Continue reading →

I found this week’s reading from Lara’s Queer Freedom : Black Sovereignty to be very thought-provoking and illuminating. One aspect of this ethnography I resonated with was the incorporation of different modes of thinking in her analysis of current oppressive … Continue reading →

I was intrigued by Lara’s inclusion of Frantz Fanon’s definition of decolonization. Fanon describes decolonization as, “quite simply, the substitution of one ‘species’ of mankind by another. The substitution is unconditional, absolute, total, and seamless” (2). It is also a … Continue reading →

While I did find this ethnography very interesting and significant, I honestly had some trouble understanding some of the concepts and specifics that Lara was talking about. However, I did really like her discussion and definition of “body-lands.” Lara states, … Continue reading →

The theme that stuck out most to me in this reading, that has recurred in the ethnographies we have read time and time again, is the connection between people and the physical space that they occupy. The loss of control … Continue reading →

When discussing the conquista and colonialism as a whole, we tend to imagine these concepts as historical artifacts—as happenings of the past that are in indeed still impacting the present and that will continue the affect the future. However, I … Continue reading →

I personally enjoyed how Ana-Maurine drew audiences in by forcing them to reconsider their understanding of terms that seem so common and accessible to some demographics – words like “gender,” “race,” or “freedom”. What does it mean to have sovereignty … Continue reading →

In her book, Ana-Maurine Lara argues that being Black and queer challenges Christian colonial hermeticism and paves the way for values, knowledge, and being that never cease to exist despite the colonial order’s attempts to marginalize, deny, and eradicate. The dominating theme throughout the … Continue reading →