Decolonial Puerto Rican Women's Writings: Subversion in the Flesh [1st ed.] 978-3-030-05730-5;978-3-030-05731-2

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxvii
Introduction (Roberta Hurtado)....Pages 1-27
Enfleshment: Beneath the Body Lies Flesh (Roberta Hurtado)....Pages 29-47
Flesh-Memories: Bearing Witness to Trauma and Survival (Roberta Hurtado)....Pages 49-68
Sentient Narratives: Similes, Metaphors, and Dusmic Poetics Within the Senses (Roberta Hurtado)....Pages 69-88
Envisioning Empowerment: Recodifying the Meaning of Historical Trauma (Roberta Hurtado)....Pages 89-110
Strategic Decolonization: Methods for Resistance and Community Healing (Roberta Hurtado)....Pages 111-130
Conclusion: Sentient-Flesh Subversions (Roberta Hurtado)....Pages 131-137
Back Matter ....Pages 139-157

Citation preview

Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings Subversion in the Flesh

ROBERTA HURTADO

Literatures of the Americas Series Editor Norma E. Cantú Trinity University San Antonio, TX, USA

This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions within a hemispheric perspective, with an emphasis on perspectives from Latin America. Books in the series highlight work that explores concerns in literature in different cultural contexts across historical and geographical boundaries and also include work on the specific Latina/o realities in the United States. Designed to explore key questions confronting contemporary issues of literary and cultural import, Literatures of the Americas is rooted in traditional approaches to literary criticism but seeks to include cutting-edge scholarship using theories from postcolonial, critical race, and ecofeminist approaches. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14819

Roberta Hurtado

Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings Subversion in the Flesh

Roberta Hurtado State University of New York at Oswego Oswego, NY, USA

Literatures of the Americas ISBN 978-3-030-05730-5 ISBN 978-3-030-05731-2  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05731-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Roberta Hurtado This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book began some years ago when I asked seemingly simple but ultimately very complicated questions: Are Puerto Rican women more than the sum of how colonial structures define them? And, if Puerto Rican women are more than the sum, how do we/they define ourselves/themselves beyond those structures without getting trapped in a reactionary battle? These questions led to years of research, readings, conferences, publications, and teaching moments. The further I dug, the more I kept coming back to something: the body. But it wasn’t the “body” as I had always taken it to be. Or rather, I began to see the many layers with which my flesh was wrapped with meanings that get defined as a “body.” When I look down at my skin, my flesh, my bones, I begin to see something other than how my “body” is defined in narratives given to me about who and what I am; the meanings I make in the spaces in which I circulate. And the closer I got and continue to get to this flesh, the more I discern that its very essence pulsates with a kind of consciousness that I had once thought emerged from “thinking” as if the brain were itself not flesh. I began to see the intricate interconnectivity between the flesh, its functioning, and how knowledge emerges. I began to rethink my experiences and my responses to people with whom I interact. My sentient-flesh emerged as something that was more than what I had been taught it could be. My potential became infinite. My ability to heal became more than a “mindless biological” function and instead became the very seed and seat of my resilient rebellion. v

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And so I went back to the literature. I went back to the novels, the short stories, the dramas, and the poetry. I went back looking for traces of this very reality in the words and creative outpourings. Something quite amazing occurred: I began to see descriptions of corporeal reality as holding within them key insights into how power structures work to oppress. I also saw how these same structures can be and are navigated for survival. And more than survival—I saw the creation of spaces where those who are oppressed can flourish, without leaving their sentient-flesh behind as collateral damage. Why is such a maneuver important? Because for too long this flesh has been demonized as the cause of oppression by those with power. It has been studied, labeled, brandished as proof of an inability to be fully human. It has been castigated, made the burden of existence while others profit from its exploitation. And so it would seem only a natural ramification that I would want to be done with it; that we would all wish to be free from its shackles and impositions. But then the reality hits: This flesh has done nothing wrong to me. I cannot hold it accountable for the ways that it has been harmed, as if its very intention in existing is to be harmed. I cannot blame it for the actions of others. And so I have spent years learning to redirect my attention to the sources from which these accusations have been lobbied—searching to where harsh tones and pathologizing fingers of condemnation have been pointing from. So I go back to history in an attempt to get beneath the layers of these narratives.1 The story of Puerto Rico begins long before the US invasion and subsequent takeover that occurred in the late 1890s. Although existing and inhabited long before the arrival of the Spanish, the islands that are now known as Puerto Rico first entered the Western European imagination in 1493 (Pierce Flores 2010). A few years later, it was bequeathed with the name “Puerto Rico” and set upon as a site that would come under Spanish control and full colonization. By the dawn of 1500, the island witnessed the arrival of Spanish conquistadors invading its shores en masse.2 In subsequent years, this arrival brought on an almost completely successful genocide of the branch of the Arawak nation that had previously existed in this particular archipelago (HaslipViera 2001). Murder, rape, theft, torture, enslavement: all details in the larger tapestry of the Spanish takeover. In the early 1500s, to replace the diminishing and/or diminished population of Amerindian inhabitants, the Spanish began bringing enslaved

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Africans to the island for labor. The blood, the sweat, the very flesh of enslaved Africans built the wealth of Spanish landholders and international traders. The population of the island grew with the continued importation of enslaved Africans and the arrival of Iberian and Mediterranean colonizers. The island transformed into an agrarian economy that participated in international trade. But this process was not unique to Puerto Rico (Pierce Flores 2010). Instead, it was a phenomenon being witnessed across the Caribbean as Western European colonizers stretched out, consumed, and destroyed. In the centuries that followed, Puerto Rico became a small part of a larger network of Spanish international projects that led to the wealth of Europe and its rise to modernity (Galeano 1997; Quijano 2000). However, by the nineteenth century, the Spanish government’s awareness of the increased black population on the island gave rise to a process called blanqueamiento. Designed to halt the black population’s growth, the Spanish government actively sought to increase the volume of white/European inhabitants on the island by encouraging Europeans from regions in the Mediterranean to migrate to Puerto Rico (Godreau et al. 2008). This, in combination with a sponsored program of “reclaiming” indigenous identity in the nineteenth century, created unique methods of cultural erasure and social structuring that has maintained to today (Duany 2001). Importantly, under US occupation, racial classification also experienced a social shift in terms of how children were documented at birth (Loveman and Muñiz 2007). The nineteenth century also witnessed, across Latin America, fervor for independence from Spanish and other colonial impositions. Countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico all fought for and won their independence and sought to stave off encroachment from other colonial forces. The desire for independence was no different in the Caribbean. The uprising of enslaved peoples and subsequent independence of Haiti from the French heralded a beacon for a new type of future for the people of the Americas, but did not come to fruition in Puerto Rico or anywhere else. Although, historically, the island had witnessed uprisings by Taíno communities and enslaved African communities—sometimes both together—the promise of freedom to be colonized subjects rather than property did not arrive until 1873, as a result of promises made to those who participated in the 1868 Grito de Lares uprising. This shift did not signal a major alteration of social makeup or a redistribution of wealth. Nor did it function as the foundation for a “new” country that would rise up against Spain.

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However, this is not to ignore the many unique examples of Puerto Rican pushes for independence that were quite radical. For instance, Puerto Rico can boast names of women who held seditious meetings in their homes, participated in organizing and planning rebellions, and created networks around the island as strategic holdings against which to fight the Spanish (Colón Warren 2003; Romero-Cesareo 1994). From the time of the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, Puerto Rican women have participated in revolutionary movements for independence as well as Puerto Rican rights more generally. Indeed, women such as Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Luisa Capetillo, and Antonia Pantoja are among some of the names of those fighting for independence and Puerto Rican communities from the island and beyond (AcostaBelén 2005; Hewitt 2005; Sánchez Korrol 2005). As the 1800s began to draw to a close, US imperial designs in the Caribbean and Pacific emerged. In the late 1890s, Cuba and Puerto Rico began shifting toward interim governments in which local officials—although not free from Spain’s control—would now be in command of the islands and provide self-government. Contemporaneously, the Philippines waged a revolutionary war against Spain. Then, the USA invaded the remaining holdings of Spain and conquered the dying empire (Burnette and Marshall 2001). Although less than a century before the US government had feared Spanish invasion (Heiss 2002), it now attacked with vigor and demonstrated to other European powers its role as a contender of engaging in practices that Western European colonial forces had done centuries or even decades before. According to the US Library of Congress, US takeover of the island—which it notes as occurring at a moment of “short-lived experiment in self-government”—“marked the end of four centuries of Spanish Imperial occupation and the beginning of U.S. sovereignty at the dawn of what has been called the American Century” (Library of Congress 2019). There is no hint of irony by the Library of Congress that Puerto Rican independence was destroyed for the imperial designs of a nation that boasts a desire for freedom as one of its founding tenets. The signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898 marks the year that Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico became possessions of the USA. Although the language of the treaty itself does not explicitly label these nations as colonies, history has shown that they did indeed emerge as property of a foreign imperial force. The countries of Cuba and the Philippines would later gain independence—the former through

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a socialist uprising and the latter through a strategic US dissociation that would render it vulnerable to US needs while simultaneously relinquishing any responsibility of the USA to this Pacific archipelago. Guam and Puerto Rico remain property of the USA to this day. Importantly, the USA has never officially designated Puerto Rico or Guam as colonies. In recent years, the US Supreme Court acknowledged the island’s status as property of the US (Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle). Further, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) board hearings of 2015–2018 resulted in high-ranking official being forced to acknowledge that Puerto Rico is in fact a colony (Caban 2017). Following the US takeover and colonization of Puerto Rico, changes in Puerto Rico were often predicated on how the US was attempting to exact particular ends and needs. Some alterations were brief, such as changing the spelling of the island’s name to “Porto Rico” and the attempted imposition of English as the island’s language (Jones Act; Barreto 2001; Gallardo 1947). However, other activities gained more traction, such as the restructuring of the island’s economy in order for the US to maneuver its capitalist needs in a manner that would not compromise US internal laws. Some programs focused on the use of land by US-based businesses, with examples such as regulations being set in place that allowed US corporations to gain 500-acre land parcels, although these restrictions on land consumption were routinely violated (Descartes 1943). The early 1900s also witnessed other innovations in US use of Puerto Rico for financial gain, specifically in relation to regulating taxes and import/export of goods from the island. Puerto Rico, at the time, had several agricultural exports, such as sugar, coffee, and tobacco. US imposition on the Dominican Republic had already secured a source of sugar that could be dominated and exploited, but US control of Puerto Rico would mean the ability to side-step international trade agreements and laws. Other issues emerged, however, regarding how to treat Puerto Ricans (at the time labeled as “Porto Ricans”). Notably, all of these economic movements and even issues regarding the labeling of Puerto Ricans centered on one central problem: the status of Puerto Rico. The resulting “Insular Cases,” which were heard by the US Supreme Court in 1901 and then extended over several years, marked the need for more formal designations of the island, its people, and— most importantly to the US—its role in US commerce (Burnette and Marshall 2001).

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In March of 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones– Shafroth Act. This act, later referred to as the Jones Act, transformed Puerto Rican status and shackled the island to the US. Most notably, the US provided Puerto Ricans a six-month period in which they could swear allegiance to the US and become US citizens, or—if born of foreign parentage—become citizens of their parents’ originating nation. Subsequent generations of Puerto Ricans automatically became US citizens without the option of being “Puerto Rican citizens” with their own national identification, such as passports. Important to the emerging designation of US citizenship was the fact that Puerto Rican men were subject to the US military draft. The US, under this act, also made decisions regarding the governmental structuring of the island and regulation of Puerto Rico’s ability to engage in trade. In essence, the island became a colony subject to what the act consistently refers to as the “needs of the United States,” subject to its whims and desires. Its politicians were subject to US oversight, and its people subject to its laws.3 Although, in 1952, Puerto Rico established its own constitution and was rebranded as a “Commonwealth,” very little has changed in terms of being subject to US oversight, dependent on US political determinations, and controlled by US policy. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed a colonial narrative regarding the island and its peoples, which has lasted to today, that centered around the question: What will the USA do to “save” these people from themselves? Historical writings from the time period prove sufficient in identifying how the US managed to maneuver this question and its resulting narrative. Examples abound of US pundits describing the island as a “laboratory” or noting the need to bring the island up to speed with modernity (Beard 1945; Reuter 1946). Other examples exist, such as the depiction of Puerto Ricans as overpopulating the island because of their inability to control their sexuality. These narratives resulted in US “intervention” in the form of testing birth control pills on Puerto Rican women and mass sterilization programs, which themselves perverted the access to family planning and reproductive rights for which Puerto Rican women had fought (Briggs 1998; Lopez 2008; Mass 1977; Safa 2003). Other examples of the USA “saving” the island exist, such as Operation Bootstrap. This endeavor sought to bring US manufacturing to the island in an apparent move to create jobs that would encourage Puerto Ricans to work and pull themselves up by “their bootstraps” in recollection of the US idiom (Cabán 1984). These businesses

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drew Puerto Rican male workers into the factories, and women were also engaged in the US economy in areas such as textile work (Manning 1934). While employment was, indeed, needed on the island, it is unquestionable that US corporations benefited greatly by having the island and its people available as a colonized labor pool. However, none of this is to say that there was not simultaneous resistance to US colonization or that Puerto Ricans were “passive victims.” Whereas US narratives regarding the island have undoubtedly imagined the island and its inhabitants as burdens that the US beneficently takes on, realities on the island are quite different. Political resistance has been present on the island since long before the arrival of the US as a colonial force and is still present today (Gonzalez-Cruz 1998; Churchill 2002). In the early half of the twentieth century, major political movements occurred, such as that of anarchosyndicalists, and revolutionary independence parties also emerged (Hewitt 2005; Blanco-Rivera 2005; Valle-Ferrer 2006). One example of Puerto Rican resistance, and a clear US response that demonstrates colonial awareness of Puerto Ricans as more than passively in need of saving, is the Ponce Massacre of 1937 (Denis 2015). Starting as a peaceful protest on Palm Sunday, this demonstration was organized by the Nationalist Party to commemorate the end of slavery and also in response to repression of political dissidents, such as Pedro Albizu Campo. Albizu Campo was a well-known independence advocate who also rallied for fair wages and the general well-being of Puerto Ricans. Police opened fire on the demonstrators, killing a handful of people and maiming hundreds. Although, officially, the police officers involved were Puerto Ricans, they nevertheless represented the colonial government that sought to terrorize and instill fear in the hearts of Puerto Ricans to forever stop such rallies. It did not, however, achieve this end. Less than two decades later, Puerto Rican activists launched an armed attacked on the US Congress in 1954. Activists such as Lolita Lebrón were arrested for wounding several members of Congress. She and others who were involved in the attack spent their remaining years in prison. Although not mentioned in most textbooks on US history, Lebrón’s legacy as a freedom fighter remains a hallmark of the spirit for independence that cannot be squelched by the US colonial government. Yet, such examples of Puerto Rican resistance and organizing— while clearly eliciting intense and aggressive responses by the USA—are ignored by US political pundits who have continued to mark the island

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as in need of saving to this day. More recently, narratives surrounding the financial crises that struck the island as a result of US imperialist engagements provide examples of how the coloniality manifests such a mystification. The island, bound to the USA by the Jones Act, cannot trade without authorization of the USA. US capitalists enjoyed the ability to build manufacturing sites and access to agricultural exports and imports. Tax exemptions routinely made the island desirable for these ventures while nevertheless restricting the island’s economic growth and ultimately shackling it to the whims of—though domestic, actually foreign—investors. The transformation of tax laws for the island beginning in the last portion of the twentieth century witnessed the flight of manufacturing jobs and the increase in need for aid to make up the difference between what the people needed to survive and what they were left to work with after US capitalist exploitation (Feliciano 2018). The result was a dramatic increase in debt. The mounting debt came to a head as the first decade of the new millennium came to an end and was exacerbated by the landfall of Hurricane Maria. Additional issues, such as an increase in sales tax and changes in employment rates, have substantially impacted debt on the island in relation to the USA (Caraballo-Cueto 2018). To begin, the transformation of the island’s debt into bonds from which capitalists profit was narrated as a financial debt restructuring. The creation of the PROMESA board secured the fate of public programs being decimated to the financial benefit of private shareholders. Minimum wages were slashed, university programs shut down, and public works programs gutted. What remained, US policies, following the havoc wrought by natural disasters, made profit on. And, of course, US government policy for the island was no better emblematized than the US President throwing rolls of paper towels at Puerto Ricans as a gesture of his goodwill. Arguments on official death tolls and what constitutes a “hurricane-related death” as a result of US policy for the island continued years later as the White House refused to acknowledge how apathy encouraged genocide (Varela 2018). Yet, the island and the Puerto Ricans who have remained on the island continue to fight despite the many battles being faced. In the face of dilapidated and outdated electrical grids, communities have come together to bring solar power to homes and even move toward power modes that are eco-friendly and hurricane durable. Water systems continue to be reworked and redesigned. Schools have shut, but students in

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the university systems have continued to rally and protest against austerity measures that would ensure the fallout of all remaining public programs. Artists and activists have rallied and taken to the streets. On the other side of this story, but very much part of it, is the movement of Puerto Ricans to the US mainland. This movement represents a carefully orchestrated project designed by the USA from the early days of the island’s takeover. Original Puerto Rican communities in the US mainland included New York City and southern regions, such as Miami, although Miami would later become a central point for Cuban communities. As the twenty-first century has arrived, Florida in general has become a diasporic point for Puerto Ricans, especially regions such as Orlando. Many of the first Puerto Ricans in the USA were often political exiles fleeing Spain’s imperial reach, artisans, and laborers. Following the US takeover of the island, US companies and businesses began a process of contract labor that drew Puerto Ricans to regions such as Hawaii where they were used as sugarcane cutters, and even locations such as Arizona where they were used for agricultural labor (Maldonado 1979). While Operation Bootstrap brought manufacturing jobs to the island, many men were called to the US mainland to participate in the mainland’s manufacturing services. Towns and cities, especially in the north and northeast, became regions for Puerto Rican settlement. Puerto Rican communities in places such as Holyoke and Springfield, Massachusetts, and Chicago, Illinois, began to grow even as New York City continued to develop its own Puerto Rican neighborhoods in areas such as East Harlem, the South Bronx, and Brooklyn; cities in New Jersey also participated in this growth. Although those contracted were typically men, women and families also moved and created strong nuclei of Puerto Rican communities. Yet, movement to the mainland US did not remove the status question that has framed Puerto Rican experience on the island. Although they are Latinos, Puerto Ricans are US citizens. This reality alters the dynamics of movement between the island and the mainland from other Latino communities. For instance, Puerto Ricans do not have to go through processes of “international” immigration or obtain visas to work in the USA because Puerto Rico is a “territory” of the US. Yet, even as US citizens, Puerto Ricans living in the mainland US have continued to face off with a colonial structure that does not perceive or treat them as humans. Examples abound of experiences of systemic racism in which schools, housing, and local governments have become institutions that created a nuanced form of colonial relations in the US mainland.

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But a narrative of social oppression in the US would be incomplete if we did not also look to the multiple forms of resistance that have emerged from within different communities in response to structural injustices. The formation of Puerto Rican neighborhoods during the twentieth century might be a good place to start. Although Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings: Subversion in the Flesh explores writings by Puerto Rican authors from different geographic locations in the US, New York City will—here—be used as an important case study given the volume of Puerto Ricans living in New York City as well as the establishment of long-lasting neighborhoods. East Harlem, known as El Barrio, has been a home to Puerto Ricans since the twentieth century. Issues of poverty, unemployment, safe living conditions, and more have been historical hallmarks that impacted inhabitants of this neighborhood. Arlene Dávila records in Barrio Dreams one individual’s statement that “‘[f]or us, El Barrio means la lucha, that everyday struggle of living, of our culture and roots” (2004, 70). Questions might be asked as to why a neighborhood would be framed in this manner and, even more importantly, why the community within its geographical boundaries would have such experiences. To begin, Puerto Ricans coming to the mainland during the twentieth century needed employment. As manufacturing jobs began to shift overseas or shut down altogether, the need for this labor pool also diminished. As jobs decreased, unemployment increased. Simultaneously, being US citizens did not mean that Puerto Ricans were suddenly bequeathed with the intergenerationally established benefits that those with access to power in the US had. Instead, leaving the island meant that Puerto Ricans became an enclave unto themselves and experienced the limitations that come with being non-Anglo-US in the USA. The constraints that are placed onto specific geographies are manmade, such as problems that arise with education. Historically, the US does not have an official language. Each state has determined its policies regarding language, with states such as Nebraska famously creating English-only policies in response to anti-German fervor in the early portion of the twentieth century (Sudbeck 2015). Scholars have long-documented anti-Spanish movements within education systems that specifically target Latino communities, with regions such as the Southwest and Northeast being prime examples of attempts to force people of Latin American origin to become monolingual. Physical and intellectual violence has been waged in order to ensure the death of

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Spanish in the tongues of children (Anzaldúa 2003). Debates regarding language aside, there also have been structural injustices with not only how children are taught but also by whom and what information is presented in the classes. In response, in regions such as New York City, activists have consistently pushed to create change within the education system, with examples such as work conducted by Diana Caballero and the Puerto Rican/Latino Education Roundtable. Striving for better representation of Latinos in the classroom and education boards, such entities are part of a long battle for educational equality for Puerto Ricans. In connection with education, libraries have also been key in this fight, with historical figures such as Pura Belpré not only documenting Puerto Rican folktales for children but also transforming libraries into spaces where children could enter in order to engage in cultural experiences that validated their own existence and heritage. Education functions as just one facet of how systemic inequality has faced resistance by community-led individuals and organizations. Other forms of community activism have emerged as an important component of Puerto Rican community narratives emerging during the twentieth century and especially in the second half of the century. A discussion regarding El Barrio, or Puerto Ricans in New York City more generally, during this era would be incomplete without a pause in relation to the Young Lords Party. First established in Chicago, Illinois, in connection with the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords emerged as a community-based organization in the New York City area in the late 1960s. Made up of young Puerto Rican activists, this group engaged in grassroots social justice change in connection with Marxist tenants (Morales). The Young Lords sought to mobilize local community members via education and social programs to transform the landscape of their neighborhoods. However, their work was not a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” model. The group created and published biweekly newsletters that provided information on Puerto Rican history, culture, and programs. They also orchestrated intricately choreographed and carefully targeted initiatives in the New York City area. The group was responsible for forcing tuberculosis screenings: Taking over a mobile screening van, Young Lord Party members forced the driver to bring the unit out into the public and screen the very individuals it was supposed to but had previously ignored. The group also occupied a church and transformed it for a brief period of time into a community center that provided food and child services. The “Garbage Offensive,” in which Party

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members—along with local residents—swept garbage from the street into an intersection that was later set on fire forced the sanitation board to resume actual pickup in the neighborhood (Gonzalez 1971). And, perhaps best known, the Young Lords organized a takeover of the Statue of Liberty during which time they draped the Puerto Rican flag from an upper portion in protest of the continued colonization of Puerto Rico. Although the group officially ended in the early 1970s, its members continued to conduct work in and around the city, and their legacy remains to this day as witnessed in the formulation of the patient’s bill of rights and other social justice initiatives (Young Lords Party 1971; Omotosho 2015). Other organizations, such as the Puerto Rican Leadership Alliance and the Puerto Rican Community Development Project, have been key in fighting for rights for everything from voting to securing rights for senior citizens. Figures such as Petra Allende have not only participated in these organizations but also created collaborative moments with other non-Puerto Rican communities in order to spark larger-scale social justice initiatives (Centro). An important dynamic of the social justice initiatives that currently exist in Puerto Rican communities, and that have existed for quite some time, is that of cultural production. For, even as Puerto Rican communities in the mainland US have experienced oppression and hostility, the creative impulse has not been squelched. Indeed, in the face of adversity, Puerto Ricans have continued to construct outlets within the arts that give voice to their experiences as well as visions of a culture that is more than the sum of oppression. Important to the conversation of Puerto Rican cultural expression on the mainland is how it is framed and how it is discussed. Juan Flores, in From Bomba to Hip Hop, has noted this very issue. In this text, while exploring work by Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, Flores points to the problematic discourse in which such expression is considered an “extension” of the island rather than having its own unique “contour or dynamics in its own right” (2000, 51). An important nuance emerges that requires reflection. While Puerto Ricans in the US mainland are, indeed, Puerto Rican by heritage if not by geographic birth, their experiences are different than those on the island for all of the reasons (and more) that I have noted thus far. Puerto Ricans in the mainland have had to navigate experiences of US coloniality that manifest in ways that are different than how they emerge on the island. And, even in the mainland, experiences vary widely depending on geographic

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location, historical rootedness, and sociopolitical dynamics within different states and cities. It is not to argue that Puerto Ricans on the mainland are not Puerto Rican but that the differences between Puerto Ricans on the mainland and island are key components of how the different geographic communities have formed and transformed over time. Such a reality is important to mark because of the ways that debates about representation have emerged regarding Puerto Rican artists on the mainland. Lisa Sánchez González, in Boricua Literature, has pointed to the need to explore Puerto Rican literature in its own right. Noting that Puerto Rican writings have received minimal attention in both the island and mainland, she notes that when Puerto Ricans write “no one seems to pay attention” (2001, 20, 140). Not quite Puerto Rican enough because they are not on the island, not quite “American” enough because they are Puerto Rican, Puerto Rican writers in the mainland US experienced an almost sensational disappearing act. However, as the twentieth century continued and the twenty-first century dawned, this reality began to change with the emergence of not only vital publishing outlets taking on Puerto Rican authors but also scholarly works that explore the literature as important in its own right. This is significant because it is written by internal colonial subjects, and the aesthetic and cultural transformations that occur within the literature are unique unto themselves. This book explores writings by Puerto Rican women in the mainland. It considers the nuances of the different communities that Puerto Rican women engage in and represent. It is also premised on the notion that literature written by Puerto Rican women can hold within it representations of sentient-flesh. These representations are important because they form a cultural resistance to Anglo-US domination by reclaiming the flesh and altering how it is treated and narrated. It transforms how we know the flesh and how we can get back to inhabiting it beyond the reaches of colonial narratives. It is therefore necessary to return to the flesh with which this Preface began. We are made of flesh. A seemingly simple and obvious statement, yet one that is important to make. This flesh—the bone, the meat, the chemicals, and materials—is where the “me” that is me and the “you” that is you reside. But this flesh is more than a container. The “me” that is me exists in every part of my flesh. When I am cut, the flesh that is me changes. Biochemical reactions become activated, and the very cells of my being respond. But I am also not only flesh. To state that my existence is only the raw material that makes my corporeal being would be

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to ignore the presence of sentience that makes up this being. The flesh knows. It knows how to heal. It knows how to not heal. It knows how to navigate experiences through quick reactions and how to not navigate experiences by refusing to act. The question emerges of what it means to “know” in the flesh. This question is important because if it is possible for Puerto Rican women to be more than the sum of how they are narrated by Anglo-US colonialism, then it is vital to distinguish the “Puerto Rican woman” from that sum. Without question, the flesh of Puerto Ricans has long been targeted by the USA. As the Comité de Mujeres Puertorriqueñas has stated, “the message of colonialism is clear: not only is our land the property of the United States, but so are our people” (2002, 129). The history shows—through policy and action—that the US government has actively narrated and treated Puerto Ricans both on and off the island as possessions to be dominated. This fact gives way to a very important reality: Although scholars such as Gayatri Spivak have noted that the more vulnerable someone is, the more it is necessary to negotiate, it is not possible to negotiate when a person’s very life is the property of another being (1990). And being colonized means knowing that you are indeed subject to the whims and powers of that controlling force. It does not, however, mean accepting that the colonizing force is the definitive limit of potential. This book argues that not only is Puerto Rican women’s writing important but it also holds within it representations of the flesh that challenge colonial narratives and creates cultural spaces of healing to reclaim the sentient-flesh. This claiming—or, more accurately, reclaiming—is necessary as part of a project born from knowledge of how power works. In Nuyorganics, Regina BernardCarreño explores the development of organic intellectualism among Puerto Ricans. In this work, she draws on Antonio Gramsci’s model of the organic intellectual as someone who theorizes about their subject position from within their experiences emerging from their cultural space rather than being taught about them. Bernard-Carreño depicts the development of Nuyorican4 organic intellectualism as emerging out of how Puerto Ricans in New York navigate power structures (2010). These navigations are born out of having to know how power works, how to survive it, and how to thrive beyond that power. Importantly, as Bernard-Carreño notes, Nuyorican “intellectual expertise and/or indigenous knowledge holds no legitimacy within what the dominant elite constitutes as worthy knowledge, something of merit” (13). However,

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and in spite of this reality, it does not mean that this knowledge or expertise does not exist. Instead, and as she and other scholars have proven, it means shifting how the resistance and fight against colonial tactics and power dynamics work. The knowledge that is denigrated and dismissed by and within power structures is born in the flesh. It is born out of the cells that learn how to navigate traumas of flesh and blood. It is born out of the pulsating sentience that Gloria Anzaldúa has documented with her depiction of facultad as an ability to sense beneath the surface of social phenomenon the power structures that lie beneath them (2003, 60). For people living within a colonial structure, the very targeting of the flesh for domination has resulted in the flesh knowing how it is targeted and what needs to occur in order to survive that targeting. Within the study of the literary arts, transforming how Puerto Rican writings—and for the purposes of this book, Puerto Rican women’s literary arts—are explored means accounting for both social structures that impact the community and the kinds of knowledge that its members hold within their sentient-flesh. I contend that the literary arts hold a space of creation. Within them, as Anzaldúa has written, new worlds and possibilities are forged (2015, 5). Within the potential that emerges, new visions of what can be are articulated and transformed into actual potential. And it is not that the writings being produced, alone, function as these individual spaces, which they do. It is also that the act of writing— the act of creating—is transformative for the very flesh that is engaged in the activity. And that is where it begins to build potential for change. Real change. Socially constituted and culturally formed change. This book emerges from the belief that the potential for change that literary arts contain is not one-off or on an individual level, although it can and does happen at the individual as well as collective level. The potential is in the act of expression. It is in the act of communicating and forging paths that know that beyond the boundary of a colonial structure, there is indeed life and the potential for growth. And that knowledge is formed and forged in the flesh. It is born there and resides there. And it is within this sentient-flesh that the empowerment for change will emerge. Oswego, USA

Roberta Hurtado

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Notes 1. This overview is not comprehensive or designed to be so but, instead, provides basic information. Additional historical information is provided in the introduction of this book and in subsequent chapters. However, please see the references for further information and lines of inquiry regarding the different aspects listed in the historical overviews for both the island of Puerto Rico and its populations. 2. Puerto Rico is an archipelago. However, the term “island” is routinely used instead of “islands.” For the purpose of this text, I will be utilizing the term “island” and will note when an island other than the main island is referenced. 3. This information, and each individual legislation, is marked in the Jones– Shafroth Act of 1917. 4. Nuyorican means New York + Puerto Rican. As a construct, it refers to people of Puerto Rican ancestry or birth who live or grew up in New York City.

References Acosta-Belén, Edna. “Lola Rodriguéz de Tió and the Puerto Rican Struggle for Freedom.” Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community, edited by Vicki Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez Korrol. Oxford UP, 2005, pp. 84–96. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 3rd edition. Aunt Lute, 2003. Barreto, Amilcar Antonio. “Statehood, the English Language, and the Politics of Education in Puerto Rico.” Polity, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, pp. 89–105. Beard, Belle Boone. “Puerto-Rico-The Forty-Ninth State?” Phylon, vol. 6, no. 2, 1945, pp. 105–17. Bernard-Carreño, Regina. Nuyorganics: Organic Intellectualism, the Search for Racial Identity, and Nuyorican Thought. Peter Lang, 2010. Blanco-Rivera, Joel. “The Forbidden Files: Creation and Use of Surveillance Files Against the Independence Movement in Puerto Rico.” American Archivist, vol. 68, no. 2, 2005, pp. 297–311. Briggs, Laura. “Discourses of ‘Forced Sterilization’ in Puerto Rico: The Problem with the Speaking Subaltern.” Differences, vol. 10, no. 2, 1998, pp. 30–66. Burnette, Christina Duffy, and Burke Marshall, eds. Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution. Duke UP, 2001. Cabán, Pedro. “Industrialization, the Colonial State, and Working Class Organizations in Puerto Rico.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 11, no. 3, 1984, pp. 149–72.

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Caban, Pedro. “Puerto Rico and PROMESA: Reaffirming Colonialism.” New Politics Journal, vol. 14, no. 3, 2017, pp. 120–25. Caraballo-Cueto, Jose. “The Exacerbating Effects of Hurricanes on Puerto Rico’s (Broken) Economy.” Hispanic Economic Outlook, Special Edition 2018, pp. 2–8. Churchill, Ward. “COINTELPRO—Puerto Rican Independence Movement.” The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Ward Against Domestic Dissent, South End, 2002, pp. 63–90. Colón Warren, Alice. “Puerto Rico: Feminism and Feminist Studies.” Gender and Society, vol. 17, no. 5, 2003, pp. 664–90. Comité de Mujeres Puertorriqueñas. “In the Belly of the Beast: Puertorriqueñas Challenging Colonialism.” Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray!: Feminist Visions for a Just World, edited by M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrecht, Sharon Day, and Mab Segrest. Edge Works, 2002, pp. 125–36. Dávila, Arlene. Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City. University of California Press, 2004. Denis, Nelson Antonio. War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony. Bold Type, 2015. Descartes, S. L. “Land Reform in Puerto Rico.” The Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics, vol. 19, no. 4, 1943, pp. 397–417. Duany, Jorge. “Making Indians Out of Blacks: The Revitalization of Taíno Identity in Contemporary Puerto Rico.” Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics, edited by Gabriel HaslipViera. Markus Weiner, 2001, pp. 55–82. Feliciano, Zadia. “Puerto Rico’s Manufacturing Decline, U.S. Possessions Corporations Taxes and Hurricane Maria.” Hispanic Economic Outlook, Special Edition 2018, pp. 11–20. Flores, Juan. From Bomba to Hip Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. Columbia UP, 2000. Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America. Monthly Review, 1997. Gallardo, José. “Language and Politics in Puerto Rico.” Hispania, vol. 20, no. 1, 1947, pp. 38–44. Godreau, Isar, Mariolga Reyes Cruz, Mariluz Franco Ortiz, and Sherry Cuadrado. “The Lessons of Slavery: Discourses of Slavery, Mestizaje, and Blanquemiento in an Elementary School in Puerto Rico.” American Ethnologist, vol. 35, no. 1, 2008, pp. 115–35. Gonzalez, Gloria. “Wherever a Puerto Rican Is, the Duty of a Puerto Rican is to Make the Revolution.” Palante, edited by Michael Abramson and The Young Lords Party. McGraw, 1971, pp. 8–13. Gonzalez-Cruz, Michael. “The U.S. Invasion of Puerto Rico: Occupation and Resistance to the Colonial State, 1898 to the Present.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 25, no. 5, 1998, pp. 7–26.

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Haslip-Viera, Gabriel. Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics. Markus Wiener, 2001. Heiss, Mary. “The Evolution of the Imperial Idea and U.S. National Identity.” Diplomatic History, vol. 26, no. 4, 2002, pp. 511–40. Hewitt, Nancy. “Luisa Capetillo: Feminist of the Working Class.” Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community, edited by Vicki Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez Korrol. Oxford UP, 2005, pp. 120–34. Lopez, Iris. Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom. Rutgers UP, 2008. Loveman, Mara, and Jeronimo Muñiz. “How Puerto Rico Became White: Boundary Dynamics and Intercensus Racial Reclassification.” American Sociological Review, vol. 72, no. 6, 2007, pp. 915–39. Maldonado, Edwin. “Contract Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States.” International Migration Review, vol. 13, no. 1, 1979, pp. 103–21. Manning, Caroline. “The Employment of Women in Puerto Rico.” Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, vol. 118, 1934, pp. 1–34. Mass, Bonnie. “Puerto Rico: A Case Study of Population Control.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 44, no. 4, 1977, pp. 68–81. Omotosho, Josh. “Young Lords Recall 1970 Hospital Takeover.” The Bronx Journal, September 2015. http://bronxjournal.com/?p=18769. ¡Palante, Siempre Palante! The Young Lords. Dir. Iris Morales. Videorecording. Columbia University Station, 1996. Pierce Flores, Lisa. The History of Puerto Rico. Greenwood, 2010. Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality and Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla, vol. 1, no. 3, 2000, pp 533–80. Reuter, Edward Byron. “Culture Contacts in Puerto Rico.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 52, no. 2, 1946, pp. 91–101. Romero-Cesareo, Ivette. “Whose Legacy? Voicing Women’s Rights from the 1870s to the 1930s.” Callaloo, vol. 17, no. 3, 1994, pp. 770–89. Safa, Helen. “Changing Forms of U.S. Hegemony in Puerto Rico: The Impact on the Family and Sexuality.” Urban Anthropology, vol. 32, no. 1, 2003, pp. 7–40. Sánchez González, Lisa. Boricua Literature: A Literary History of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. New York UP, 2001. Spivak, Gayatri. The Postcolonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Edited by Sarah Harasym. Routledge, 1990. Sudbeck, Kristine. “Educational Language Planning and Policy in Nebraska: An Historical Overview.” The Nebraska Educator, vol. 25, 2015, pp. 70–100.

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United States Library of Congress. “Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives.” Accessed January 2019. https://www.loc.gov/collections/puerto-rico-books-and-pamphlets/ articles-and-essays/nineteenth-century-puerto-rico/autonomy-and-the-war/. Valle-Ferrer, Norma. Luisa Capetillo, Pioneer Puerto Rican Feminist. Peter Lang, 2006. Varela, Julio Ricardo. “Trump Lied About Puerto Rico’s Death Toll After Hurricane Maria. But Island Officials Enabled That Behavior.” NBC News, September 13, 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-

lied-about-puerto-rico-s-death-toll-after-ncna909296”Trump.

Acknowledgements

The completion and publication of this book would not have happened without support and encouragement from both institutions and individuals. I would like to begin by thanking both my department and department chairs at SUNY Oswego, as well as the dean’s office for CLAS, for the support to conduct research and attend conferences. This support took on other forms, such as encouragement to participate in the Faculty Success program run by the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, which helped move the chapters in this book from ideas into realities. Also, thank you to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College for your assistance during my research and patience while I combed through documents. I would like to thank several individuals whose presence in my life has made this book possible. A heartfelt thank you to Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Josephine Méndez-Negrete, and Bernadette Andrea. Each of you has, individually, impressed upon me the importance of the work that we do as scholars, as well as the dignity and integrity with which this work must be done. Additionally, a big thank you to Norma Cantú whose guidance brought me to this series. I would also like to thank Alicia Cox—our weekly meetings kept me on track and you have taught me so much about self-care being just as important to the writing process as every other part! Included in this thanks are Catherine Santos and Betsy Mctiernan—your friendship and wisdom have helped me remember the importance of the shifts we make. Thank you to A.C.E. for your help with realizing the cover for this book and for your presence in my life. xxv

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I would also like to thank Sarah Hall and Jessica Macdonald, who took time from their schedules to meet with me and discuss my work within epigenetic studies and their understanding of the connections that I made to literature and Latina feminisms. And thanks to María Luisa Arroyo, Dahlma Llanos Figueroa, and Alba Ambert for taking the time to read the chapters about your work and provide me with feedback. Additionally, thank you to Rosemi Mederos and Heather Dubnick for your assistance in getting the final stages of the book completed. Finally, to the many friends who continue to be inspirations to me every day, and to those of you who have stood by me as this project came to fruition—gracias a todos y pa’lante!

Contents

Introduction 1 Enfleshment: Beneath the Body Lies Flesh 29 Flesh-Memories: Bearing Witness to Trauma and Survival 49 Sentient Narratives: Similes, Metaphors, and Dusmic Poetics Within the Senses 69 Envisioning Empowerment: Recodifying the Meaning of Historical Trauma 89 Strategic Decolonization: Methods for Resistance and Community Healing 111 Conclusion: Sentient-Flesh Subversions 131 Index 139

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Introduction

The search to understand how cells in the flesh know how to function has been a major pursuit of scientists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In 1980, Jeanne Achterberg and G. Frank Lawlis proclaimed in Bridges of the Bodymind that “[e]ach cell in the human body possesses memory” (1). This statement, following and followed by decades of research, intervened in memory studies by defining memory as more than an abstract concept of recorded detail in the brain, but instead as an active process that exists in humans down to the cellular level. The theory of “cellular memory” has continued to grow and gain scientific credibility with new research conducted by scientists to the present day. Excitingly, in 2014, Monica Skoge, Haicen Yue, Michael Erickstad, Albert Bae, Herbert Levine, Alex Groisman, William F. Loomis, and Wouter-Jan Rappel published findings that cells actually remember how to move in specific directions to attain an intended goal, such as healing a wound wrought by a traumatic incident. What emerged was an understanding that cells do not randomly know what to do; they remember how to do it. For Puerto Rican women, the fact that the flesh holds cellular memory of how to heal functions is more than a metaphor for surviving the trials and tribulations of daily life; it is a subversive act against the colonial oppression that has targeted their very existence for generations. It can be easily argued that Puerto Ricans have suffered physically and emotionally as a result of the Anglo-US takeover of the island in 1898. © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hurtado, Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05731-2_1

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Examples abound of mass deportation policies, purposeful creation of low-paid employment pools, and the reconstitution of the island’s economy. All of these things are true. And, for Puerto Rican women, Anglo-US medical science has been particularly devastating: mass sterilization programs aimed specifically at women and medical testing of birth control on Puerto Rican women punctuate the twentieth century. These targetings of the flesh have been carefully crafted methods not only for imposing on Puerto Rican women but also for directly intervening in their flesh. Cells remembering how to heal themselves is more than just an example of the flesh possessing the secrets to life: It evinces an integral component for surviving and challenging the all-encompassing domination of coloniality in the flesh. This book explores the ways and sources from which Latinas—and specifically Puerto Rican women—critique and subvert oppressive social structures. Some might question the need for such acts, especially given arguments that we currently exist in a post-race society (Wise 2013). However, and as scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw have shown, such beliefs are dangerous for their obfuscation of how racism—among other forms of oppression—works in both obvious and insidious ways (2014). Indeed, and as US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has argued in defense of race-sensitive admission procedures for universities, difference makes a difference (2014). For Puerto Rican women, the difference that makes a difference is that they are colonial subjects of a government that has explicitly, and without hesitation, marked the Puerto Rican woman as a site for domination and exploitation. The difference that makes a difference for these women is based not on the fact that difference exists but in how that difference manifests in their colonial relationship with the US. Puerto Rican women experience Anglo-US coloniality in intimate ways. These intimacies have not been mutual, nor could they be argued as having been consensual given that they manifest as part of a colonial relationship. In order to better understand how Puerto Rican women’s experiences form knowledge of Anglo-US coloniality, this book begins at the location where this colonial violence focuses and attempts to manifest itself: the flesh of Latinas and, for the purposes of this book, Puerto Rican women’s flesh. For it has been and continues to be the flesh of Latinas that is targeted for inquiry and intervention, and the flesh of Latinas that colonial policies seeks to divest of humanity and obfuscate with narratives fashioned within the imaginations of those with hegemonic

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authority. And it is within their flesh that Puerto Rican women know coloniality in all of its intricacies, its tactics, and its manifestations. In this book, I explore how Puerto Rican women’s insights and social justice acumen are wrought within what I describe as sentient-flesh. Sentientflesh is flesh that holds within it consciousness of being. However, to have this acumen is not enough. Questions emerge as to what Puerto Rican women will do with the intimate knowledge they have of coloniality and how this knowledge enables and can be employed to subvert structures of oppression and colonial violence. In answer to these questions, I examine the literary arts produced by Puerto Rican women that identify, delineate, and subvert colonial violence while simultaneously constructing healing projects of empowerment that are framed by sentient-flesh. It is important to note, here, that this book does not utilize a framework built with the “body” and understandings of embodiment as it and they have emerged out of Western European genealogies. To be sure, there currently exist ontological debates regarding the embodied realities of those enduring oppression. These debates are furthered by scientific inquiries into areas such as affect and affect theory, which identify how emotions and physiological responses indicate how a person comes to respond to certain stimuli via what are labeled as emotions. Such studies have, as Ruth Leys identifies, distinguished between physiological responses and the mind (2011). Importantly, such a distinction traffics in a mind/body dichotomy and renders its implicit binary all the more entrenched in embodiment studies as Ruth Leys argues regarding work conducted by Eve Sedgwick (2011). To utilize this binary as the foundation for my current study would be to engage in a false premise. For the purposes of this book, I do not seek to understand how those caught within violent structures personify the narratives placed onto them by colonial forces via a mind/body split. However, I do note that it is essential to understand, for instance, that scientific researchers find Puerto Rican women to be viable and exploitable targets for their investigation via such a binary. But the importance of understanding this information is not to identify how Puerto Rican women on the mainland suffer from imposed power structures, alone, but instead to identify the source of potential for constituting Puerto Rican women’s experiences as more than the sum of logics that make them exploitable. It is necessary to distinguish between the narratives circulating around Puerto Rican women, how Puerto Rican women experience these narratives, and how Puerto

4  R. HURTADO

Rican women create ways to subvert these narratives via sentient-flesh. In what follows, I provide a brief overview of Puerto Rico’s history and current island/mainland debates that must be accounted for when discussing Puerto Rican women’s experiences in the mainland US.1 I continue with a description of what the literary arts enable in the expression of sentient-flesh experiences, and then move on to identify the space that the literary arts provide to differentiate sentient-flesh from the “body” as the “body” emerges within colonial structures.

Puerto Rico’s History and the Island/Mainland Divide Puerto Rico’s current instantiation under Anglo-US domination requires clarification not only in terms of an overview of historical events but also to situate this current study of Puerto Rican women’s writings in its historical moment. Aníbal Quijano has described that, since the beginning of Western European colonization in the Americas, a coloniality of power has enabled a logic of domination manifesting in outright control that has endured the passing of centuries (2007; 2000). This coloniality of power has rendered narratives of those coming under Western European colonial domination as inferior and subject to the imaginations and actions of those with power. This coloniality of power functions to create what Walter Mignolo describes as a “colonial matrix,” the structural system that upholds how colonized lands and people in the Americas were perceived, narrated, and treated by their Western European counterparts (2011). Thus, it is essential to interpret Puerto Rico’s history, and the history of its people, via an understanding of the mechanisms of coloniality given its colonization, first by Spain and then by the USA. For Puerto Rican women, this understanding is also vital given the configurations of gender that determine the constraints that are placed upon them. Indeed, and as María Lugones has argued, gender itself became a vital tool for both limiting the potential of women of color in the Americas as well as denying them access to full category inclusion within a gender binary due to the intersections of race, biological sex, and geographic location (2010). The island, itself, is located in the Caribbean. The Amerindian communities that inhabited the island at the time of the Spanish conquest were part of the Arawak nation. The island’s specific community has been recorded in history as “Taíno.” In 1493, Spanish conquistadors touched briefly onto the island and named it Puerto Rico de San Juan de

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Bautista and eventually “Puerto Rico.” The sixteenth century witnessed a marked movement to colonize the island, with both the importation of enslaved Africans as well as the construction of trade sites and ecclesiastical seminaries. The decimation of the island’s Amerindian population is well documented by contemporaries such as Bartolomé de las Casas, whose Tears of the Indians identifies the eradication of the Taíno population. However, debates have emerged more recently regarding whether the Taíno population was completely destroyed or if traces remain (Haslip-Viera 2014). These debates are significant when considering the historical use of an “indigenous” identity by the Spanish government to negate and denigrate African ancestry on the island (Duany 2001; Haslip-Viera 2013). This book does not seek to intervene in these debates, although it does acknowledge that this history is significant for understanding contemporary experiences of Puerto Ricans on and off the island. It also acknowledges that these historical realities have contributed to what is described as the tres raíces—three roots—of the island’s culture: Spanish, African, and Amerindian. And these three roots have been deeply intertwined with the economic development of the island and its social stratifications. As an example, from 1493 onward, and as part of Spanish colonial policy, the island developed into a plantation colony following early attempts at an encomienda system. It has also been subject to social projects such as that of blanqueamiento or the “whitening” of the population by bringing more Europeans from places such as Corsica to the island during the nineteenth century (Godreau et al. 2008). Similar to other Spanish colonies in the Americas, Puerto Rico was on the eve of independence during the nineteenth century. However, the US war with Spain to attain its remaining colonies in the late 1890s abrogated Puerto Rico’s development into an independent nation. In reality, these remaining Spanish colonies were either already in a state of independence or in the process of decolonization. For instance, Puerto Rico had an interim government in 1898, from which it was meant to develop an autonomous government in subsequent years (Burnette and Burke 2001). The Treaty of 1898, signed between Spain and the USA, ceded the island—as well as Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines— to the US as bounty of war. Following this takeover, US attempts to rename the island and enforce English as the national language failed. However, US Supreme Court cases and various federal acts did succeed in rendering the island a non/colony of the US. Puerto Ricans became

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US citizens as a result of the Jones Act of 1917, and yet are unable to vote in federal elections unless living in the mainland US. Puerto Rico has no federal voting representation within Congress but has its own elected government officials who can be replaced should the US federal level government see fit. Not geographically connected to the mainland US, Puerto Rico exists in the liminal space of an “unincorporated territory” and “commonwealth.” The US government has also enacted policies such as that of “Zero Population Growth,” which was instituted to reduce the island’s population via a mass sterilization program (Mass 1977). The island’s inhabitants, specifically women, have also been used for medical testing. For example, women were subjected to experimentation with estrogen levels in birth control trials (Lopez 2008). These historical experiences are among just a few instances that exemplify how the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, and geographical location have constituted a relationship in which Anglo-US coloniality has demarcated the Puerto Rican woman as available for exploitation via what Lugones articulates as a coloniality of gender (2010). As US citizens, Puerto Ricans are able to travel between the island and the USA without the restrictions placed on other Latin American communities. Puerto Ricans have experienced this “right” in a variety of ways, which includes mass migration movements to the US mainland. Scholars such as José Torres-Padilla and Carmen Haydée Rivera have identified these movements as occurring across three major waves ranging the early, mid-, and later twentieth century (2008). Reasons for these migration movements vary, ranging from political exile to the search for employment. Not all of these migration movements have been without coercion, as in the case of evacuating the island’s population to the mainland to increase labor pools in the US via Operation Bootstrap (Cabán 1984). Other examples include opening the island’s lands to US corporations and military needs, such as transforming Vieques into a naval testing ground and subsequently repurposing it as a resort destination for tourists with no restitutions made to its original inhabitants (García Muñiz 1993). For Puerto Ricans who have moved to the mainland USA, cultural identity and connection to Puerto Rico have changed over time. Scholars such as Edna Acosta-Belén and Carlos Santiago (1986; 2006), Jorge Duany (2002), and Juan Flores (1993) have demonstrated that these communities have continued to develop their sense of Puerto Rican identity along a trajectory that—while maintaining ties to

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the island—has honored the uniqueness of their situation as navigating an existence inside the belly of the beast and away from the island. The island/mainland divide that has emerged has been identified and studied during the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. For the purposes of this text, I utilize the term “mainland” to identify Puerto Rican women who have either grown up off the island and in the mainland US and/or moved from the island to areas such as New York and Massachusetts and are thus distinguishable in their experiences from women on the island even as both groups share a history and culture. Usage of the term “mainland” is not intended to elide differences within the Puerto Rican population in the mainland: socioeconomics, gender, and race, among other differences, distinguish Puerto Ricans on the mainland to this day. Nor is use of “mainland” intended to further the mainland/island divide. Contemporary scholars such as Marisel Moreno have attempted to bridge this divide via studies in cultural icons, such as la gran familia, as both an island and mainland experience (2012). Other scholars, such as Lisa Sánchez González, have documented the existence of Puerto Rican cultures on the mainland, giving critical representation to a community and its creative expressions that are often left unaccounted for in Anglo-US and island accounts (2001). Both fields have provided nuanced understandings of the relationships between the island and mainland. Such work is vital for understanding the continued development of Puerto Rican culture as a non-monolithic experience. Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings: Subversion in the Flesh2 focuses on literary arts written in the mainland US by Puerto Rican women. Subversion’s focus, however, does not argue that these writings are better or worse than that of island counterparts and contemporaries. Rather, Subversion examines how writers such as Judith Ortiz Cofer, María Luisa Arroyo, Alba Ambert, Dhalma Llanos Figueroa, and Aracelis Girmay conceptualize experiences of Anglo-US coloniality from within the belly of the beast, and how these same women constitute their own nuanced narratives via the literary arts as a decolonial act of empowerment. These writers comprise varying racial categorizations, educational trainings, island relationships, and professional associations.3 However, despite their myriad of differences, they share a colonial history. This study begins with the awareness that knowledge of Anglo-US coloniality is important for Puerto Rican women living in the mainland US even as it is of grave importance for Puerto Rican women on the island.

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Subversion attends to the historical experiences of women on the island as it is interlinked with Puerto Rican women in the mainland in terms of culture and heritage. Yet, it continues with an awareness of how experiences of coloniality that manifest within the two communities differ in significant ways while also attempting to consider the variation of experience and expression among mainland Puerto Rican women. Awareness of these differences is important: as those living within the belly of beast know, elisions of cultural nuances specific to the island and its history and the imposition of hegemonic narratives regarding people, places, and power are constructed within, and support, the Anglo-US colonial social structure. Living away from the island, Puerto Rican women become even more vulnerable to such narratives due to a process of divide and conquer; a process enhanced by the nuances in racism that flourish within this distance (Alexander 2002; Lugones 2003; Pérez 1999). However, such awareness is not meant to argue that the histories and futures of Puerto Ricans both on and off the island do not remain interlinked. It is, instead, to acknowledge that these linkages are part of complex cultures that have different experiences due to geographic locations among other reasons.

The Literary Arts and Sentient-Flesh Subversion examines Puerto Rican women’s literary arts for representations of sentient-flesh. This study is built on the premise that there is a conceptual distinction between the “body,” which functions within Western European genealogies as an “object,” and the flesh—the meat, the tissue, and the marrow—which is the target of colonial gazes because it holds within it key elements for subversion of domination. Chicana third space feminist scholars Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga have identified the need for a “theory in the flesh” that reads how hegemonic structures of power influence and at times determine women of color’s daily experiences—the very real physical realities of their lives (2015). Theory in the flesh requires an analysis of experiences from the position of women of color. However, rather than utilizing Western European models of inquiry, this analysis must begin and center at the site in which they experience structures of power: the flesh. This shift in perspective disrupts the narratives circulating around women of color and, for my purposes, Latinas and specifically Puerto Rican women.

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And this shift in perspective redirects us to the flesh. It is important, when considering that imperial violence has known its targets so intimately, to begin at the site where knowledge of this intimacy occurs for Latinas: the flesh. Cognitive studies and research in neuroscience have demonstrated that physical experiences of reality are mapped in the brain as well as in other parts of the actual flesh and its sensory perceptions (Dolins and Mitchell 2010). These experiences then build over time via repetition and reinforcement, producing a kind of scaffolding to assist in understanding new and unique circumstances (Sheets-Johnston 2010). These initiating experiences transform as metaphors within the brain and flesh to make meaning of new information that is being experienced by external stimuli (Doyle and Sims 2002). Even more importantly, studies in cellular memory have demonstrated that the flesh becomes a significant site in the intake of this information and the recording of this information for future usage (Silva et al. 2009; Rothschild 2000). This mapping of knowledge is significant because the ways in which flesh experiences are narrated can indicate an understanding of cellular memory, the ways that power targets the flesh, and of how flesh becomes a contested site in which Puerto Rican women—and potentially other women of color—maintain their sentience. This turn to cognitive and cellular research is not to go back to the very sources of Anglo-US imperial violence. Rather, this knowledge provides insights into one of the “worlds”—to borrow language from Lugones (2003)—currently examining Puerto Rican women’s “bodies,” as well as an understanding of what this knowledge illuminates in terms of how Puerto Rican women inhabit their sentient-flesh. Such an understanding is essential to avoid pathologizing Puerto Rican women’s experiences and identities. It also points to the necessity of understanding “sentience.” Understanding sentience is indeed significant when examining and depicting flesh experiences. Sentience, in root, comes from the ability to feel via the senses. It does not, in this originating sense, mean perception. However, knowledge born within the flesh emerges as a reality of having sensory perception that records information. This knowledge can lead to conocimiento via facultad—a coming to consciousness regarding hegemonic power that begins by being able to see beneath the surface of a given social structure, respectively (Anzaldúa 2003). Conocimiento is born out of an understanding of how these daily experiences are manifestations of power structures that seek to dehumanize people who are

10  R. HURTADO

being oppressed, to distance them from their flesh such that they perceive themselves only as rightful objects of study (Anzaldúa 2003). Poet Judith Ortiz Cofer recalls this reality when detailing her mother’s experience of reproductive sterilization as part of a government policy in the poem “The Gift of a Knife.” Colonial policies that target the flesh illustrate methods undertaken to enforce the internalization of coloniality as a means of subverting and domination the flesh. The process of Puerto Rican women being distanced from their flesh via coloniality has been several hundreds of years in the making and, for Puerto Ricans experiencing Anglo-US coloniality following that of Spain, has been transformed via multiple colonial practices. However, and important for this book, internalized colonialism is not only about believing in the ideas of the colonial force. Recent developments in epigenetic studies, for example, have identified the ways in which experiences of trauma by communities trapped within colonial violence are genetically impacted. I do not read this “imprinting on the epigenetics” as a self-fulfilling prophecy, as would be the case within a narrative created by a coloniality of power and supporting a colonial matrix. For example, what these studies have found, among other relevant data, is that raised cortisol levels—which occur during times of trauma as part of a flight/fight response—can be intergenerationally inherited and/or linked (Matthews and Phillips 2010). This finding would suggest that those whose communities have faced extreme trauma—such as witnessed in colonial practices and ongoing colonial violence—become, intergenerationally, more adept at handling and surviving these same traumas via these raised levels of cortisol (Walters et al. 2011). Within a colonial matrix, however, this information could be read as indicating a predisposition toward being victims, playing victims, having an identity that is predisposed to victimhood without a drive to not be a victim. Simultaneously, there would be an obfuscation or outright displacement of responsibility for the social structures creating these social injustices and manifesting in contemporary traumas as is witnessed in Ortiz Cofer’s poem. Understanding that traumas of the past are physically present within the flesh of current generations is significant: It demonstrates not only the impact of colonial trauma but also the manner in which sentient-flesh has navigated this violence to survive. Further, it illustrates that the flesh finds ways to both record information as well as navigate survival to traumas, as María Luisa Arroyo’s “still bedwetting at nine” illustrates in relation to genderized sexual violence in the home. Arroyo’s development of narrative persona

INTRODUCTION 

11

via the testimonio genre in this poem shows, as well as contemporary research, quite literally, the flesh changes due to these traumas, and on some level, this information becomes internalized via these experiences. While the impacts of these traumas are notably negative, understanding that internalized colonialism is not merely conceptual but also physical can underscore an awareness of how the coloniality of power impacts those experiencing it across generations. Again, it would be easy enough to read this reality of internalized colonialism via the framework of a coloniality of power and argue that individuals experiencing coloniality are pathological or—simply—defective. However, doing so would miss something key to the writings that I examine in this study: resilience. And this resilience is intertwined with the sentience that exists within the flesh. A question emerges regarding how to express this resilience and sentience outside of a framework provided by Anglo-US hegemony and colonial structures. Alba Ambert’s novel, A Perfect Silence, questions philosophical understandings of resilience and formulates an image of resilience via metaphor as both culturally constituted and born within the flesh. Here, I return to theory in the flesh, as described by Anzaldúa and Moraga, and to the manner in which it builds critique via analysis that is not inherently limited to a coloniality of power and the knowledge born from it. Latinas must formulate strategic expression of this critique. Indeed, the how of describing their conclusions about hegemonic machinations is deeply combined with the why of the telling. Lillian Comas-Díaz’s work on “Spirita” provides an entry point to understanding the vitality of sentient-flesh for framing subversive expression. This concept defines a community-based decolonial praxis of healing that considers soul-work as integral to surviving and thriving after trauma. Comas-Díaz’s contends that “Spirita” is a primary component of how women of color—and specifically Puerto Rican women—find the ability to survive extreme violence and to formulate a spiritual practice for healing and empowerment founded in Anzaldúa’s concept of facultad. I further that claim by noting that it emerges from, and is an aspect of, sentient-flesh. The significance of spirituality as both an internal and external method of healing comes to the forefront. Anzaldúa has described, elsewhere, the act of creating art as both political and spiritual given the reality that—for a woman of color—race and gender are never not components of who she is as a woman of color and how she experiences Anglo-US social structures (1990). In understanding the constant presence of

12  R. HURTADO

colonial narratives and actions of such categories, Anzaldúa clarifies the need for understanding the difference that difference makes, to recall Sotomayor, for women of color. Anzaldúa goes on to argue that survival depends on being creative because “[c]reative acts are forms of political activism employing definite aesthetic strategies for resisting dominant cultural norms and are not merely aesthetic exercises. We build culture as we inscribe in these various forms” (xxvi). A focus on Latina writings that explores only aesthetics would potentially miss the texture of the specific aesthetics that are driven by cultural relevancy as well as by social consciousness; it would miss that these writings are theorizing even as they are artistic. To understand these elements as connected is to not only have awareness of the fact that they are not inherently separate but also accept that they are actually intensely intertwined. As writers such as Miguel Algarín, Miguel Piñero, and Martín Espada have described, the combination of craft and politic participate in the creation of a specifically attuned and communicated social justice consciousness (1975; 1999). Subversion explores the ways that Puerto Rican women write subversion under colonial imposition, and—rather than a “writing back to empire”—create in order to move beyond its boundaries. It identifies how Puerto Rican women—via the literary arts—construct projects of empowerment and healing that move beyond the scope of colonial domination. This project is based in an understanding of flesh as sentient. Anzaldúa has, elsewhere, described the importance of writing as a revolutionary act that is both one born out of necessity and one fraught with pain (2003). The reality of writing words as not merely a task for the imagination but as one intricately intertwined with an experience indicates the stakes that are set in writing. Dhalma Llanos Figueroa’s novel, Daughters of the Stone, considers how this resilience manifests when formulated from a decolonial consciousness that refutes colonial imposition on both the flesh and the imagination. This novel follows the matrilineal line of a family that experienced Spanish enslavement of West Africans and Anglo-US imperial imposition. It considers both the necessity for resistance to formulation of identity within coloniality and the ways that its structures insidiously impact these same formations. It concludes with the final member of this family utilizing artistic expressions to give voice to that resilience. The question of how to refute these impositions is key. Audre Lorde has identified the ways in which the literary arts provide a path to moving beyond the boundaries of oppression: It is within the act

INTRODUCTION 

13

of creating these art forms that the “vision” of possibility can manifest (1984). Subversion engages the question of, yet does not seek to create an all-encompassing answer to, how Puerto Rican women transform the literary arts into an arena that creates projects of empowerment and healing. The decision to describe writings by Puerto Rican women as “literary arts” is intentional. Excellent work by Carmen Rivera has demonstrated the different literary forms and genres that Puerto Rican women can and do write in (2002). However, the debate surrounding what qualifies as “literature”—while important—is a project beyond Subversion’s scope. In describing Latinas’ writings as “literary art” or being within the “literary arts,” I focus on the process of creation and recreation that artists engage in, such as witnessed in Aracelis Girmay’s poetry, as well as the kinds of questions they do not attempt to answer but instead attempt to elucidate. These works constitute a third space feminist critical expression in that, in the act of creating their writings, these Latinas are also creating a new method of communication that theorizes their experiences via creative acts (Hurtado 2019). The outcome of these acts is not only a manifestation of their interpretation of events but also a subversion born out of their knowledge. It is, in many ways, what Latinas create when given no recourse within the narrative possibilities provided by hegemonic structures. And there are, indeed, multiple worlds occurring simultaneously that Puerto Rican women in the US traverse. The gendered, racialized, geographically contingent, and socioeconomically defined spaces that are a reality of living within an Anglo-US geography manifest in different ways. Lugones has described the reality of “world-travelers,” and the awareness of how a person’s experiences are contingent upon the way subject positions and their meanings shift depending on the community or space that is being entered into (2003). This reality creates a type of knowledge that provides a foundation for the way people engage the new space they are entering and also the relations between people and objects in these spaces. This knowledge identifies the intricate ways that Anzaldúa’s models of conocimiento and facultad—coming to consciousness about oppressive social structures and an ability to read beneath the surface of social phenomenon, respectively—are integral components of how Puerto Rican women navigate and survive the Anglo-US structures impinging upon their lives and constraining their choices (2003).

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To avoid lapsing into a colonial narrative of these experiences, I engage what Iris Lopez describes as an “integral approach” to analyzing trauma and trauma knowledge; examining Puerto Rican women’s experiences requires an understanding of the constraints placed upon them within structures of power while maintaining awareness of Puerto Rican women as having the ability to think and feel and navigate these constraints (2010–2011). This understanding moves Puerto Rican women from “victims” and toward a more nuanced engagement with the complexities of two possible worlds happening at the same time: that of the Anglo-US colonial structure and that of the Puerto Rican women whose resilience enables them to contend with and subvert coloniality.4 To do so is to engage Mariana Ortega’s model of “Latina feminist phenomenology” to identify the situatedness of experiences within the context of social machinations and the “worlds” that create them (2016). What my methodology elucidates is the strategies that Latinas construct as part of a decolonial consciousness and praxis. The decolonial, as it has emerged out of Latin America and among Latinas/os/xs in the US, is a space of consciousness and social justice that is not born within or actually possible in a Western European/Anglo-US coloniality of power. The decolonial is not limited to a reactionary relationship with the coloniality at hand. Instead, it is about the resilience and imaginations of those who are able to see coloniality impinging upon them as an external reality (Pérez 1999). It knows that the narratives used to oppress and subjugate the people of the Americas—both in the past and currently via neo-colonial tactics as well as the residual effects of coloniality that maintain in contemporary coloniality—were fabrications and that while they have manifested in very real experiences, they are not the beginning and end of possibility. Thus, decolonialism is, in many ways, the praxis of a Latina who moves away from the binaries wrought within the coloniality of power. It is, rather, outside of the epistemological frameworks at work in a colonial matrix, as Mignolo has described the structuring of a coloniality of power (2011). However, to argue that—simply by writing—all Puerto Rican women are attending to their sentient-flesh while depicting their trauma knowledge via world traveling is an overstatement. And, indeed, not all Puerto Rican women write to subvert, to pressure processes of dehumanization, or to engage a decolonial praxis. Thus, I do not intend to argue that all Puerto Rican women are engaged in these tasks. However, to tell the narratives of

INTRODUCTION 

15

their lives using the literary arts, on some level Puerto Rican women can be engaged in identifying how they have survived Anglo-US coloniality. Finally, sentient-flesh is not born out of a binary. Instead, it is consciousness and flesh existing together as a whole being. Importantly, even as the sentient-flesh and “body” are distinct from one another, they do not exist in a binary as the “mind” and “body” exist in a binary within Western European discourses. A conceptual shift is necessary because binaries create gaps that constitute silences. And these silences are reinforced within hegemonic narratives regarding oppression and colonial violence (Levins Morales 1998). Rarely do we find the voices of the oppressed unfiltered by master narratives constituted within hegemonic structures. Narratives about the oppressed within popular culture, when they do exist, are filtered via the logics of the oppressive force. I contend that the renarration of historical traumas by Puerto Rican women via the literary arts provide testament to the resilience of this community both on and off the island—as the diasporic communities share these histories while having different future experiences. I also contend that what these narratives can depict is alternative ways of knowing this trauma and the potential of sentient-flesh to create projects of healing and empowerment that are attuned to the specificities of particular communities. This healing and empowerment come from the wisdom born out of sentient-flesh: The site of consciousness, the flesh, the location where sentience—awareness and emotion combined together to make the individual—surges and comes to life. In what follows, I identify the urgency of shifting from narratives of the “body” and how the literary arts create a space to distinguish the “body.”

Literary Arts and the “Body” The literary arts provide a space where writers can narrate their experiences of the “body” as these can be distinguished from those of the sentient-flesh. Studies currently exist regarding spatial relativism, embodiment, and metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). However, my current study differs from this previous work in that I argue that the literary arts can expose the “body” as a manifestation of Western European discourses and conceptual genealogies; these discourses and genealogies can be countered by narratives of sentient-flesh within the literary arts as part of a decolonial praxis for healing and empowerment. I argue that

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select Puerto Rican women’s literary arts intervene in the dehumanization wrought by coloniality by identifying where these scientific imaginations express their right to control Puerto Rican women—the “body.” The term “body” is placed in quotation marks to identify that it should not be taken as a given that this term has a real concrete existence. They also signal that the “body’s” meaning must be unpacked and not taken as a naturally occurring concept. For the purposes of understanding how the “body” functions as an imposition onto Puerto Rican women, I begin with the ideological meanings of it as they exist within Anglo-US hegemonic culture and genealogically traces back to Western Europe. The “body” has been constructed by a conceptual genealogy within Western European philosophies, and this term has proven dehumanizing for Puerto Rican women—an experience shared by other women of color in the US. The “body,” born out of a binary, has circulated as part of a narrative controlled by those with power. This binary functions as part of a foundation that enables violence against communities of color. Puerto Rican women’s experiences of Anglo-US coloniality, both on and off the island, provide key insights into the structures of power against which they clash. The control and narration of Western European domination over “knowledge” and the “bodies” caught within its net have not only bolstered ideologies purporting an innate superiority of Western Europeans, but also functioned to service the financial advancements that would eventually lead to Western European capital and preeminence in a global economy (Quijano 2000). Therefore, views of the “body” emerging out of Western European ideologies and activities must be identified as having underpinning tenets born within a coloniality of power. And the “body” has a long history in Western European philosophies. Scholars, especially those in the latter half of the twentieth century, have identified the manner in which the “body” becomes an object of power within Western Europe, and specifically an object to be disciplined (Foucault 2007; Grosz 1992; Laqueur 1991; Schiebinger 2000; Spillers 1987). The purpose of this disciplining is to distance the “body” from whatever it creates (militarily, economically, and so on) and distance what is created by the “body.” As such, there is automatism in which the disciplined “body” becomes merely a receptacle of information. This information is then translated into a series of behaviors. These behaviors are controlled vis-à-vis an exacting force driven by the perspective of controlling, and having a right to this

INTRODUCTION 

17

proprietary stance, with the object under speculation. When “bodies” are put through thorough coercive tactics, an eventual “docility” emerges that renders moot the notion of resistance to the power structure at hand. The gender-racialization of these same “bodies” via a coloniality of power creates a variety of ways that this docility can manifest and be reinforced (Lugones 2010). With this understanding of the “body,” Western Europeans in the Americas colonized with, and were in the midst of constructing, views of the colonized “body” as not only an object for control but also an object to be controlled based on the coloniality of power’s reasoning that creates those being encountered as inferior. Without its ability to create dualisms between the “body” and “spirit,” Western European coloniality of power would not have been possible in the Americas. Thus, colonized “bodies”—and for my purposes, Latinas’ and specifically Puerto Rican women’s “bodies”—are constructed within social structures that have predetermined narratives regarding use, worth, and value of these same “bodies.” A clearer picture of how these meanings and values were mapped, the term “hot climates” and “torrid zones” became applied to areas that were undergoing Western European colonization (Lugones 2010; Nussbaum 1995). This connection lasted beyond initial encounters between Western European colonists, merchants, and so on, and those in the areas that would be colonized. The importance of sexuality uniquely positioned those who were conceived as objects of desire so that the moment of their objectification also included how their sexuality was narrated. And these narratives did not remain solely in the realm of travel narratives and reports regarding those in the Americas and other colonized lands. Indeed, these narratives entered into medical science inquiries with a flourish, with Enlightenment authors such as Georges Cuvier becoming an “authority” of the connection between the “body” and the “monstrosity” of women of color’s sexuality (Sharpley-Whiting 1999). While Cuvier’s work focused upon the “South African” female “body,” this work carries resonance for Latinas as women of color ruled by a coloniality of power. Simultaneously, the “body”—even skeletons—emerged within medical science’s spheres to legitimate a continued understanding of the female “body” in general as inherently inferior to that of white males (Schiebinger 2000). The combination of gender and colonial status—as well as emerging categories of “race”—becomes a space in which specific “bodies” become exceptionally vulnerable to speculation and control (Lacquer 1991).

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The meanings of “body” that are imposed onto Latinas in the US created and continue to create the methodical production of Latinas’ possibilities within an Anglo-US society. As witnessed in Ortiz Cofer’s poem, the constitution of the docile Puerto Rican woman manifests as a symbol of Anglo-US coloniality that obfuscates its targeting of the flesh by transforming it into a body–object to be controlled. Questions might emerge as to whether this disciplining of the “body” might have an intended result of disabling it access to achieving “human” status in the coloniality because it has been uniformly pressed into submission. Scholars such as Paula Moya have argued that the default structure of the universal human as a white, middle-class male is as prevalent today as it was in eras such as the Enlightenment (2000). This depiction of “human” is an extension of how the coloniality of power narrates modernity. What this fact means for Latinas is that they contend with a logic that conceptualizes them as non-human until they enter into the white, middle-class, male identity by forsaking the realities of being non-Anglo, female, and so on. This would be to suggest that identity is a matter of choice, and even more so, that such a choice is available to Latinas within a structure that perceives them as exploitable objects under surveillance. As such, the attainment of “humanity” within this system is a moot point; it is unavailable for Latinas, even at its most basic level, within an Anglo-US colonial structure. Interlinked with this inability to attain “humanity” utilizing Anglo-US discourses and logics is the denial of autonomy to the colonized within a colonial structure. Yet, underlying this issue of the “body” and what enables access to “humanity” is the fact that a coloniality of power has already produced a conceptual genealogy of why Latinas can be colonized and controlled. The “body” is no more than an object; it is a container with some basic physiological capabilities that exist outside of or—at least—beyond reason as it is understood within Western European philosophies. As Arroyo points to in her poetry, if it can effect affect, for instance, the “body” is perceived as doing so because it is a basic physiological function rather than reflective of consciousness (Leys 2011). For the purposes of coloniality, the “body” functions as an object of control. And this control is inscribed onto the “body” with narratives fashioned by colonial forces. It is in this way that domination and exploitation become acceptable; the targeting of specific individuals becomes justifiable, and the obfuscation of the sentient-flesh via narratives of the “body” becomes the norm.

INTRODUCTION 

19

It is also important to consider how this narration of the “body” participates in the ways these acts of domination are described within a colonial matrix. Within an Anglo-US patriarchal capitalist society, portrayals of violence against communities of color are often sanitized of their impact and importance. In novels such as Ambert’s A Perfect Silence, the results of coloniality—mass migration, high rates of unemployment, gender violence, and so on—are detailed as both connected to colonial policies and manifesting from a space of colonial domination. To obfuscate the impact of coloniality as emerging from colonial imposition is an invaluable mechanism for maintaining contemporary power structures. Indeed, and as fields such as cultural trauma studies demonstrate, the shift in focus away from colonial perpetration and toward how those experiencing it respond negatively becomes an important tactic for colonial technologies. Scholars in this field, as an example, have examined how the renarration of slavery among African-Americans impacts the creation of an African-American identity (Eyerman 2004). Terms such as “carrier group” are utilized to identify the process by which one group, or members within the group, carry and then share their knowledge of these historical traumas, as well as other theories that are useful for understanding the transmission of this knowledge and its infusion into collective conscious and identity (Alexander 2004). The telling and retelling of a particular story are posited as creating a new trauma: The originating event was so horrific that even knowledge of it by those who were not present at the time is traumatizing. For a novel such as Llanos Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone, characters who tell of their experiences of survival of enslavement and coloniality would thereby become “transmitters of trauma” as opposed to survivors and educators for their communities. Missing, and what a term such as “carrier group” obscures, is that having knowledge of trauma is not the same as being the enactor of the originating trauma. And, even more importantly, it ignores the fact that the horrors of slavery as a legal structure are part of a longer history of racial violence that still continues to this day (Alexander 2010). Instead, it is only a matter of the pathology of the oppressed. Exploring mainland Puerto Rican women’s experiences of the “body” provides a reading of empire and the Anglo-US coloniality that currently holds governmental authority over all Puerto Rican women. Girmay’s poetry, in questioning the makeup of the flesh as sentient via irrevertential depictions, moves questions of what it means to be “human” to

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a decolonial space. However, while it is necessary to understand and remain aware of Anglo-US colonial mappings of Puerto Rican women’s “bodies,” especially as these mappings manifest in specifically attuned possibilities and experiences, the focus of this book is instead a reading of Puerto Rican women’s writings as not inherently limited to readings of empire as a reactionary stance.

Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings: Subversion in the Flesh and Structure This book consists of five main chapters. Each chapter examines not only the representation of sentient-flesh experiences by Puerto Rican women authors in the mainland US, but also how different literary devices and genre conventions can provide key moments for constructing decolonial projects of empowerment and healing. Each chapter individually explores how different mainland Puerto Rican women writers express sentient-flesh potential within the literary arts. For each chapter, an individual literary device is explored for its capability to convey a particular sentient-flesh expression of experience and meaning. For example, if motifs are repeating refrains, then what does that repetition point to in terms of what the flesh knows? If knowledge is mapped via metaphor, what are those metaphors of and what do they convey? However, the intention of each chapter is not to provide a prescriptive formula for how to achieve decolonial action via a specific literary device. Nor is it to argue that the topic of each chapter can only be depicted via a specific device, along. For instance, motif works in conjunction with diction. Characterization works in conjunction with narrative persona. Instead, each chapter focuses on one particular device in order to provide an exploration of the kinds of potential that each literary device holds. The literary devices, respectively, that are explored are: motif, narrative persona, metaphor/simile, characterization, and discourse via diction. I posit that each literary device provides a different type of intervention that clarifies the importance of shifting to sentient-flesh within a decolonial praxis. The five chapters are divided into three sections. The first section explores how motif and narrative persona can expose the distance between the “body” and flesh, and how resituating discussions of Puerto Rican women within the sentient-flesh provides a much-needed intervention

INTRODUCTION 

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in moving away from Anglo-US colonial narratives. The second section of Subversion considers the importance of metaphor in detailing not only flesh experiences of violence but also decolonizing the meaning of “healing” via the use of dusmic poetics. The final section of this book explores the significance of resilience in creating projects of decolonial empowerment that can then be deployed for community social justice activism. The first section of this book, comprised of two chapters, identifies how Puerto Rican women writers deploy motif and narrative persona to expose the “body” as obfuscating the sentient-flesh and how this obfuscation enables sociosexual geo-racialized violence. However, the purpose of these two chapters is not to respond to coloniality but instead to identify a rupture between the colonial imposition and how those experiencing it witness its imposition. The first chapter examines the motif of enfleshment to draw out this distinction via an analysis of Judith Ortiz Cofer’s poem, “The Gift of a Knife.” This poem explores the experiences of a young girl coming to consciousness regarding US sterilization policies for Puerto Rican women. I examine Ortiz Cofer’s poetry to identify how a motif of enfleshment—a bringing of flesh back to the bones of Latinas’ experiences—exposes Puerto Rican women’s multilayered experiences of US Federal Zero-Population Growth programs that resulted in one-third of Puerto Rican women being reproductively sterilized by 1982. Drawing from the awareness that this motif conjures, the second chapter considers how the development of narrative persona in the poetic-testimonio genre deployed by María Luisa Arroyo’s “still bedwetting at nine” elucidates sentience within the flesh that refutes victim-blaming narratives. The second chapter analyzes Arroyo’s depictions of flesh responses to violence—in this case, enuresis brought on by sexual abuse—in conjunction with contemporary cognitive development and neuroscience research to explore how the flesh is targeted for violence while simultaneously being the sentient site that speaks of and against this targeting. The second section, comprised of one chapter, analyzes novelist Alba Ambert’s A Perfect Silence in conjunction with spatial cognitive development studies of sensory perception to mark the importance of simile and metaphor as a method for conveying sentient-flesh experiences as part of a healing project. This novel illustrates how, and as Iris Lopez’s work on trauma-knowledge shows, the disorienting nature of micro- and macro-level violence can condition Latinas to survive perpetration but does not provide methods for Latinas to thrive in healthy or empowering ways. I argue that this novel’s depiction of sensory perceptions via simile

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and metaphor represents a type of dusmic poetic—a culturally specific term describing Puerto Rican poets’ ability to transform pain into healing—which portrays the importance of acknowledging trauma while also demonstrating that sentient-flesh is not defined by this violence alone. This third chapter posits the distinction between surviving and healing, and that while the former sustains life, it is the latter that provides transformative possibilities for empowerment. The third and final section of this book, comprised of the fourth and fifth chapters, considers the importance of characterization and discourse when depicting resilience as part of a decolonial praxis for healing and empowerment. The fourth chapter examines Dahlma Llanos Figueroa’s premier novel Daughters of the Stone via psychoanalytics of historical trauma and epigenetic studies regarding the effects of coloniality on genetic predispositions. I analyze how Llanos Figueroa depicts the intergenerational effects of enslavement via characterization and challenges the systematic silencing of slavery’s traumas within Puerto Rican communities. This novel elucidates the history of violence in which Afro-Latina flesh is targeted and the lineage of resilience in the face of dehumanization that emerged from it. I argue that reclaiming this lineage participates in the construction of a world-traveler consciousness, what Lugones describes as a person who travels between and among multiple social worlds, to refute narratives of pathologized “bodies.” The fifth chapter considers the implications that awareness of sentient-flesh creates within social justice movements via a reading of poetry by Aracelis Girmay. I examine this poetry in conjunction with Emma Pérez’s concept of decolonial imaginaries, or creative methods through which colonial tactics are subverted, to identify an epistemic shift in Latina writings that manifests a theme of social justice as the foundation for communicating decolonial consciousness (1999). This fifth chapter does not provide a prescriptive method for moving beyond coloniality of power that will be uniform for all women of color, for Latinas or for Puerto Rican women specifically. Instead, it identifies the multiplicity of methods that form a decolonial space where feminists of color—and specifically Puerto Rican women—create visions of transformation that are specifically attuned to their own experiences of the coloniality of difference that nevertheless stems from the systematic oppression of women of color under Western European—and its predecessors such as that of Anglo-US coloniality—colonial forces.

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Conclusion Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings: Subversion in the Flesh explores questions of how Puerto Rican women write subversion to the objectification of the “Puerto Rican woman’s body” via representations of sentient-flesh in the literary arts. In doing so, Subversion asserts that knowledge of Anglo-US coloniality is necessary but in itself does not achieve a goal of resistance to dehumanization or liberation from a coloniality of power. Similarly, tunnel-vision focus on coloniality and to a specific colonial matrix erases the resistance that leads to acts of subversion by Puerto Rican women. Thus, a balance must be struck, one that acknowledges how coloniality constitutes a “body” under domination while also seeing beyond this construction to the simultaneously occurring decolonial praxis of resistance and subversion at hand within the literary arts. The final question that emerges is: to what ends does this decolonial praxis function? To engage this question, each chapter attends to what it means to heal. Healing, which occurs within sentient-flesh as both tangibly expressed and conceptually present, is what enables a shift outside of a colonial matrix and coloniality of power.

Notes 1. The Preface of this book provides a lengthier overview. I have attempted to not replicate information between the two chapters, and instead here attempt to more thoroughly identify key historical information that will be specifically examined in the following chapters. 2. The term Subversion will be utilized in order to mark the title of this text henceforth. 3. I will here note that the writings examined in this book are either written by women who are identified as heterosexual, self-identify as heterosexual, or whose text content is about heterosexual women or heterosexual experiences. Further, the characters within the texts are cis-gender. This focus and emphasis are not designed to elide experiences of Puerto Rican communities that do not fall within these category parameters. Indeed, examination of literature regarding their experiences is vital as part of an analysis regarding decolonial Puerto Rican narratives, sentient-flesh, and the literary arts as holding decolonial potential. However, such discussions are beyond the scope of this book. I contend that additional projects on these

24  R. HURTADO topics are indeed necessary as scholarship continues to develop and engage the decolonial turn. 4. “Resilience,” in this book, is used to describe a process. The term, especially in relation to Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans following Hurricane Maria, requires an expanded critique that is beyond the scope of this book. It is used in this book to depict a component of the process of conocimiento that also enables space for survival and strategic navigations of power structures.

References Achteberg, Jeanne, and G. Frank Lawlis. Bridges of the Bodymind. Institute for Personality and Ability Testing, 1980. Acosta-Belén, Edna. The Puerto Rican Woman: Perspectives on Culture, History and Society. 2nd ed. Praeger, 1986. Acosta-Belén, Edna, and Carlos Santiago. Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Contemporary Portrait. Lynne Reinner, 2006. Alexander, Jeffrey. “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma.” Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey Alexander, Ron Eyerman, and Bernard Giesen. U California P, 2004, pp. 1–30. Alexander, M. Jacqui. “Remembering This Bridge, Remembering Ourselves: Yearning, Memory, and Desire.” This Bridge We Call Home, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating. Routledge, 2002, pp. 83–103. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New P, 2010. Algarín, Miguel, and Miguel Piñero. Nuyorican Poetry: An Anthology of Puerto Rican Words and Feelings. William Morrow, 1975. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Making Face/Making Soul: Haciendo Caras. Aunt Lute, 1990. ———. “Now Let Us Shift.” This Bridge We Call Home, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating. Routledge, 2002, pp. 540–78. ———. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 3rd ed. Aunt Lute, 2003. Anzaldúa, Gloria, and Cherríe Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color. 4th ed. SUNY P, 2015. Burnette, Christina Duffy, and Burke Marshall, eds. Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution. Duke UP, 2001. Cabán, Pedro. “Industrialization, the Colonial State, and Working Class Organizations in Puerto Rico.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 1, no. 3, 1984, 149–72. Comas-Díaz, Lillian. “Spirita: Reclaiming Womanist Sacredness into Feminism.” Psychology of Women Quarterly, vol. 32, 2008, 13–21. Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Martin Luther King Encounters Post-racialism.” Kalfou, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014, 15–26.

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Dolins, Francine, and Robert Mitchell. “Linking Spatial Cognition and Spatial Perception.” Spatial Cognition, Spatial Perception: Mapping the Self and Space, edited by Francine Dolins and Robert Mitchell. Cambridge UP, 2010, pp. 1–18. Doyle, John, and David Sims. “Enabling Strategic Metaphor in Conversation: A Technique of Cognitive Sculpting for Explicating Knowledge.” Mapping Strategic Knowledge, edited by Anne Huff and Mark Jenkins. Sage, 2002, pp. 63–88. Duany, Jorge. “Making Indians Out of Blacks: The Revitalization of Taíno Identity in Contemporary Puerto Rico.” Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics, edited by Gabriel HaslipViera. Markus Weiner, 2001, pp. 55–82. ———. The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States. U North Carolina P, 2002. Espada, Martín. “Poetry Like Bread.” Zapata’s Disciples. South End, 1999, pp. 99–106. Eyerman, Ron. “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity.” Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey Alexander, Ron Eyerman, and Bernard Giesen. U California P, 2004, pp. 6–111. Flores, Juan. Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity. Arte Público, 1993. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage, 2007. García Muñiz, Huberto. “U.S. Military Installation in Puerto Rico: Controlling the Caribbean.” Colonial Dilemma: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Puerto Rico, edited by Edwin Meléndez and Edgardo Meléndez. South End, 1993, pp. 53–65. Godreau, Isar, Mariolga Reyes Cruz, Mariluz Franco Ortiz, and Sherry Cuadrado. “The Lessons of Slavery: Discourses of Slavery, Mestizaje, and Blanqueamiento in an Elementary School in Puerto Rico.” American Ethnologist, vol. 35, no. 1, 2008, 115–35. Grosz, Elizabeth. “Inscriptions and Body Maps: Representations and the Corporeal.” Space, Gender, Knowledge: Feminist Readings, edited by Linda McDowell and Joanne Sharpe, Arnold, 1992, pp. 236–76. Haslip-Viera, Gabriel. Taíno Revival. Princeton: Markus Weiner, 2013. ———. Race, Identity, and Indigenous Politics: Puerto Rican Neo-Taínos in the Diaspora and the Island. Latino Studies, 2014. Hurtado, Roberta. “Transformative Expressions: Latina Third Space Feminisms and Critical Theory-Asethetic.” The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, vol. 2, no. 1, 2019, 50–61.

26  R. HURTADO Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic, 1999. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard UP, 1991. Levins Morales, Aurora. Medicine Stories. Blackwell, 1998. Leys, Ruth. “The Turn to Affect: A Critique.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 37, no.3, 2011, 434–72. Lopez, Iris. Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom. Rutgers UP, 2008. ———. “Sterilization and the Ethics of Reproductive Technology: An Integral Approach.” The Scholar and Feminist Online, vol. 9, no. 1–2, 2010–2011, http://sfonline.barnard.edu/reprotech/lopez_01.htm. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Crossing, 1984. Lugones, María. Pilgrimages/Perigranejes. Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. ———. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia, vol. 25, no. 4, 2010, 743–59. Mass, Bonnie. “Puerto Rico: A Case Study of Population Control.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 44, no. 4, 1977, 68–81. Matthews, Stephen, and David Phillips. “Minireview: Transgenerational Inheritance of Stress Response: A New Frontier in Stress Research.” Endocrinology, vol. 151, no. 1, 2010, 7–13. Mignolo, Walter. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke UP, 2011. Moreno, Marisel. Family Matters. U Virginia P, 2012. Moya, Paula. “Cultural Particularity Versus Universal Humanity: The Value of Being Asimilao.” Hispanics/Latinos in the United States: Ethnicity, Race, and Rights, edited by Jorge Gracia and Pablo de Greiff. Routledge, 2000, pp. 77–98. Nussbaum, Felicity. Torrid Zones. Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. Ortega, Mariana. In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self. SUNY P, 2016. Pérez, Emma. The Decolonial Imaginary. Indiana UP, 1999. Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality and Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla, vol. 1, no. 3, 2000, 533–80. ———. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies, vol. 21, no. 2–3, 2007, 168–78. Rivera, Carmen. Kissing the Mango Tree. Arte Público, 2002. Rothschild, Babette. The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. Norton, 2000. Sánchez González, Lisa. Boricua Literature: A Literary History of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. New York UP, 2001.

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Schiebinger, Londa. “Skeletons in the Closet: The First Illustrations of the Female Skeleton in Eighteenth-Century Anatomy.” Feminism and the Body, edited by Londa Schiebinger. Oxford UP, 2000, pp. 25–57. Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French. Duke UP, 1999. Sheets-Johnston, Maxine. “Movement.” Spatial Cognition, Spatial Perception: Mapping the Self and Space, edited by Francine Dolins and Robert Mitchell. Cambridge UP, 2010, pp. 323–40. Silva, Alcino, et al. “Molecular and Cellular Approaches to Memory Allocation in Neural Circuits.” Science, vol. 326, no. 5951, 2009, 391–95. Skoge, Monica, et al. “Cellular memory in eukaryotic chemotaxis.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States of America, vol. 111, no. 40, October 2014, 14448–14453. Sotomayor, Sonia. “Dissent.” Schuette v. Coal. Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigration Rights. U.S. Supreme Court. 2014. Spillers, Hortense. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacrtics, vol. 17, no. 2, 1987, 64–81. Torres-Padilla, José, and Carmen Haydée Rivera, eds. Writing Off the Hyphen. U Washington P, 2008. Tucker, Phebe, and Elizabeth Foote. “Trauma and the Mind-Body Connection.” Psychiatric Times, 1 June 2007. Web. 13 February 2015. http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/trauma-and-mind-body-connection. Walters, Karina, et al. “Bodies Don’t Just Tell Stories, They Tell Histories: Embodiment of Historical Trauma Among American Indians and Alaska Natives.” Du Bois Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 2011, 179–89. Wise, Tim. Color-Blind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equality. Color Lights, 2013.

Enfleshment: Beneath the Body Lies Flesh

By 1982, one-third of all Puerto Rican women living in Puerto Rico had been reproductively sterilized. Debates abound regarding whether this number demonstrates women exercising a hard-fought-for right of reproductive control or if these women were coerced into tubal ligation. Important to these debates are: (1) The fact that Puerto Rican women were actively fighting to gain reproductive autonomy during the twentieth century; and (2) The context in which they were fighting. Since 1898, Puerto Rico has been held as a colonial possession of the USA, and its people have been subject to the laws and regulations that the USA imposes upon them. Puerto Rican women’s demands to legally hold authority over whether or not they would have children and if they did, how many, occurred at a moment of transition for the island as it moved out of a Spanish coloniality and into that of the Anglo-US. Simultaneous to calls for reproductive freedom, this new coloniality instituted the “Zero Population Growth” policy, born out of its eugenics movement, which transformed the island into a laboratory for government controlled population reduction and birth control testing. Scholars such as Laura Briggs (2002) and Iris Lopez (2008) have documented the history of both this fight and US intervention in Puerto Rican women’s reproductive rights. They have also pointed to problematic depictions of island-based Puerto Rican women as victims who are erased of their historical fight for access to birth control options. As previously noted, this fight for birth control occurred alongside US © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hurtado, Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05731-2_2

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intervention and so it is necessary to avoid falling into a binary of Puerto Rican women as either victims or as acting in total autonomy. A nuance must be made, and it is one that activists such as Denise Oliver (2011) have argued on behalf of: At the same time that Puerto Rican women want birth control options, these options and access to them must occur in a space devoid of colonial imposition. Otherwise, the possibility of imposition by that coloniality exists. It is not to argue that the methods of survival that Latinas navigate are themselves representative of or controlled by a coloniality, but it is to acknowledge that these same actions would possibly not be the same if they were to be done outside of a coloniality. How Anglo-US narratives of Puerto Rican women’s “bodies” within its discussions of reproductive choice link to the high rate of tubal ligation among Puerto Rican women must be considered. Jennifer Griffith’s work on African-American women’s trauma in literature demonstrates that US processes of sociosexual geo-racialization create a narrative of the woman of color’s “body” as a known object available for exploitation and domination (2009). For Puerto Rican women, these processes are connected to the situation of the island as a territory/colony and the production of policies born out of this relationship as documented by Bonnie Mass. For instance, mid-twentieth century discussions by eugenicists such as Kingsley Davis and Mayone Stycos linked Puerto Rican women with overpopulation of the island, undesirable population growth, and—at times—defining the island and its inhabitants as dependent on the US in order to transform the US into a savior of sorts that would lead the island into the modern age (1948; 1954). Such discussions created a near-genocidal discourse in which the Puerto Rican woman’s body emerges as a tool to restrict the future of Puerto Ricans as a people. Missing from these earlier debates are the voices of Puerto Rican women and their responses to their own experiences being filtered through Anglo-US coloniality. This chapter distinguishes between colonial narratives of the Puerto Rican woman’s “body” and depictions of sentient-flesh in Puerto Rican women’s literary arts made possible by “enfleshment.” I look to Judith Ortiz Cofer’s poem, “The Gift of a Knife,” for representations of enfleshment and how this motif builds the presence of sentient-flesh within the literary arts. As a motif, enfleshment brings flesh back to the bones of Latina experiences—figuratively—to map not only the targeting of Latina flesh by an Anglo-US coloniality but also infuse an

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understanding of sentient-flesh into her experiences. It provides one literary method for detailing sentient-flesh as flesh that holds within it critical consciousness born from a facultad that has a decolonial praxis of subversion that developed to know and to navigate coloniality. In depicting sentient-flesh, it is vital to consider that it can be misinterpreted as describing “embodiment” or even just the “body” because of how effectively coloniality maps its narrative of the “body” object onto the flesh. However, enfleshment exposes that very narrative via a depiction of sentient-flesh that is conceptualized by redirecting focus away from the “body” and toward the flesh of experience. In so doing, this motif depicts specific Latina experiences without relying on narratives created by the Anglo-US coloniality. However, the motif is not solely focused on showing how coloniality impinges on the flesh. It must also identify the flesh as more than just a container or an object that is narrated as having meaning. Instead, once the narrative of the “body” has been demystified, this motif clarifies the presence of the sentient-flesh that exists beyond the scope of the “body.” This chapter explores how the motif of enfleshment depicts sentient-flesh and how enfleshment also manifests in Latinas’ survival techniques. Constructing a motif of enfleshment requires detailing lived flesh experiences. It begins by first identifying the “body” narrative that is mapped onto Puerto Rican women. It next distinguishes between that “body” object narrative and the woman who is experiencing. Finally, it identifies the importance of reconceptualizing the sentient-flesh that exists beyond the boundaries of coloniality. This motif participates in engaging a self-reflexive process of creation that sheds the shackles of coloniality. Rather than a defensive posturing, enfleshment provides an entry into the possibility of growth outside of coloniality. The literary arts provide a realm in which to counter narratives that circulate in different colonialities about women of color and simultaneously create new cultures. Enfleshment directly contends with colonial narratives of women of color and specifically women of color in the Americas. Early colonial literature of the Americas abounds in motifs of “savages” in need of rescue and the Amerindian woman who betrays her people out of love for Western European colonizers.1 Examples of the latter have been especially detrimental for women of color. Gloria Anzaldúa recalls in Borderlands stories such as that of Malintzin or la Malinche, who was given by her people to Hernán Cortés and forced to act as both his interpreter and concubine. Yet, this figure has lasted

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in Mexico as a symbol of female treachery to this day. In Puerto Rico, Yuiza is a similarly historically vilified figure although her story has been one of redemption among inhabitants of her former home. In this story, Yuiza engaged in an intimate relationship with a conquistador to save the people in her village by covering them with his protection. It is rumored that the conquistador was himself either a Moor or of mixed descent. Local caciques assassinated her for this relationship, which they perceived as traitorous. Today, she is celebrated as a savior despite the events surrounding her death. In these depictions, the Amerindian woman/woman of color in the Americas becomes a tool to demonstrate either the prowess of Western Europe and the traitorous nature of the Amerindian woman, or the tactical martyr brought down by narrow-­ minded compatriots. Both depictions demonstrate the precarious position that women of color in the Americas were placed—balancing survival within a context in which their very lives were easily controlled. They also demonstrate ways in which these same women were attempting to navigate the newly imposed social structures that were harming them and their communities, and also transformed into narrative objects. Enfleshment begins at the site where such narratives emerge: coloniality and the Western European depictions of “bodies” available for control.2 A nuance is necessary: There is, as I illustrated in the Introduction of this book, a distinction between the “body” as it is narrated by a coloniality and the flesh as it experiences that coloniality. To clarify this distinction, I mark the conceptual genealogy of the “body” that results in Anglo-US objectification of Puerto Rican women as emerging from early modern and Enlightenment-era discourses of the “body” and the colonized woman’s “body” specifically. The early modern and Enlightenment periods in Western Europe and the Americas heralded new and innovative research designed to know the “body” using scientific inquiry to discern the mysteries of humans and vanquish presumably outdated beliefs governed by superstition. What emerged was an era in which corporeal dissection became an enterprise not simply to identify the parts of the flesh that composed the entire being but also to discern the less tangible aspects of the corporeal—such as memory and consciousness—as being based in different parts of the anatomy (Keiser 2015; Lloyd 2013). Contemporaneous to these activities, a distinction was made between the “body”—which was perceived by Enlightenment neurophysicists such as Thomas Willis as “unthinking”— and the mind, which was classified as “thinking.” While scholarship from

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the era sought to identify how the brain could create the “mind,” an intangible series of thought processes, the result is significant: The flesh becomes an “unthinking” object that merely houses the “thinking” mind. Indeed, the “body” becomes an object that’s meaning is dependent on the intangible and is, itself, relegated to no more than non-cognizant. Beyond concerns of the non/thinking “body,” early modern and Enlightenment philosophers, intellectuals, and scientists also investigated issues of sentiment, emotion, and sensibility as part of, but also distinct from, the non-thinking “body.” Trying to determine the physical location of the mind as located within the brain led neurophysicists such as Willis and others to use metaphors of energy animals that carried consciousness throughout the brain and from there the rest of the body. Alternative accounts, such as that provided by Nicolas Malebranche, attempted to explore connections between the mind and “body” via a concept of embodied-minds. Malebranche contended that the “embodied-mind” utilized perception of external objects to create knowledge but was also distinct from a mind that was purely intangible in its pursuit of “truths” that were distinct from physicality. Jordan Taylor’s recent scholarship considers the possibilities that Malebranche’s work provides for understanding connections between the “body” and imagination. She also indicates how the embodied-mind contributed to a genealogy of mind/body concepts that impacted David Hume, a later Enlightenment philosopher. Retrospectively, Malebranche’s work during this historical moment enabled discussions of how the “body” was necessary for a mind that interpreted information. The seventeenth and eighteenth century in Western Europe also witnessed attempts to determine the location of the soul in a similar manner to those locating the brain as the home of the mind. However, this pursuit was not without difficulty. For, and as those engaged in this pursuit pondered, if the soul was a distinct and in many ways more advanced component of the human, how could it possibly be located in only one element of the “body”? Ann Thomas’s recent scholarship on the early Enlightenment identifies major shifts that occurred, specifically in England, due to debates regarding medicine and religion. Thomas outlines debates regarding the concept of an immortal soul, theologically driven understandings of corporeal-function, and non-heterodox concepts of the “body” that perceived things such as blood and fibers as functioning independent of an omniscient being. Early Enlightenment era writers such as Claude Perrault, Guillaume Lamy, Francis Glisson,

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and John Mayow are among some of those cited as participating in dialogues regarding how the corporeal can engage in activity at both thinking and non-thinking levels while also somehow having, and potentially not having, an immortal soul. Other philosophers, such as John Locke, attempted to understand and interpret how this distinction is possible and yet the resulting contradiction of a person being both physical and intangible remains. Importantly, deeply intertwined within these conversations were debates regarding the concept of being “animal” or being a higher species with the possibility of genius and soul. Anatomical dissections in Western Europe participated in the constructions of such narratives and also contributed to building justifications for different types of social hierarchies. Sexual anatomy emerged during this era as of particular importance to interlink concepts of social differences with the “body.” Thomas Laqueur’s Making Sex explores the transformation of human knowledge regarding biological sex and gender. Laqueur identifies how this era produced the idea of an eyewitness— who was almost always male—as having a command over the human “body” that demystifies what is not known, hidden, and renders all persons subject to a penetrative gaze. Laqueur notes that “[i]n 1559, for example, Columbus—not Christopher but Renaldus—claims to have discovered the clitoris…Conquistador in an unknown land, Columbus stakes his claim: ‘Since no one has discerned these projections and their workings, if it is permissible to give names to things discovered by me, it should be called the love or sweetness of Venus’” (64). Describing and naming this piece of human anatomy illustrates the presupposed authority of this European male in an age of “discovery.” In absorbing the idea of having a legitimate right to control the human “body’s” representations—here, specifically, the female “body”—it is possible to see the engendering of a discourse of sexual difference and the meaning it takes on during the early modern through to the Enlightenment era. Connected to the depiction of flesh as a “body” available for controlled narration was the emergent discourse of coloniality that sought to justify the subjugation of predetermined people based on Western European needs. The “body” in the early modern and Enlightenmentera colonial discourses emerged from the distance between what was considered to be a cognizant, intelligible mind and the “body”—object that lumbered along as part of a physical reality. Scholars such as Aníbal Quijano have described how colonization of the Americas created a coloniality of power in which the newly/long-term colonized transformed

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into “bodies” that could be exploited for different types of labor via the constitution of newly designed hierarchies of being. He describes an axis of domination in which labor needs existed hand in hand with the emerging ability to identify “race” and its biologically inherited traits to constitute systems of exploitation that could in every way be determined as markers of predesign for why people of color, and specifically in the Americas, were available for labor exploitation (2000, 534–535). David Spurr’s work in Rhetoric of Empire indicates the long-lasting impact of the colonial gaze that classifies the “bodies” that were under surveillance into “known” objects of study that were available for exploitation as it manifested in nineteenth-century colonial narratives. The connection between sexualization and racialization within a coloniality of power can be witnessed in writings of the era, and it created what Lugones has described as a coloniality of gender as I have discussed in the introduction of this book. Individuals such as Thomas Jefferson and George Cuvier directly participated in the construction of Enlightenment colonial discourses that served to rationalize the dehumanization of individuals experiencing colonialism while also constituting more insidious elements of the coloniality itself: The discourses that constitute colonized “bodies” to be exploited. Individuals such as Thomas Jefferson can be noted for statements regarding the overt sexuality of black women with no irony involved regarding his own sexual assault of enslaved women in his property. Others, such as George Cuvier, who historically dissected Sarah Baartman, participated in an early construction of the Western European colonial-medical gaze that transformed women of color “bodies” into dehumanized objects of scientific inquiry. Integral to this process of objectification is the distance between the white male who is viewing the woman of color and her positionality as inherently different from him so that the act of viewing can occur. The authority vested in the act of viewing here takes on more chilling intonations of not only objectifying but also creating an abject, in recollection of Julia Kristeva’s work (1982), that is so other that it is merely a curiosity to be controlled and deformed at will. The process of sociosexual geo-racialization becomes one of situating different types of individuals available for domination and exploitation. Participating in this process, and what emerged from this historical moment, is a predetermined criterion for what and who could be “human” in connection to the “body.” Paula Moya, in her work on assimilationist narratives among neo-conservative writers of color in

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the US, identifies contemporary discussions regarding how processes of “Othering” have resulted in a backlash against concepts of racial identity as a source of empowerment for people of color when engaging acts of subversion against hegemonic dehumanization. She maps how some writers take as a political standpoint that things such as ethnic, gender, and women’s studies are problematic because they hinder the ability to explore a truly “American” identity by compartmentalizing those who it incorporates. Further, it is argued, problematic unification of different categories denies them the ability to act as agentic individuals. Missing from such arguments is a willingness to acknowledge that the default identity for assimilation becomes, as Moya puts it, heterosexual, EuroAmerican, male. Obfuscation of that fact enhances the stability of the heterosexual, Anglo, male as the unquestioned stance from which all other people are viewed. It also mystifies the process of othering via a systematic construction of the colonial gaze—as Spurr describes it—that is unidirectional and always from the point of view of that coloniality’s predetermined central identity. As these examples show, the Anglo-US coloniality is not merely indebted to these earlier colonial machinations: It is made possible by them. In many ways, Puerto Rican women’s experiences of Anglo-US coloniality have been centuries in the making. However, I do not seek to argue in this chapter that Puerto Rican women are limited to the sum of the descriptions created about their “bodies” within the Anglo-US coloniality. Instead, I seek to explore how the literary arts provide an arena in which to account for such experiences without being beholden to the narratives provided by coloniality. I note that it is necessary to stipulate that Puerto Rican women function as an object within an Anglo-US coloniality of power. Yet, when moving outside the boundaries of that coloniality, it is possible to consider that Puerto Rican women’s physical realities are not those of objects but instead are experiences of sentient-­ flesh beings. This reality requires depictions that avoid reifying discourses reliant on a conceptual genealogy of the “body” formed within early modern and Enlightenment colonialities. Enfleshment provides such an opportunity because it brings flesh back to the bone of Latina experiences. In what follows, I first identify how enfleshment exposes how the “body” is mapped onto Puerto Rican women and the kinds of discourses that are attached to it. I then move on to consider the distance between the “body” and the person it is mapped onto. This chapter concludes by exploring how enfleshment can depict sentient-flesh.

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Delineating “Bodies” in Coloniality’s Discourse Within the Anglo-US coloniality, the Puerto Rican woman’s “body” is narrated as an object of control. Enfleshment emerges from conscious awareness that this narrative must be exposed. Judith Ortiz Cofer’s poem, “The Gift of a Knife,” identifies how the narratives of “body” within a coloniality render violence and exploitation not only justifiable but normal. In this poem, Ortiz Cofer begins by identifying how—as a child—the narrator showered with her mother once and saw the physical scar that emerged as a result of la operación, which is the colloquial term for tubal ligation (2005, 1–2). In the opening portion of this poem, Ortiz Cofer directly uses the term “body” when describing how the scar appears to cut the mother’s “body in half” (2005, 3–4). The narrator connects this scar to being female, and specifically to the gender roles that Puerto Rican women take on. The diction in this section of the poem requires further scrutiny, as it is curious as to why a small child would so readily make a connection between a scar and cis-gender womanhood. A distinction must be made between the mother as a person and the “body” that recurs in this section in order to understand this mother’s experiences of Anglo-US medical intervention into her reproductive rights. The daughter’s first use of the word “body” occurs during the act of viewing: she notes that she “saw” the scar on the mother’s “body.” The first introduction of this woman’s corporeal presence is through the act of being viewed rather than being an active agent who can also enact a “viewing.” Recalling Spurr’s discussion of viewing, the colonized individual is denied the ability to view at the very same time that the colonized person is viewed (1993, 13). Although the relationship between the mother and daughter is different than a colonial government and the colonized, the fact that the mother is first introduced through the act of viewing is paramount. The act of viewing, in this instance, therefore raises questions regarding how knowledge about the mother is being framed and interpreted. The narrator describes the scar as dividing her mother’s “body in half.” The ability to fragment her mother based on what she sees indicates a specific technology embedded in the act of “viewing” and “narrating” what is viewed. For, the mother is not truly broken in half. However, the mother’s top half and bottom half become two connected components based on the presence of the scar. For the little girl who is witnessing this scar, the idea that a mother—a woman—can be broken in half indicates that the process of fragmenting the “body” is something that can and

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will occur without any intervention. Further, she does not even appear to consider whether the “body” can actually be divided in half or into smaller parts. This fact brings forth the reality that the “body,” itself, is a manifestation of what and how it is narrated. The narrator asks when she will also receive a scar and then “imagines” the knife that had cut her mother. While the knife functions as a metonymy that connects the object used to cut her mother to the doctor engaging the medical surgery, it is the fact that the child “imagines” the knife and the “body” that stands out in these lines (2005, 7). For, it is not that she sees her mother within the reality of what happened but instead uses creative interpretation to conjure an image of the events that took place. The mother’s very real corporeal experience is here filtered through the daughter’s imagination to recreate its possibilities. Importantly, in this act of recreation there is also the issue of how the “body” is being imagined. The daughter does not question that the “body” should have been cut and received a scar. Nor does she question the right of the “silver knife” that functions to create the metonymy. Instead, it is taken as a matter of accordance that the “body” being viewed is at the mercy of a man-made object. The little girl asks her mother when she will also receive such a scar. While it might be taken as genuine childhood curiosity regarding how she will grow up to physically look like her mother, the narrator notes perceiving the scar as a “preface” to her becoming a “woman” (2005, 5–6). Here, gender becomes both conceptual and physical in performance. For, although gender is often linked to biological sex within Anglo-US patriarchal structures, it is not inherently linked to physical scars. The notion that the scar is interlinked to the development of her gender identity indicates that the little girl understood her own gender as somehow linked to trauma, recalling Griffiths’s work. Indeed, the notion that she is destined to receive the scar—not asking if but “when” she will get one—demonstrates that the little girl does not even question if the “body” that she sees is the norm for Puerto Rican women. Instead, it is taken as fact that this “body” is actually demonstrative of a longer process of gender creation and development. As such, gender, ethnicity, and geographic location become interlinked with how a “body” is narrated, viewed, and imagined within this particular coloniality of power. Finally, it is the “mystery” with which the “body” is connected that seems to be at fault for the mother’s having been wounded. The narrator describes how the knife “exposed” this mystery (2005, 8). Questions

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emerge as to why there is a mystery and who has a right to expose it. Already knowing that the “body” is something to be viewed, imagined, and narrated, the notion that it holds a mystery of any sort appears to be contradictory: How can an object that is controlled by others possibly have something that is not in their ability to determine either the meaning of or even its existence? Yet, underlying this question is a very real contradictory paradox within a coloniality. For, even though the “body” functions as concept that allows others to view it, describe it, and control it, it is nevertheless overlaid onto a real, living being. As such, the elements of a person that are not controlled by this narrative must necessarily be determined as “mysteries” that can be exposed and figured out. Indeed, the idea of it being a mystery indicates it is a phenomenon that can be understood with enough investigation in a manner similar to that depicted by Laqueur. Thus, the “body” of the mother once more turns into an object with a meaning imposed onto it. Further, the fact that the “body” in this case holds a “mystery” justifies the scarification because if it did not have a mystery, there would be no need to investigate.

Distances Between “Bodies” and “Flesh” Enfleshment identifies a distinction between the “body” that circulates in narratives produced within, by, and for a coloniality and that of the individual experiencing the ramifications of such narratives. The poem’s continued description of the mother shifts to identify how her experiences of la operación are narrated by a coloniality of power. Although the words are not quoted, the mother is attributed with explaining to her daughter that the scar does not function as an opening into her physical self but as an “exit” (2005, 12–13). She then goes on to describe government narratives of overpopulation and government beneficence. However, the daughter’s response to learning this information is both visceral and emotional as she struggles to understand the narratives circulating about her mother and her mother’s real-life experience. It is in this instance that a significant distance emerges between the colonial narrative of the mother’s “body” and her experiences as a target of coloniality. The mother’s depiction of her experience begins by repeating discourses that link her own experiences with commerce and capital. She is described as having “survived” the “good agony of birth” (2005, 10–11). Although clearly meant to describe the process of birthing, the notion that it is something that is both “survived” and

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yet is “good agony” would appear to engage in a conflation of meaning and oxymoron. However, the mother continues by noting that the “good agony” is considered “payment” for the “gift” of having a child (2005, 11–12). The oxymoron, here, is that her pain is considered to be a trade or barter for having a child. And yet, the fact of giving birth is described as a gift, which is something that is free. A link emerges between something that by its very nature is free, the gift, and the concept of paying for it. The gift is clear: the baby that she just birthed. The mother’s payment is clear: her pain and suffering. Beyond the obvious physical “labor” that is included in the act of giving birth, an equation is made between a Puerto Rican woman going through intense pain to receive a “gift” or be able to physically reproduce. Her biological ability to give birth is equated to a type of physical labor that creates a form of payment. The use of a capitalist equation in this instance in the poem reflects other discourses of capital and population that circulated such as Stycos’s reference to the cost of sterilization and Puerto Rican women’s futures from 1954 (4). The mother continues by describing how la operación is narrated as a gift that is given to her for “free” by the government when she was “eighteen” to stop overpopulating the island (2005, 13–16). The repetition of the word “gift” enhances the contradiction present in its first use: In its first manifestation, this “gift” was not a regalo-gratis but instead was bought with her pain and suffering. However, here, the “gift” is not paid for and is instead given to her by a government. Thus, while her own biology would have her suffer, the government appears to be altruistic and saves her from pain and payments that must be “survived.” Yet, the fact that she was so young adds an important question to the dynamic of this situation: How can an eighteen-year-old be labeled as responsible for or participating in overpopulating an “island” that “was already crowded” (2005, 16)? Importantly, no longer being able to reproduce could be perceived as having—indeed—made a payment. Further, it can be speculated as to whether or not she actually accepts the coloniality’s narrative as her own self-definition. Several important components emerge that distinguish between the “body” as it is narrated by a coloniality of power and the mother’s experience. First, the mother, by repeating the narratives provided by the government about her experience, exposes the coloniality’s logic: Her “body” is an object to be known and narrated and to be viewed and imagined into being. In this process, the “body” is blamed for whatever

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that narrative determines to be true about it. Then she is systematically taught that the coloniality’s actions against it are not only feasible courses of action but actually well-reasoned and necessary. For, the only logical response to overpopulation is to stop the process of reproduction from culminating in new life that contributes to the population’s increase. And yet, it is necessary to ponder why the government perceives sterilizing women as a feasible option for population control, and why this government has decided to intercede in women’s reproductive rights when, as a colonial government, the US could simply end its relationship with the island. The daughter’s response to the mother’s statements indicates how learning about this rupture between the “body” and her mother’s experiences occurs. While hearing the mother’s words, the daughter’s physical reaction indicates that the violence of the colonial logic has a negative impact. As the mother describes the issue of population with the statement “an Island already crowded,” the daughter starts having trouble breathing and connects the island to the small shower cubicle where she and her mother are engaged in ablutions (2005, 16–17). The comparison of the island to the shower stall might, at first glance, appear overly dramatic or even hyperbolic. However, in considering that a small child is making sense of her mother’s having been sterilized as part of a government policy, this comparison actually demonstrates the manner in which the coloniality’s logic in its narration regarding Puerto Rican women’s “bodies” worked. Yet, the daughter’s difficulty in breathing indicates that there is more to this comparison. A kind of claustrophobia emerges in which the pressure of these narratives, knowledge of them, and the contradictory paradoxes they create literally stifle the space. Indeed, what is making it hard to breath is not the actual size of the shower stall or the fact that she is sharing it with her mother as would have been the case if it had been hard to breathe all along. While hearing her mother state “no más hijos,” she describes feeling as though “our bodies were separated by oceans” (2005, 19–20). The daughter’s invocation of the “body” here could indicate that the mother’s physical experiences are indeed that of a “body.” However, at this moment a tension emerges between the “body” that is narrated within a coloniality and the flesh that experiences it. For, the mother’s “body” has already been narrated, known, and branded. Yet, the daughter, who has not gone through this same procedure, maintains the “mystery” that the mother has already been divested of by the knife at

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the beginning of the poem. Further, her response to learning about what happened to her mother’s “body” identifies that she and her mother are not the same even as they are both Puerto Rican women. This distinction shows that within the flesh, experiences of coloniality bare similarities and yet cannot be collapsed into a single, monolithic narrative.

Bringing Flesh to the Bones of Experience The tension that arises between how the “body” is narrated and the flesh experiences of coloniality enables an opportunity to bring flesh back to the bones of Latina experience via enfleshment. In moving away from the “body,” this poem deploys the motif of enfleshment to depict the mother’s experiences outside the space of a coloniality of power in order to both expose the coloniality and complicate the narratives surrounding her own life. The narrator, in the ending lines of the poem, transforms in how she describes her mother’s experiences. She stops using the term “body.” Instead, she moves to articulate her mother’s experiences with dignity and also expresses comprehension of how the learning process regarding coloniality takes places. She uses terms such as “queen” to describe her mother and the scar on her mother is portrayed using words such as “hieroglyphs” and “ancient” (2005, 21, 23, 25). This turn shifts how the mother is being “viewed” and requires a new type of consciousness to perceive her experiences. Most striking is the transformation of how she describes the scar on her mother’s skin. At the beginning of the poem, while engaged in the act of viewing her mother, she described the scar as a “sardonic smile” and had immediately connected it to the object that caused the scar.3 At the end of the poem, after a process of first identifying and then delineating the “body” from the flesh, the narrator describes this same scar as a “wound” (21). The decision to infuse the scar with the mother’s pain rather than allowing it to remain a terrifying symbol of power illustrates a shift in the daughter’s thinking in which her mother is rendered both vulnerable to assault but also capable of surviving such an assault. Also, included within this shift is a divorcing of the violation from the concept of gift-giving and beneficence. This distinction is enhanced by the daughter’s description of the wound’s markings as “pale hieroglyphs.” The scar, itself, becomes a kind of language that has been etched onto the flesh of the mother and, as such, becomes part of how her flesh tells its own story. The fact that the scar becomes a hieroglyph—a

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non-alphanumeric mode of writing—challenges notions of Western European and Anglo-US dominance over how narratives are recorded, narrated, and distributed. For, in reading this scar, the daughter is not deferring to eugenicists and policy makers from the Anglo-US coloniality but instead looking to her mother and what the flesh tells her. The daughter, by transforming how the scar is described, also creates a moment to reconceptualize the mother. Moving away from describing the mother as a woman who was depicted by the government as responsible for the population problem and its control by the government, the mother’s skin transforms into being described as the “wall/of a dead queen’s tomb” (2005, 23–24). Here, the description could be taken as completely negative as the skin would be the wall of a tomb, and the flesh beneath the skin would be, by default, dead. However, it is necessary to consider what the skin and flesh are covering and why the skin would need to be the wall of a tomb. First, it is unknown as to whether the mother would have elected to undergo tubal ligation without the imposition of the Anglo-US coloniality. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, what is at issue is not whether the mother has a right to choose to undergo tubal ligation. Instead, what is at issue are the circumstances and context within which tubal ligation becomes “the” chosen method of birth control: that of an Anglo-US coloniality. As such, the scar comes from the mother’s experience of birth-giving and then being sterilized and, thus, cannot be divorced from the coloniality. The tomb, in this case, would turn into the uterus. That the mother can no longer procreate would mean that the womb can no longer hold life. The notion that it turns into a tomb indicates a moment in need of grieving, for at the age of eighteen the mother was transformed within an Anglo-US coloniality from a young woman capable of reproduction into an object of control and then sterilized as part of a government program. However, the flesh is not dead. Instead, it has been altered and even as it is necessary to reclaim the mother from the coloniality’s narrative, it is not possible to undo the past. As such, depicting the mother as a queen both advances her position so that she is no longer the abject as Kristeva conceptualizes it while, at the same time, having to acknowledge the social structures with which she contends. The conclusion of the poem brings forth the knowledge of the flesh and completes the motif of enfleshment as it is constituted within the poem. The narrator describes the scar once more, but this time transforming it into a “message” that “I had yet to decipher” (23, 25).

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The scar, while potentially remaining the hieroglyphs described in previous lines, carries within it information that the narrator is looking at but cannot, at her age, understand. However, it is the notion that the scar is a method of communication that becomes vital to understanding the distinction between the “body” and the flesh. The “body” is an object that gets viewed and narrated. The flesh, however, is the physical experience and pulsates with sentience—the two are interconnected. That the flesh, here, holds a message means that it is not inherently an object to be viewed but is instead attempting to communicate. While it could be argued that the scar only exists because of medical intervention, the reality is that the scar is telling a story about coloniality and experiences of coloniality using formations of tissue and biochemical reactions—literally telling of the past. Further, it also details how the flesh navigates these same structures. The narrator’s admission of having difficulty understanding what the scar tells her when she was little further indicates the significance of the flesh “speaking” or communicating its experiences. In this moment, the motif illustrates that the flesh can only be witnessed as separate from the “body” when a process of learning has occurred that engages in removing the coverings of coloniality’s narratives. These narratives of the “body” obfuscate the experiences of the Puerto Rican woman and her sentient-flesh beneath it. Further, this narrative also demystifies the power dynamics that are involved in the relationship that renders Puerto Rican women targets for a colonial gaze while simultaneously constituting a logic that renders the woman responsible for her own experiences of coloniality. However, the purpose here is not to merely respond to the Anglo-US coloniality. This motif gives a glimpse into a world that is ungoverned by coloniality, a sentient-flesh that knows itself outside the confines of the “body.” What emerges is the moment of witnessing that flesh as more than the limits of a colonial gaze and narrative. It transforms into sentient-flesh that participating in the construction of culture.

Enfleshment’s Bones Enfleshment brings flesh back to the bones of Latina experiences. As a motif, enfleshment is not bound only to responding to coloniality even as it exposes the ramifications of Anglo-US coloniality and its

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technologies. Enfleshment elucidates the need for a conceptual shift that does not accept the “body” as a natural phenomenon but instead contextualizes its contemporary manifestations as part of a longer conceptual lineage. It exposes a centuries-long process of transforming the flesh of women of color into an object of control. As such, this motif denaturalizes these earlier process and technologies of domination. Enfleshment requires and enables navigation of the contradictory paradoxes that exist within a coloniality and an understanding of the distinctions between how a coloniality narrates those it dominates and the actual experiences of that domination. Simultaneously, it builds new processes of narration within the literary arts that construct a culture beyond the boundaries of coloniality. This final component indicates the richness of this motif in terms of its potential for building cultural practices from a space that honors sentient-flesh experiences. Important to this motif is the acknowledgement that women of color—and here, Latinas and specifically Puerto Rican women—are more than the sum of what coloniality narrates. Their existence is more vital and complex than the narratives that enshroud them. Here, the literary arts provide a space in which to explore the potential that women of color hold beyond the confines of coloniality via the act of artistic creation born out of experience in the flesh.

Notes 1. John Smith narratives, Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter, etc. 2. The term “enfleshment” is not an intentional overlap with Christian theologists who have, recently, begun to use this term as a translation of “incarnation.” My use of this term is not grounded in Christian theology nor does it stem from the concept of incarnation or reincarnation. Further, use of this term has occurred in pedagogy studies and studies of performance, such as generated by Peter McLaren. While these texts provide invaluable insights for interpreting the “body” as being needed for performance, scholars in this arena do not distinguish between the “body” and flesh as I do and thus continue to rely on the conceptual lineages of the “body” that my current project challenges. 3.  Here, we can recall Hortense Spillers’s “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” for her discussion of the targeting of flesh as part of the captive body as both a concept and reality and specifically in reference to scarification and targeting.

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References Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 3rd edition. Aunt Lute, 2003. Briggs, Laura. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico. U California P, 2002. Davis, Kingsley. “Puerto Rico’s Population Problem: Research and Policy.” The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 3, 1948, p. 300. García, Ana María, director. La Operación. Latin American Film Project, 1982. Glisson, Francis. English Manuscripts of Francis Glisson. Edited by Andrew Cunningham. Cambridge, 1994. Griffiths, Jennifer. Traumatic Possessions: The Body and Memory in African American Women’s Writing and Performance. U Virginia P, 2009. Guillaume Lamy. De Principiis Rerum: Liber Tres. Paris, 1669. ———. Dissertation sur l’antimoine. Paris, 1672. ———. “Dissertation contre la nouvelle opinion, qui pretend que tous les animaux sont engedrés d’un oeuf.” In Explication Méchanique et Physique des Fonctions de l’ame Sensitive. Paris, 1678. Keiser, Jess. “Nervous Figures: Enlightenment Neurology and the Personified Mind.” English Literary History, vol. 82, 2015, 1073–1108. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. Columbia UP, 1982. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard UP, 1991. Lloyd, Henry Martyn. “The Discourse of Sensibility: The Knowing Body and the Enlightenment.” The Discourse of Sensibility: The Knowing Body in the Enlightenment, edited by Henry Martyn Lloyd. Springer, 2013, pp. 1–23. Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter Niddich. Oxford UP, 1987. Lopez, Iris. Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom. Rutgers UP, 2008. Malebranche, Nicolas. The Search After Truth (1678). Translated by Thomas Lennon and Paul Olscamp. Cambridge UP, 1997. Mass, Bonnie. “Puerto Rico: A Case Study of Population Control.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 44, no. 4, 1977, 68–81. Mayow, John. Medic-Physical Works Being a Translation of Tractatus Quinque Mediophysici (1674). Edinburgh, 1907. Oliver, Denise. Palatante!: The Young Lords Party. 2nd edition. Haymarket, 2011, p. 47. Ortiz Cofer, Judith. “The Gift of a Knife.” Love Song Beginning in Spanish. U Georgia P, 2005, p. 37.

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Perrault, Claude. Essais de Physique ou Recueil de Plusiers Traitez Touchant les Choses Naturelles, in Oeuvres Diverses de Physique et de Mechanique de Mrs. C. & P Perrault, 2 volumes. Leiden, 1721. Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality and Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla, vol. 1, no. 3, 2000, 533–80. Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire. Duke UP, 1993. Stycos, J. Mayone. “Female Sterilization in Puerto Rico.” Eugenics Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1, 1954, 3–8. Thomas, Ann. Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment. Oxford UP, 2008. Willis, Thomas. A Medical-Philisophical Discourse of Fermentiation. Translated by Samuel Pordage. London, 1681, 14. Willis, Thomas. An Essay of the Pathology of the Brain and Nervous Stock. London, 1681. Willis, Thomas. Cerebral Anatomy. In 4 Treatises, translated by Samuel Pordage. London, 1681. Willis, Tomas. Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, Which Is That of the Vital and Sensitve of Man, Englished by Samuel Pordage. London, 1683.

Flesh-Memories: Bearing Witness to Trauma and Survival

Macro-level experiences such as mass sterilization programs, examined in the last chapter, offer obvious examples of a coloniality of power at work. However, coloniality does not rely on episodic events alone. It requires a combination of large-scale activities and consistent demonstrations of social hierarchies and exercises in dominance. Recalling Anzaldúa and Moraga’s description of theory in the flesh (2015), the daily-lived experiences of power provide insight into how varying social structures function in their smaller technologies. It also provides insight into how the home functions as an important locale for micro-level manifestations of coloniality because, even as the home is—theoretically—a safe space, the nature of its intimacy also renders it a space of vulnerability to violence and exploitation. Domestic abuse and sexual violence are among some of the ways that the home can function as a venue where Latina sentient-flesh is transformed by a coloniality into an object without a direct engagement with the coloniality, itself.1 Such activity also demonstrates that members of a colonized community can be trained by a coloniality to act on its behalf in such a manner that opportunities for solidarity are undermined while it simultaneously entrenches itself into the flesh knowledge of those in the home. Thus, the literary arts that depict sentient-flesh must also attend to the micro-level manifestations of power dynamics that exist within a coloniality’s structures. Depicting such experiences while contending with a coloniality makes the act of description particularly tense. The connection between © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hurtado, Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05731-2_3

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a coloniality of power and domestic violence and sexual assault might not be immediately obvious. Indeed, and as Alfredo Mirandé’s research points to, narratives within an Anglo-US coloniality of power identify violence among Latino communities as resulting from innate issues of “machismo” and the brutality of Latinos. However, and as scholars such as Diane Purvin (2007) and Susana Fried (2003) show, domestic violence and sexual assault in the home are not unique to Latino communities in the USA. Domestic violence and sexual assault are not a pathology of Latinidades. Instead, and as feminist scholars such as Sam Warner have pointed to, domestic violence and sexual abuse emerge as social experiences within a patriarchal culture. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) and Patricia Hill Collins (1998) contend that gender violence is directly linked to the intersections of sociosexual geo-racialization that promulgate varying forms of oppression interacting with one another. Gender violence is symptomatic of a coloniality that enables an Anglo-US male identity to be at its center and in command of viewing the “bodies” under dominance. How the lessons of coloniality have been instilled within different communities might make expressions of that knowledge unique to different peoples, and so its manifestations are culturally specific. Regardless of the idiosyncrasies of different cultural manifestations, the underlying functions of asserting domination, dehumanization, and exploitation are themselves rooted in the coloniality and, thus, are not inherently limited to the people exhibiting such behaviors. This chapter examines María Luisa Arroyo’s poem “still bedwetting at nine” for her construction of narrative voice that identifies and delineates the “body” as a potential site of dominance in the domestic sphere and constitutes a shift to account for the experiences of sentient-flesh survivors. Narrative voice develops a story that is told in either the first or third person. Differing, then, from motif, this literary device also has the ability to depict sentient-flesh experiences because the narrative voice guides interpretation of the details in the narrative. Although the narra­ tive voice can, at times, be collapsed with the author’s persona, the narrative voice is different in that it is a carefully crafted technique in its own right. Sentient-flesh, which is flesh that holds within it consciousness of being, is not a fabricated or crafted literary device. However, the narrative voice impacts how sentient-flesh is depicted via the kinds of relationships that it can forge and even its ability to express multi-layered understandings of a specific social interaction that carries with it cultural nuances and valences. Narrative voice that depicts sentient-flesh

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experiences of coloniality and attempts to subvert that coloniality must be cognizant of how the coloniality creates “victims” who are blamed for their experiences, as noted in the previous chapter. Narrative voice must also maintain awareness that there is a conceptual distance between this “victim” and the sentient-flesh person who is surviving. Constructing this literary device participates in twentieth- and twenty-­ first-century attempts to constitute a platform from which Latinas can articulate their experiences of oppression and the debates surrounding this endeavor. For example, the testimonio genre, first documented in the late 1980s from Latin America, creates a narrative voice that tells of an individual’s experiences of systemic violence while also detailing the realities of these systems for a larger community. The first identified testimonio, I, Rigoberta Menchú, details the experiences of Rigoberta Menchú and her community as they struggle to survive daily experiences of oppression at the hands of wealthy elites and the government while indicating the influence of international forces on these same events. Scholars such as John Beverly have identified the significance of this genre as a space in which the process of marginalization and domination from a non-Western European/Anglo-US epistemology can be shared (2001; 2004). However, and as The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy has documented, challenges to this testimonio and the genre have prompted larger tensions—especially in the academy—regarding who is allowed to narrate experiences of oppression and who dictates what counts as “truth” and “fact” within these experiences (2001). Individuals such as David Stoll (2001; 2007) and Daphne Patai (2001) are notable for their participation in these conversations and raising awareness around misgivings of “trusting” women of color as experts of their own lives, the power structures that impinge on them individually and collectively, and the power structures that produce the settings within which their exploitation and violation occur. These charges could be dismissed as reactionary against a disruption of power dynamics. Indeed, such assertions elucidate processes of discrediting Latinas and Latin American women who speak on behalf of themselves, their communities, and their ways of knowing in relation to oppressive structures and the daily-lived experiences of a coloniality. The politics surrounding who is allowed to speak of oppression is a direct result of a coloniality of power and the use of narrative as a technology of power. Documentation of transforming women of color—in general—into dehumanized objects available for manipulation and exploitation that exist at the behest of male sexual desire has

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a clearly marked path in narratives coming out of Western European and Anglo-US coloniality. As scholars such as María Lugones point to, such narratives functioned to reduce women of color who faced coloniality out of the range of protections—what little there were for Anglo-women—that being labeled “woman” afforded during Western European colonialism while simultaneously rendering them vulnerable to the exploitations created by that very label. Women—generally—suffer from patriarchal structures. Yet, the reality of living within an Anglo-US coloniality of power renders women of color, and for this book specifically Latinas, vulnerable to a violence resulting from sociosexual geo-­ racialization in a different manner than Anglo-US women, as Allison Sneider’s work on suffragettes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century indicates (2008). Also important in these conversations is the construction of vulnerability that is mapped onto certain “bodies” that renders them particularly available to social control. As Alexandra Howson notes, children’s “bodies” are particularly vulnerable due to mappings of “pre-rational” narratives onto them. It becomes important, then, to consider how micro-level experiences of coloniality play out in the intimacy of the home. Records of domestic violence rates among Latinas are sadly lacking. Not because there is a lack of such action—which would be undoubtedly positive—but because reporting rates are low, as is documented by the group ALIANZA. The question that emerges is why sexual assault in the home should be considered as resulting from Anglo-US coloniality, and what it means for Latinas to navigate it and survive it. While it might be easy to identify the stress of mass sterilization, it is more difficult to consider what the daily patterns of behavior are that are taught to individuals living within a coloniality, and how those behaviors enact and reinforce the power structures—especially when they are enacted by those who are oppressed by that coloniality. Scholar Lillian Comas-Díaz considers that there may be a link between colonialism and sexual assault (1995, 34). A coloniality of power functions by stripping specific individuals and communities of their humanity and replacing it with narratives that transform these individuals into “bodies” available for domination. As Comas-Díaz notes, the colonized position of Puerto Ricans inherently means a disempowered status, and the lessons of coloniality teach that the best way to counteract this effect within a coloniality is to assert domination. A pattern of violence results from the logical technologies of the coloniality, but it is simultaneously

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obfuscated because the people enacting the violence are also those who are colonized. Comas-Díaz, in her writings on sexual assault in Puerto Rican mainland communities, describes different ways that this cycle of abuse manipulates cultural mores and creates coping mechanisms that can be considered culturally specific. For example, among Puerto Ricans, respeto or “respect” requires that children defer to their elders as a sign of social hierarchy. Manipulating this cultural norm would mean relying on the ability to harness a child’s socialization and utilizing it to detrimental ends. Also culturally significant are the coping mechanisms that are specific to the community at hand. Among these, Comas-Díaz describes “no pensar” as noteworthy in that it functions as a strategy in which an individual does “not think” about whatever trauma or stressful situation has occurred or is occurring. The purpose of this strategy is multifold. To begin, it allows the person who has experienced or is experiencing a traumatic or stressful event to not be fixated on what has happened. This shift provides a certain amount of consciousness to not “dwell” on events that cannot be undone or stopped. It acknowledges a power dynamic that cannot be hindered even as it is not inherently the responsibility or fault of the person experiencing the trauma or stress. Next, in not fixating on the event, “no pensar” means that the individual is—hypothetically—not trapped in a reactive state of constantly responding to the event; the person now has the ability to “not think” about it, and since it is “out of mind,” it is now not part of how the person is constructing their own, individualized, reality. Also important within “no pensar,” from a theoretical perspective, is the fact that not thinking about something means it will not be spoken of and thus not face charges of inaccuracy or outright lacking trustworthiness as witnessed in the debates surrounding testimonio. While it is not possible to argue that people “don’t think” about violations they survive because of the testimonio debates, it is true that dismissive charges against those who speak of their experiences do occur, as is noted by Enriqueta Vásquez (2006). The politics surrounding who is allowed to speak of oppression is directly linked to how sentient-flesh learns of and knows a coloniality of power. In Telling to Live, the Latina Feminist Group argues on behalf of communicating experiences of systemic oppression that result in microlevel aggressions in the US. I contend that the need to speak of these experiences emerges from the sentient-flesh that has not been destroyed

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by the coloniality of power. The flesh remembers how to survive, and it navigates ways to do so both internally and in terms of knowing how to interact with the world. Dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, researchers have identified ways in which cells maintain an ability to adapt in their expression to new circumstances, such as outside stimuli, while attempting to maintain the integrity of their functions. For instance, the ability of an individual to physically grow is dependent on cells not only to allow for growth but also to remember how to grow. Early researchers such as Ernst Hadorn identified ways that cells have this coping mechanism. Yet, the notion that cells carry memory is significant when moving away from narratives of the “body” because it requires consideration of the smaller mechanisms of the flesh that both record experience and then remember how to respond to specific, or generally specific, exposure to stress. As Leonie Ringrose and Renato Paro (2004) evince, even as cells engage in division over time, the memories remain in those cells. Researchers in cognitive studies have documented the impact of stress, especially chronic stress, on the brain and its functioning. Consistent exposure to stressful situations will result in a person’s flesh creating different navigational choices that it remembers in the future so that it can survive the stressful situation. Researchers such as Lauren Chaby have documented that this exposure can result in an atypical ability for spatial development, and other researchers such as Peter Levine have identified later-life difficulties such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), different from post-traumatic stress, among other responses. There is, currently, knowledge that sexual assault—in general—will have long-lasting effects on those who have experienced it. Further, the awareness that PTSD can emerge as a result of sexual assault has been clearly demarcated in trauma studies and, specifically, recent psychological work by Levine and other researchers, such as Bessel van der Kolk (2015). What remains largely understudied is the impact of sexual assault occuring in a coloniality on sentient-flesh beings. The factors, here, of coloniality and how it targets members of different communities to gradually encourage the enactment of violence and perpetuate dehumanization against one another are important as a form of internalized colonialism. This factor elucidates the need for further research into the realities of what and how sentient-flesh records violation while also not remaining in a space of victimization when outside of the coloniality. Recollection of “no pensar,” then, illustrates one method in which sentient-flesh attempts to navigate circumstances in a manner that will

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enable survival. However, what is problematic about this method is that not thinking about something does not make it go away, does not fix it, and most especially does not allow moments of catharsis in which the emotional residue that remains in the flesh is worked out. As Babette Rothschild describes, memories recorded throughout what she describes as the “body”—but, in my interpretation, appears to highlight the flesh—its sensory perceptions, and different recording mechanisms, do not simply disappear. Not thinking about something does not make that information go away or make it so that the event itself never occurred. It could be argued that not thinking about something provides reprieve so that a reactionary stance is not the only mode of existence. However, it also means that there is no opportunity to work through the pain of the traumatic event or to allow the sentient-flesh to heal itself. While “no pensar” does navigate the traumatic event for survival, it does not have the opportunity to move beyond a survival mode. Trauma impacts the sentient-flesh and the ways that sentient-flesh learns to know a coloniality in a very intimate, internal manner. I contend that, even if someone engages in no pensar to cope with a traumatic event, sentient-flesh wants to process that information and/or expound its experiences. Levine’s sensation, image, behavior, affect, and meaning (SIBAM) model describes how, during times of extreme trauma, different sensory perceptions as well as implicit and explicit memories might become heightened or disconnected. This process enables the individual to not be so overwhelmed as to not be able to survive while simultaneously also creating a method for the information to be recorded via the sensory perceptions that are now activated. For instance, a visual image of the event might be remembered but not the physical sensation associated with it. Or, a child might reenact in detail the behaviors associated with a traumatic event but not be able to recall details of the event at all. Or, and as John Gosnell notes, sexual abuse might result in enuresis— bedwetting at night. While not every traumatic event will result in this kind of sentient-flesh response, the fact that it can happen demonstrates that the flesh can remember to protect itself. The ability of the flesh to engage in this type of protection, then, also shows the ways that the cells within the flesh learn to respond to specific types of stimuli and to navigate them as part of the survival process. Sentient-flesh knows the traumas it experiences within a coloniality of power even if that coloniality attempts to silence it from communicating that information. Within a coloniality of power, there is a technology

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of narrative that is used to promote the silencing and dismissal of those speaking out against injustices created by different social structures. As previously noted, a power dynamic exists in which some individuals are vested with authority in a coloniality and proclaim themselves to be the arbiters of truth. Explored in the previous chapter, a coloniality constructs narratives in which those whom it oppresses are depicted as responsible for their own oppression and the negative treatment they receive. Missing from such narratives is a sense that those who experience oppression have a right not to be harmed. In the construction of such a narrative, only those with power become exempt from being blamed. The impact of this maneuver as a conditioning process for those who are experiencing the violence of coloniality is multifold. Told by the coloniality to see themselves as somehow justifiably violated, self-identity within a coloniality becomes nothing more than acceptance, eventual internalized colonialism, and trauma. The identity within the coloniality becomes founded on trauma and inextricably defined by it. I contend that, outside of that coloniality, the sentient-flesh being is more than that trauma. It knows itself to be more than that trauma. If it did not, it would not recognize the trauma as trauma or have any real reaction to the trauma itself. The cells, themselves, would become so used to the trauma that instead of surviving the trauma, they would adapt to it and possibly even require that trauma to function. While some survivors experience difficulty in working through their traumatic experiences, I believe that sentient-flesh does allow this shift to happen. Representing such awareness requires crafting a narrative voice that can identify sentient-flesh experiences of trauma while also distinguishing that trauma from an innate self-fulfilling prophecy created by the Anglo-US coloniality of power. Thus, constructing a narrative voice that speaks to sentient-flesh experiences must depict traumas emerging within a coloniality while also not pathologizing the person surviving that experience. This narrative voice must also avoid lapsing into discourses that would render the survivor “only” a victim or even having a hand in the violation by promoting notions of agency within a coloniality. In considering the testimonio genre, and awareness of how the flesh records and produces memory, this task becomes one of constituting a distance between the “object” under observation and in narration by the coloniality and the sentient-flesh being who survives and navigates that coloniality. It requires going back to the flesh and identifying ways that

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sentient-flesh communicates its own knowledge. It necessitates exposing the coloniality while simultaneously elucidating sentient-flesh outside of coloniality’s dehumanizing narratives. In this chapter, Arroyo’s “still bedwetting at nine” is examined for her construction of narrative persona and voice that depicts a child’s sentient-flesh responses to sexual abuse within a Puerto Rican community during the twentieth century. This poem, told through the voice of an omniscient narrator, portrays a young girl—Luz—who urinates in her bed at night, leading family, neighbors, and doctors to prescribe a range of treatments that fail to “cure” the enuresis because they ultimately do not address the underlying problem about which they are ignorant: She is being sexually abused in her home. Arroyo’s construction of narrative voice in this poem elucidates that such sentient-flesh depictions require: (1) the ability to identify the “body” that is being abused by a family member and that then gets misinterpreted in its response to that trauma, (2) delineating the difference between the “body” being abused and the child who is surviving the abuse, and (3) a subversion of that “body” by the depiction of the girl’s sentient-flesh survival of that abuse and movement toward self-healing. This narrative voice requires an ability to perceive these three components from a space in which the narrative of the “body” is not the only platform from which this Puerto Rican child’s story can be told. It requires what Gloria Anzaldúa describes as facultad: an ability to see beneath the surface of a social phenomenon to identify the underlying mechanisms that make such a phenomenon possible. It is about a sentient-flesh knowledge that elucidates the foundations that enable coloniality’s long-lasting reach. Constructing such a narrative voice also requires awareness of how certain “bodies” are rendered especially vulnerable to abuse within a coloniality and the difficulty of discerning what the flesh tries to communicate about such experiences. Thus, it is necessary for the narrator to know how to depict sentient-flesh responses in such a way as to imbue them with a sense of being carefully crafted survival and coping strategies that enable those responses to save the individual from complete destruction. In what follows, I examine the narrative voice in Arroyo’s poem for how it identifies the “body” that is abused in the home, delineates the difference between the “body” and the young girl’s sentient-flesh, and illustrates how sentient-flesh responds in such a way that subverts the silencing mechanisms that exist within a coloniality.

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Vulnerable “Bodies” Constructing a narrative voice that attends to sentient-flesh experiences of coloniality requires identifying the “body” that has been demarcated for exploitation and domination. Constituting such a voice begins by determining the details of the story being told and the manner in which they are communicated. The narrator in “still bedwetting at nine” is neither an actor in the poem’s story nor seemingly involved with its aftermath. Indeed, this third-person narrator seems to be omniscient in knowing details that are unknown to half the characters in the poem— potentially creating a moment of dramatic irony—while nevertheless relaying details of the child’s abuse at the hands of a family member. The narrator’s depictions of the young girl’s experiences determine how the girl is interpreted. The poem begins by stating, “Luz drank liquid / as thick as mercury” that was intended “to make her bladder glow / for doctors” (2008, 1–4). The fact that she is nine years old and still urinating in her bed at night—as indicated by the title—appears to be a genuine cause for concern. Without any other information, it seems reasonable that the family will turn to a medical doctor for assistance in pinpointing the cause of this problem because it is occurring during a time in which Luz is not consciously awake to control herself. However, the narrator begins the poem by stating the name of the child before describing why she is visiting the doctor. The narrative choice to name the child before fragmenting her into a series of anatomical pieces imbues her with humanity. The resulting personhood, asserted through her name, which means “light,” contrasts with the chemical “glow” of her bladder that her doctor creates. The narrator thereby juxtaposes the child’s humanity and identity with that which is imposed by outside forces. Immediately following the opening line and the doctor’s medical analysis of the child, further information is given regarding how Luz’s bedwetting is framed for interpretation by those around her. The title is repeated, this time as a question: “Still / bedwetting at nine?” (2008, 4–5). Although the narrator transcribes this statement as a question, several elements of judgment infuse into its words. The idea that this action is “still” happening indicates that it should have stopped some time beforehand. As such, the question about why it should have stopped becomes all the more evident in the child’s age: She is nine years old. Her age, alone, renders her someone who should no longer be urinating

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in her bed at night. The opening line of the medical doctor’s inquiry into her bladder becomes clear: Something must be anatomically or biologically wrong with the child. Importantly, she has no control over her flesh or the fact that she is urinating while asleep. Yet, in recalling Norbert Elias’s work on sociocultural influences and the civilizing process as one of education to teach self-control, Luz’s “body” emerges as holding the cause of her unacceptable behavior. As the poem continues, this vision of the child as a “body” maintains. The narrator describes how the doctor prescribes “pills” to Luz that do not taste “like the tic tacs and m&ms” (2008, 6, 7). The fact that Luz compares the pills the doctor gives her to candy appears innocent on the surface. Indeed, it seems almost a given that a pill—simply in shape— would physically resemble candy and therefore be reasonably compared to similarly shaped candies. However, the narrator continues by noting that the candies that Luz compares to her pills are laid out in a trail by her “tío” to play “hide and seek” in her father’s closet while her father is at work (2008, 8–11). In this instant, Luz’s comparison of the pills to the candy, her experience of receiving the candy, and what might be underlying her enuresis come to the forefront via the narrative voice’s diction as well as what is alluded to but not directly told. The candy and pills become united as objects that are provided by figures of authority in Luz’s life. As previously noted, “respeto” is a common practice within Puerto Rican households, especially between children and adults where children are expected to defer to adults’ ministrations and demands (1995, 39). Respeto does not inherently have negative connotations because at its core it is an understanding of a hierarchy that is born out of wisdom, reciprocal relationships, and understandings of dynamics such as age, socioeconomic class, and more. However, Luz’s acceptance of adults’ actions toward her draws attention to the vulnerability of this small, female child who is being trained to accept as a given what a doctor and older man demand of her and her own sense of physical integrity. If she takes pills that do not taste good, is she being trained to accept other things? As the narrative voice indicates via the depiction of the child’s experiences, Luz is portrayed as a “body” that must be either controlled/stopped from wetting the bed or as an object that her uncle uses in some sort of “play” activity. The uncle’s use of the candy and “games” in this poem emerges as both sinister in his ultimate goals as well as manipulative in transferring a fictitious responsibility onto Luz by making her appear as a participant in

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her abuse via the transformation of childhood activities. Luz follows the “trail” of sweets throughout the house. On the surface, no one is forcing her to follow the candy throughout the house or into the closet with her uncle. Yet, it is significant to remember that she is nine years old. While it could be argued that “nine” is more than old enough to know not to go into a closet with an older man, several key elements must be recalled: (1) She is told they are playing a “game”; (2) she is alone with this man in the house and so he must be considered trustworthy, thereby giving her no reason not to trust him; and (3) she is nine years old. He is an older man, as indicated by his being her uncle, and so he should know better than to bring her into a closet. The very dynamics of this activity appear to manifest the patriarchal structures and other structures that Howson (2013) notes, which render Luz a vulnerable “body” available for exploitation. Indeed, the narrator indicates how Luz is positioned into an object that is tricked into being abused and one that can be potentially blamed for the abuse given how the abuser manipulates the situation. In recollection of the first chapter of this book, if a mother can be blamed for overpopulation of an entire island, then it is not a stretch to say that a small child can be manipulated into being made to feel responsible for her own abuse. Finally, the poem divulges—without actually stating—the underlying cause of Luz’s enuresis. It is not possible for only two people to play hide and seek in a closet where they are both standing. Implicit to the game “hide and seek” is actually “hiding” and determining what is actually being “sought.” In this instance, the narrative voice indicates that Luz is being sexually abused by her uncle. Two important components emerge by how this information is gleaned from the statements. First, the narrator does not come outright and state what Luz is experiencing. A kind of “no pensar” emerges in which the child is neither naming nor openly thinking about the abuse. When given the pills, she does not think about the abuse but instead makes a comparison to the candy she is given. Second, the narrator does not detail what the abuse entails, thereby refusing to provide possible moments of titillation or entertainment by detailing the child’s experiences in the closet. The narrator appears to honor Luz’s lack of desire to openly discuss what is happening and echoes the Latina Feminist Group’s assertions regarding the right of all individuals to determine what they divulge regarding experiences of oppression. Instead, what occurs in the closet is translated through the intricacies of the childhood game, itself, and the narrator refuses to

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participate in depicting any more information. Importantly, the narrator is providing this information about the sexual abuse in the same stanza that begins by describing the very intimate exploration of Luz’s bladder. The connection to be made here is between Luz’s nightly urination and her uncle’s treatment of her as a “body” to be sexually exploited. As Gosnell has contended, a connection potentially exists between enuresis and childhood sexuality assault. Thus, Luz’s enuresis can be perceived as linked with sexual assault.

Delineating Objects The narrative voice must also engage in delineating the “body” that is here marked as dysfunctional from the sentient-flesh child experiencing abuse. As the narrator continues, and breaks into a new stanza, Luz’s experiences of both intervention into her “body”/into her flesh and continued abuse are detailed. The second stanza begins with a repetition of the question and accusation “still bedwetting at nine?” (12). Indicative of the social stigma surrounding bedwetting after a certain age, this statement also demonstrates that Luz continues to wet the bed. Despite the doctor’s ministrations—the fact that her bladder was made to “glow” and then she took pills—her physical symptoms have not been stopped. While it could be speculated that she did not receive the “correct” treatment, the continued experience of enuresis in this instance demonstrates that Luz’s action might not be caused by an inherent or biological defect as was initially presumed. A question could be asked as to why the doctor does not investigate further beyond pathologizing her “body.” The narrator describes how the doctor’s failure to abrogate the enuresis results in the family looking for alternatives that can cure what Luz’s “body” refuses to stop doing. The family turns to a neighbor, someone that the narrator describes as “La abuela next door” (2008, 13). Once again, the issue of respect comes through in these lines given the narrator’s specifically chosen language. The narrator does not describe la abuela (the grandmother) as being in any way connected to Luz beyond living next door. The use of “la” instead of a possessive pronoun indicates a lack of familial connection. As such, there is no family relationship in the same manner that Luz’s uncle is related to her. While the woman is not described as a doctor or indicated to have any sort of licensing, her age in this moment is where the issue of respect comes through. The grandmother is older, wiser, and also female. As such,

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she might be someone who can be looked to for guidance with a small, female child in mind. The narrator, in detailing the older woman’s ministrations toward Luz, clarifies that once again the child is treated as a dysfunctional object rather than a sentient-flesh being in need of compassion. The older woman has Luz urinate on a hot brick so the “rancid steam” will immediately hit her vulva, which is described as “heating her there / hairless” (2008, 16–17). What is being administered could be considered a type of homeopathic remedy in which the cause of Luz’s trouble—her urethra—is being directly addressed with steam. The steam could also provide heat to sooth any muscles or passageways that might be sore or blocked. Indeed, home healthcare advocates such as Linda Page (1997) detail that some home remedies can be used to assist with bladder problems. Yet, importantly, in this moment of the poem the aspect of Luz that is still being focused upon is a component of her “body,” the part that is misbehaving and needing to be brought under control. But in this case, it is not only her bladder that is being addressed but the entire vulva, as the steam from the brick will not only hit the opening of her urethra but also all other aspects of the vulva. The distance between the older woman’s ministrations and Luz’s experience and interpretation of them becomes starkly clear through the narrator’s depictions in this moment of the poem. The steam that arises from the brick is described as “rancid” (2008, 16). The choice of remedy, urinating on a hot brick, might be compared to other home remedies, such as sitting in a hot bath or being provided some other kind of steam. Yet, while urine is sterile, it is turned into steam that is directly focused to hit the vulva. The word “rancid” indicates not only an unsanitary practice but also carries connotations of decomposition: something acrid or foul. Why the child should be forced to have something bearing these meanings hitting her in such a sensitive area of her anatomy becomes a cause for concern. Further, the fact that she is only nine years old indicates not only her vulnerability and the need to follow what the adults around her tell her to do but also the fact that her anatomy has not finished developing. She is still young, and as such, the ministrations that she is experiencing are not happening to an object but instead to sentient-flesh that is still in the process of learning and growing. What Luz learns in this moment, as indicated by the narrator, emerges through the humiliation of how she understands what is happening to her. The “rancid steam” is described as “heating her there / hairless”

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(2008, 16–17). The vulva itself is both exposed and not identified with its anatomically correct terminology. Instead, the narrator’s diction indicates that the child knows where the steam is hitting her—“heating” her—but does not have a vocabulary for it. The sensory perception of “heating” indicates the physical experience of what Luz is going through and also the difficulty she has in expressing it. In this moment, she is both hyper-aware of what the older neighbor is having her do while also being unable to express what it is doing to her beyond the fact that it is “heating” her in a specific area. The narrative voice’s diction in this moment and choice of elaboration illustrates that there is a delineation that must be made. Here, the narrator distinguishes between how people are viewing Luz, her “body,” her inability to stop urinating in her bed, and the state of confusion in which she exists caused by the literal lack of information regarding the meaning of her anatomy and experiences. In recollection of Howson’s discussion of the vulnerable child “body,” Luz’s age is compounded with her lack of knowledge. And yet, the fact that Luz knows what is happening in terms of a basic series of events illustrates her own ability to discern how other individuals are viewing her and what her “value” is within their gaze. Importantly, the narrator describes the “there”—the vulva—as “hairless” (2008, 17). It is hardly odd that a nine-year-old would not have grown hair in this region of her flesh as she would be unlikely to have gone through puberty. Yet, the word itself is emphasized, starting at line 17 and yet not capitalized. While the narrator is, perhaps, creating a reminder that Luz is a small child, the issue emerges that the skin that is being heated by rancid steam is without any protection or any intervention. The feeling of having that steam rise up has no interference or buffer to stop it from hitting the skin. Instead, the experience of the elderly woman’s home cure hits Luz directly. Her small, still growing flesh has been exposed and harmed. Luz’s flesh is actually what is targeted by the uncle’s desire, the doctor’s and the abuela’s “cures,” and the family’s intervention.

Flesh-Memory The narrative voice in this poem engages in communicating the experiences of the sentient-flesh child. The enuresis could be considered to be caused by the uncle’s sexual assault and further exacerbated by the doctor’s and abuela’s interventions, as it is this region of Luz’s flesh that is

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being targeted. In some ways, the nightly urination could be perceived as the flesh’s method for communicating because she is otherwise unable to communicate with the adults around her to receive help. The end of this poem suggests that Luz’s uncle stops sexually assaulting her when she goes through puberty. Similarly, the enuresis resolves itself. However, it is not clear if the timeline of the events fully coincides or if the fact of her going through puberty results in both issues altering over a brief period of time. What the narrative voice makes clear, though, is that Luz’s sentient-flesh speaks for her and retains the memories and knowledge that she is unable to communicate to those around her. As the poem progresses, the narrator brings Luz’s experiences forward by three years to when she is twelve and divulges what happens to her after reaching this point in her physical maturation in relation to the abuse. The narrator describes how the “rags” that Luz put between her legs to absorb her bodily fluids “rusted with her first period” (2008, 18–19). Luz begins her menstrual cycle when she is twelve years old. This event marks her physical movement from what is described as childhood, into an early stage of young adulthood, and becoming an adult female. Further, the narrator’s decision to compare “hairless” on line 17 with “Three years later” without any information between these terms asks what happens between the period after hairless and the capitalized “t” in three. The appearance of the “rags” implies that Luz has continued to be sexually abused for several more years following the start of the poem. Her childhood is therefore marked by chronic rape. And yet, by not detailing this information explicitly, the narrator allows a silence to envelop the narrative space that speaks to the hardships Luz has endured while also allowing the integrity of not having to divulge everything. The movement, then, to know that Luz has been stuffing rags “between her legs” indicates that she has continued to endure: Her enuresis has continued to be the only response she can communicate about the sexual abuse occurring in her home. In some ways, the fact that she starts her menstrual cycle normalizes the rags so that their place between her legs is warranted by a natural physical function rather than resulting from an abusive situation. The “nightly rags” that Luz had endured prior to the onset of menstruation also indicates her family’s inability to resolve the enuresis’s underlying cause. The narrator, following the use of a comma, breaks the line and writes “her nightly chorros” (2008, 21). The narrator indicates the continued presence of the bedwetting and the fact that it is has become

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almost ritualistic, something that can be expected to occur and hence Luz’s rags appear all the more necessary because they can either hide the urine or stop it from hitting the bed. This issue remains unresolved. Further, the use of the word “chorros,” for “streams,” indicates that the urine had not been a little or small amount but a full-on stream of fluid. However, knowledge of the source of the enuresis—the uncle raping Luz—demonstrates that although her “body” is interpreted as defective, her sentient-flesh knows her to be attempting to survive in egregious conditions. Further, and in recollection of Levine’s SIBAM model and Gosnell’s work, the urination—coming from the relatively same region of the flesh as the anatomy being targeted—becomes reflective of the overall experience that Luz has in relation to the abuse. The narrator’s insight into why Luz experiences enuresis participates, potentially, in how the sentient-flesh is depicted as surviving in this child’s life. Immediately following the statement of her “nightly chorros,” the narrator breaks line and describes the “trail of dulces” (29). The narrator creates a juxtaposition in this instance between the “stream” of urine and the “trail” of sweets. Physically similar to each other in shape, the two are nevertheless conceptually different in terms of what they mean in the poem. People in the poem blame Luz for the stream; it is the source of her shame and her social inappropriateness. Yet, it is the uncle’s trail of sweets that is left unremarked, remaining just a “sweet” guiding path. And yet, neither of these are actually what they appear. The “trail” is actually a sinister snaking through the home to exert violent control over the child. In contrast, the “stream” of urine functions as a type of sentient-flesh outcry regarding the abuse that she suffers in recollection of Levine and Gosnell. While one faces social stigma, it is the one that receives no ill-treatment who should be judged. The quiet dignity that Luz has had to endure as she survives the abuse is honored in the remaining lines of the poem that infuse her sentient-flesh with humanity. In the last two lines, the narrator describes how the urination and the trail of sweets, following Luz’s first menstruation, “suddenly / stopped” (2008, 30–31). The fact that these two actions end at the same time is not mysterious. The uncle, a pedophile, stops having sexual desire for Luz once she moves into puberty. The urination stops at the same time because the assault has stopped. The narrative voice breathes a sigh of relief into these lines and also a quiet sadness that it took him deciding to not physically abuse the child in order for the abuse to stop. Luz has endured years of sexual abuse and the social

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stigma of bedwetting at an older age. Yet, rather than pointing fingers or attacking anyone for not knowing what was happening to Luz, the narrator instead focuses on the fact that the two behaviors, behaviors that were most harming Luz, have stopped; there are relief and the opportunity for her to ultimately move forward. She has survived. She is a survivor.2

Narrative Voice of Sentient-Flesh The construction of a narrative voice within poetry that details experiences of oppression can enable the depiction of sentient-flesh in contrast to a “body” that is under control. The narrative voice must engage a process of identifying, delineating, and subverting the narrative of the “body” that allows that oppression to occur. Indeed, in order to bring flesh back to the bone of Latina experience and enflesh those realities, it is vital for the narrative voice to know what the sentient-flesh has recorded, the structures that it has navigated, and the ways that it has attempted to communicate to the world around it what has occurred. Doing so means having compassion for those experiences, avoiding a victim-blaming narrative or focusing solely on responses to oppression at a superficial level rather than taking those symptoms to be part of a larger context and social experience. It also means directly contending with a coloniality of power that has actively attempted to narrate Latina experiences and render Latinas voiceless and has attacked them when they do attempt to tell of their experiences of power. The integrity imbued into the narrative voice constitutes a redirection of attention away from a coloniality and hyper-reflexivity that continues a process of non-directional response and instead focuses attention onto the issues at hand, such as how that coloniality constitutes micro-level violence and thereby attempts to disarm the communities it controls while finding ways to manifest itself through processes of power domination.

Notes 1. Anyone acting on behalf of coloniality can be named as an agent of its systems. However, and as this book notes, a distinction must be made regarding those who act on its behalf as a result of continuous domination and indoctrination and those who act on its behalf as a result of having a controlling stake in it, a response to create an opportunity to survive by those

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who are colonized and accepted that coloniality as a means of survival versus those who are part of the coloniality. Here, arguments can be made regarding internalized colonialism and being a part of the coloniality. 2.  These statements are not written to provide an over-celebratory tone. However, it is important to honor the sentient-flesh of this child and acknowledge that at the age of 12, she has endured chronic trespasses. These lines are therefore written out of respect for Luz the character and also her right to make choices about what will happen and if/when she decides to narrate her own experiences.

References ALIANZA. “Fact Sheet.” DVAlianza.org. 2009. Web. 11 Jan 1014. http:// www.dvalianza.org/images/stories/ResourcePubs/fact_sheets/factsheet2010.pdf. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 3rd edition. Aunt Lute, 2003. Arias, Arturo, ed. The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy. U of Minnesota P, 2001. Arroyo, María Luisa. “Still Bedwetting at Nine.” Gathering Words/Recogiendo Palabras. Bilingual, 2008, p. 46. Beverley, John. “What Happens When the Subaltern Speaks: Rigoberta Menchú, Multicultarlism, and the Presumption of Equal Worth.” The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, edited by Arturo Arias, U Minnesota P, 2001, pp. 219–36. ———. Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth. U Minnesota P, 2004. Chaby, Lauren, et al. “Does Chronic Unpredictable Stress During Adolescence Affect Spatial Cognition in Adulthood?” PLOS One, vol. 10, no. 11, 2015, 1–12. Collins, Patricia Hill. “It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation.” Hypatia, vol. 13, no. 3 (1998), 62–82. Comas-Díaz, Lillian. “Puerto Ricans and Sexual Child Abuse.” Sexual Abuse in Nine North American Cultures: Treatment and Prevention, edited by Lisa Aronson Fontes, Sage, 1995, pp. 31–66. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, 1241–99. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process, Volumes 1 and 2. Translated by E. Jephcott, Blackwell, 1994. Fried, Susana. “Violence Against Women.” Health and Human Rights, vol. 6, no. 2, 2003, 88–111. Gosnell, John. “Enuresis: The Cause That Dares Not Speak Its Name.” British Medical Journal, vol. 315, no. 7105, 1997, 435.

68  R. HURTADO Hadorn, Ernst. “Transdetermination in Cells.” Scientific American, vol. 219, no. 5, 1978, 110–14. Howson, Alexandra. The Body in Society: An Introduction. Polity Press, 2013. Latina Feminist Group. Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios. Duke UP, 2001. Levine, Peter. The Body as Healer: Transforming Trauma and Anxiety. 1992. ———. Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing. North Atlantic, 2007. Lugones, María. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia, vol. 25, no. 4, 2010, 743–59. Menchú, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, Verso, 1983. Mirandé, Alfredo. Hombres Y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture. Persues, 1997. Page, Linda. How to Be Your Own Herbal Pharmacist. Healthy Healing, 1997. Patai, Daphne. “Whose Truth? Iconicity and Accuracy in the World of Testimonial Writing.” The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy. Edited by Arturo Arias, U Minnesota P, 2001, pp. 270–87. Purvin, Diane. “At the Crossroads and in the Crosshairs: Social Welfare Policy and Low-Income Women’s Vulnerability to Domestic Violence.” Social Problems, vol. 54, no. 2, 2007, 188–210. Ringrose, Leonie, and Renato Paro. “Epigenetic Regulation of Cellular Memory by the Polycomb and Trithorax Group Proteins.” Annual Review of Genetics, vol. 38, 2004, 413–43. Rothschild, Babette. The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. W. W. Norton, 2000. Sneider, Allison. Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–1929. Oxford UP, 2008. Stoll, David. “David Stoll Breaks the Silence.” The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, edited by Arturo Arias, U Minnesota P, 2001, pp. 118–20. ———. Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Westview, 2007. van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and the Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin, 2015. Vásquez, Enriqueta. Enriqueta Vásquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito Del Norte. Edited by Dionne Espinoza, Arté Publico, 2006. Warner, Sam. “Constructing Femininity: Models of Child Sexual Abuse and the Production of ‘Woman’.” Challenging Women: Psychology’s Exclusions, Feminist Possibilities, edited by Erica Burman, et al., Open UP, 1996, pp. 36–53.

Sentient Narratives: Similes, Metaphors, and Dusmic Poetics Within the Senses

Subversion has thus far detailed the distinctions between the “body” that is depicted in coloniality—which enables both macro- and micro-level violence against Puerto Rican women—and sentient-flesh. The motif of enfleshment and importance of narrative persona have been examined to consider how literary devices can strategically make this distinction in order to bring flesh back to the bone and fashion artistic platforms for speaking against social injustice. However, engaging in a decolonial turn—as described by Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2011)—requires more than showing that sentient-flesh is not the “body.” It also requires engaging a process of healing from the wounds inflicted by a coloniality both historically and contemporarily. It means divining processes of healing that exist beyond those of the coloniality while not falling into an oppositional binary provided by that coloniality. This divina­tion means going back to the sentient-flesh for the knowledge that it holds. It means discerning the ways that the technologies of power within a coloniality have functioned to distance Puerto Rican women from their sentient-flesh, to identify the aspects of that distancing, and perceive the sentient-flesh that exists beyond those technologies. Literary art depictions of these steps provide insights into how sentient-flesh not only survives trauma but also creates potential for its own healing. In this chapter, I explore how sensory perception similes and metaphors that exist within the literary arts provide one technique for such an undertaking. © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hurtado, Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05731-2_4

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Important to the previously noted process is an understanding that “healing” must be decolonized. In Women of Color, Lillian Comas-Díaz and Beverly Green describe the need for curative mental health practices that acknowledge and engage women’s varying racial, ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic realities of healing. This call reflects that, prior to the late twentieth century and even to today, the “standard” for health care was/is a default “norm” of white, middle class, male (Katz and Taylor 1988; Pinderhughes 1989). Although this standard is hardly inadequate for white, middle-class men, it is not substantively useful for women of color. What such a standard cannot account for is the ways that coloniality targets the sentient-flesh of these women. Indeed, it illustrates a significant aspect of reality for women of color in a coloniality: It is expected that they conform to such a standard, and when they cannot— as described previously in this book—they are found faulty if not inherently deficient.1 The act of decolonizing healing begins in the sentient-flesh. In this chapter, I explore Alba Ambert’s A Perfect Silence to identify how simile and metaphor can be strategically deployed within the literary arts to constitute a nuanced understanding of healing via dusmic poetics. Sensory perception similes and metaphors are literary devices that call upon the sensations born out of different flesh-based perceptions to translate the impact of different events and elucidate how the sentient-­ flesh learns of, navigates, and attempts to heal from those events. Construction of similes and metaphors starts by understanding that the communication of certain types of information begins where that knowledge is born: within the flesh. In recollection of the previous chapter, similes and metaphors can link to work conducted by individuals, such as Peter Levine and his work on the SIBAM model (2010). Further, and drawing from scholarship on Puerto Rican “dusmic poetry” that demonstrates how language within poetry can create a decolonial turn (Algarín and Piñero 1975), I propose that sentient-flesh dusmic metaphors and similes can identify the need for nuanced healing methods. This shift in discussing trauma and healing directly challenges depictions of women of color’s deficiency for healing that abound in an Anglo-US coloniality of power. Such narratives divert focus onto the colonized rather than the power structures from which historical and current traumas emerge. For example, scholarship in cultural trauma theory provides insights into the impact of traumas on a community level. Scholars such as Jeffrey Alexander and Ron Eyerman offer analyses of

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how social coping mechanisms develop at the moment of trauma and in the time thereafter. In their respective works, they describe how knowledge of trauma is transmitted intergenerationally, by what are described within the field as “carriers,” and can form even the identities of future generations through the framework of a “traumatic” or traumatized past (Alexander 2004, 11–12; Eyerman 2004, 62). Such language and discussions demonstrate how narratives regarding “victim playing” function within a coloniality. For, rather than intergenerational transmission of trauma knowledge being taken as a demonstration of resilience, the communities themselves appear pathological in their adherence to connecting identity with trauma. Further, what remains relatively uncritiqued is that the traumatizing events were themselves manifestations of the coloniality at hand and, as such, are only parts of a larger spectrum of violence and domination that continue to today. In consideration of Eyerman’s discussion of narrating trauma and identity construction, and the realities of what narrative style can accomplish, I pause here to consider the power of depicting what it means to live within a coloniality and simultaneously construct nuanced methods of healing via creative acts. Larry Churchill and Sandra Churchill contend that: [n]arration is the forward movement of description of actions and events that makes possible the backward action of self-understanding. It is essentially a juncture, or seam, in the fabric of forward living in which interpretations are offered. As such, narration constitutes a threshold phenomenon, and the narrator occupies a liminal place from which the pre-liminary events of the past are given order and coherence and post-liminary possibilities are discovered. When stories are told about ourselves, about our lives, narration becomes a way of taking up again our own past and also pondering, ordering, or interpreting the meaning of what may come. Unlike the careful factual description of history, narrative asserts the human meaning of events, creating, often metaphorically, the categories for interpreting those events. (1982, 74–75, emphasis in original)

Depicting experiences of trauma in order to heal requires intentionality in terms of what is divulged and the ends that are sought. When depicting sentient-flesh experiences, the narrative persona—as noted in previous chapters—determines how the readership can engage what is being told while also being guided outside of a coloniality of power and its

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narrative technologies. The act of narrating, though, also requires a consideration of the techniques best suited to convey that information and engage that decolonial turn. Such analysis raises questions as to why traumatic events that impact an entire community or even function as micro-level manifestations of the coloniality should be framed as something inherently negative rather than demonstrations of that community’s resilience—why the telling appears pathological in framing future “traumatized identities” rather than as specifically attuned coping mechanisms. For instance, and as scholars have demonstrated in recent decades, the concept of “hembrismo,” which had originally demarcated adherence to stereotypical servitude among Puerto Rican women, has been subsequently reclaimed and transformed into a source of empowerment (Boyd-Franklin and García-Preto 1994; Comas-Díaz 1995; Morales and Reyes 1998). Importantly, the reclaiming is not undertaken to substantiate power structures but to challenge them—finding strength in the refusal to be decimated via subject–position imposition. This act of reclaiming hembrismo demonstrates a refusal to pathologize the ways in which sentient-­ flesh has navigated structures of power while simultaneously finding empowerment within those navigations.2 Some studies of women who engage hembrismo as a source of empowerment report higher levels of stress among these women. However, it would not be possible to find no stress among people who are navigating dehumanizing structures. I posit that such findings, rather than undermining the potential of hembrismo, actually indicate the strains created within a coloniality rather than a deficiency in the women. Ambert’s novel, which depicts a woman’s narration of her life while she is held in a psychiatric ward after a failed suicide attempt, utilizes similes and metaphors that call upon sensory perceptions. Her suicide attempt and later physical pains could be considered, within a coloniality, part of her deficiency. In this frame-narrative novel, for example, the narrator continuously references having a headache: This physical sensation is directly linked to depictions of her bringing the pieces of her life together as a jigsaw puzzle, in Spanish a “rompecabeza”—quite literally, a head-breaker, and something that causes her physical pain. Current scientific research suggests a link between childhood trauma and later-­ life pain-related problems (Sachs-Ericsson et al. 2009). I contend that the use of such sensory perception similes and metaphors, in combination with this knowledge born out of contemporary scientific research,

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hinders the opportunity to pathologize this character. Indeed, while all metaphors, in some way, call upon the senses to convey information, this novel engages the qualities of each sensory perception—whether it is taste, sound, hearing, sight, touch, or smell—to convey the essence of the protagonist’s experiences as a young Puertorriqueña who faces different types of macro- and micro-level violence. Metaphors and similes are important tools for authors to use in order to convey information that is otherwise difficult to express (Black 1993). Conceptual metaphor theorists provide a model in which metaphors function to translate a known concept/object into an unknown concept/object that then makes the unknown “knowable” or “known” (Gwyn 1999; Lakoff 1993). In this process, the producer of the metaphor takes a position in which reliance on a particular concept is anticipated to be known, thus requiring the creator to have an awareness of the audience and an understanding of things to which the audience will be able to connect (Ortony 1993). Importantly, a metaphor might be unsuccessful if the audience has no prior connection to the object or concept being drawn upon to furnish information about the new and previously unknown object or concept. Thus, metaphors require an audience with an agreed upon knowledge base and an understanding of how the concepts, objects, and experiences— or whatever is being utilized in the metaphor to constitute new information—work. Manuel de Vega argues “metaphors are a special case of hybrid meaning because, although they refer to abstract ideas, their linguistic support is still concrete (perceptual and motor words)” (191). Although the metaphor works in abstraction to convey an essence through implied meanings, its basis and success emerges from the very tangible realities from which meanings are drawn and of which the audience will know. Scientists such as Eileen Cordillo have shown that there is a process by which metaphors move from being new, or “novel,” and into a process of conventionalization within the brain in order to reduce the amount of actual work that must be undertaken to make meaning of the metaphor (2012). The more commonplace the metaphor becomes, the more “known” its meanings are, the less physical work it takes for an individual to process it. Further, the type of information that the metaphor calls upon can impact how the flesh responds and translates that metaphor into knowledge. For example, metaphors that rely on texture have been found to activate the somatosensory cortex (Lacey et al. 2012). Metaphors can call upon memories of the flesh utilizing that perception—as with

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the example just noted of physical texture—to make or discern an essence that the author or speaker is attempting to convey. Not all metaphors that rely on specific sensory perceptions have been shown to activate the corresponding parts of the brain that regulate those perceptions. However, research has shown that some types of metaphor that are deployed can activate different parts of the brain—instigating different patterns of processing to enable the metaphors to be translated in meaning so that they can be discerned. The flesh literally churns the information over in order to engage and know it. For Puerto Ricans in the mainland US, use of language in conveying their experiences and moving outside of a coloniality has been of great importance from the twentieth century onward. Writers and activists such as Miguel Algarín and Miguel Piñero challenge the notion that writing is just a hobby or something that elite members of society perform. Instead, as they argue, poetry is vital for the creation of a revolutionary practice in that it builds cultural and community survival techniques against a colonial imposition. They describe this action as “dusmic,” and cite as example Sandra María Esteves’s poetry in which she takes the negativity that she is given and transforms it in into something positive (129). Importantly, she is not creating a Hegelian dialect. Instead, and as they note, Puerto Ricans “fight with words,” and the “dusmic” allows a reconceptualization of Puerto Rican possibilities without having to rely on unlikely visions of transformation and healing that are not in line with either actual possibilities or community needs (24). Ultimately, the dusmic becomes a realistic process of both portrayal and healing that moves away from dichotomous discourses that make something either good or bad. Instead, the poetry itself becomes a space for transformation. I contend that—although Algarín and Piñero are specifically discussing poetry—the concept of “dusmic” can be extended to other forms of literary arts. This extension becomes a “dusmic poetic” that can account for genres such as novels and fictions that engage many of the same techniques of poetry but do so in a lengthened form. Importantly, and as “dusmic poetry” indicates, cultural valences are present within similes and metaphors as culturally created and audience-tailored techniques. Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of facultad here becomes vital for understanding the knowledge that sentient-flesh holds regarding how social structures work and then become represented in sensory perception similes and metaphors. She described facultad as “an ability to see beneath the surface of things” and gives examples of

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walking down a street and being able to sense if there might be danger and similar experiences (60–61). In many ways, facultad is what happens when the flesh speaks of its knowledge in a way that discerns what is happening in a social—potentially macro- and micro-level coloniality— setting. This information of sensory perception and the way that the flesh speaks of its knowledge can be conveyed as metaphors and similes. However, these are not just metaphors and similes. Instead, they register a shift in perception regarding how facultad is understood beyond the individuals experiencing it. I believe that facultad is part of a decolonial turn in which listening to what the flesh wants to convey is movement toward understanding and embracing sentient-flesh beyond the boundaries of coloniality. As discussed in the previous chapters, portrayals of Puerto Rican women in their relationship to power structures require an understanding of these women as more than victims of coloniality without losing sight of the fact that the coloniality does exist and impact their lives. I turn, here, to Iris Lopez’s work on reproductive justice in relation to Puerto Rican women to further engage this contradictory paradox. Lopez argues for what she describes as an “integral approach” that recognizes that US sterilization policies regarding Puerto Rican women were maleficent while simultaneously not reducing Puerto Rican women to only ever victims. What I believe emerges from this integral approach is a need to understand that the oppressed within a coloniality are denied agency but that does not mean they do not have—or have an ability to have—agency outside of that coloniality. Taking a decolonial turn is the only way that agency can be recognized as such and divested of the pathologization that the agency would be vested with inside of the coloniality. This turn elucidates the vitality of culturally specific techniques that emerge from the sentient-flesh, such as Comas-Díaz’s concept of “Spirita,” which she notes as something that develops out of facultad (2008). She describes Spirita as a spiritual process that “alchemize(s) oppression” (17). Spirita—rather than succumbing to oppressive discourses or ideologies or attempting to negotiate the terms of oppression as she notes white, feminist spirituality attempts to do—provides a revolutionary praxis in which the resilience born out of survival translates into a sentient-flesh creativity by moving through and beyond the boundaries of oppression. Spirita, as I conceive of it for the purposes of engaging and depicting sentient-flesh in the literary arts, is the resilience

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to constitute new methods of healing that are born out of facultad and tailored within a dusmic poetic. This alchemy is fostered by the ability to draw from culturally constituted spaces that exist both in and out of the coloniality and that maintain awareness of the coloniality’s imposition but are not limited to them. These trainings do not emerge from Enlightenment concepts of the “body,” the “brain,” or medicine, but rather out of an alternative way of knowing the world that exists beyond the boundaries of Anglo-US and Western European coloniality and its impositions. This chapter considers the significance of what to do with knowledge of trauma outside of coloniality so as not to be limited to a reactionary relationship with a coloniality of power. In what follows, I examine Ambert’s novel for depictions of sentient-flesh created by sensory perception similes and metaphors. Within A Perfect Silence, sensory perception similes and metaphors describe the experience of coloniality in macro- and micro-level formations and construct a decolonial turn for how “healing” is conceptualized and engaged. It begins by framing how to interpret the protagonist’s experiences of trauma via the sensory perception metaphors and similes within the novel. Next, it demarcates how the traumas have manifested in both macro- and micro-level ways to target both entire communities and specific aspects of the flesh. It finishes by considering the kind of decolonial turn that is required to shift how a process of healing can be narrated for individuals who are caught within a coloniality, and the kinds of possibilities that are made available by this decolonial turn.

Metaphors, Similes, and the Need to Heal How to depict experiences of coloniality and its traumas requires detailing facts and conveying the essences of the experiences. A Perfect Silence opens as a frame-narrative fictional account of a woman named Blanca who, after attempting to commit suicide, is brought to a psychiatric facility during which time the pages of the novel function as a bildungsroman of her life. The narrative persona switches from first- to third-person narrator depending on whether Blanca is in the ever-present now of the novel or her history is being detailed. As part of the process for detailing her experiences, similes and metaphors accompany the “facts” of her life. The similes and metaphors express the experience she has of these details. They also provide critical commentary on how to frame these

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experiences as having sentient-substance in order to avoid pathologizing the protagonist. The novel opens with the first-person narrator describing the moments leading up to her unsuccessful suicide attempt and experience of waking up in the hospital. The first metaphor to emerge in the novel is that of color and vision, with the opening line of the novel stating, “Convinced that death is darkness, I want to be sure. Black and still all memories sponged clean” (11). Here, darkness—which relies on vision—moves from being a state of lacking light to actually have a substantive meaning. Recalling Vega’s claims regarding the concreteness from which metaphoric abstractions emerge, for “death” to be “darkness,” light would be the opposite of dark and life would be the opposite of death. Life becomes light and darkness and its implied blackness would become the absence of light, life, and white. As the novel progresses, the first-person narrator’s name—“Blanca”—is introduced as physically bothering the narrator when she hears it: “external voices bear deep down into my consciousness like rusty nails”—and cause pain (13). The contrast between her name—Blanca translating in English to mean “white”—and the darkness and “black” that she seeks in the first lines of the novel becomes clear in the metaphorical meaning. To engage darkness, to search out and create “black,” would be to construct that which is her opposite: Blanca would be obliterated or completely absorbed. The second significant metaphor to emerge in the early section of the novel is that of physical sensation and corporeal fragmentation. While depicting the process of attempting suicide, Blanca states, “I swallow the pills one by one. I gulp and pause holding the heaves down. Gulp, gag, pause” (11). The actions appear automatic, something routine and planned out in a similar manner to the way a machine goes about its work. Missing is the fact that a person is engaged in an almost ritualistic act. Blanca, instead, appears to be procedurally taking her life. Recalling Levine’s SIBAM model, Blanca only details the activity rather than the vision, the hearing, or any other aspect of the experience. In combination with this seeming depersonalization of activity is a later statement by Blanca when emerging from a comatose state in the hospital: “in a surprising act of insubordination, my arm refuses to obey” (12). The idea that her physical self—the flesh that makes up her corporeal existence— would be so automatized in the one description and yet not part of her sentient control in the next appears contradictory. However, when recalling that Blanca wishes to be her opposite, it becomes clear why her flesh

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does not respond to her: Being distanced from her flesh assists her in not being herself. A possibility that previous chapters have identified emerges: What of the Cartesian mind/body split that has so plagued Western European Enlightenment philosophies and medicine to today with its added structuring in ideologies of coloniality? It would be easy enough to read Blanca’s desire to distance herself as “mental” and “physical” with the two elements functioning as separate and dualistic components of her subjectivity. How narratives of pain and suffering are framed, in recollection of discussions from previous chapters regarding Enlightenment medicine and medical engagement with women of color in this chapter, provide insight into one method for intervention into coloniality’s narratives of deficiency. Reading Blanca’s desire to engage her opposite via a mind/body split would pathologize her, and this framework would also render such a desire as intrinsically unable to engage healing. The automatized way in which she narrates not only her actions but also her physical parts would enhance the notion that there is something wrong with her. Recalling Alexander’s and Eyerman’s work on community and trauma narratives, it would appear that Blanca is rendering herself a victim of her “body” and is thus inherently deficient. This rendering is born out of the distance she creates between her “self” and her action. However, the depictions of Blanca’s experiences alter when framing them with sentient-flesh and a decolonial turn. Missing from a narrative provided by a coloniality is an understanding of what Blanca wants to avoid in reaching for that which she is not. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that a lack of understanding exists regarding why Blanca views her actions as so mechanistic and so beyond her sense of self as a sentient being. The novel continues by providing a context for framing Blanca’s early statements via use of metaphor and the introduction of a sensory perception simile to demonstrate how she navigates trauma. Blanca describes how, “I had to stifle memories so there would be room to hope. I needed to see clearly ahead in order to believe that there really was a path leading me away from my labyrinth of hurt” and continues by noting that “patterns repeat themselves over and over in the life of a person. Episodes of betrayal, loss, madness, cruelty, death, seem to recur, again and again, like themes in a symphony” (18). The notion of stifling her memories calls upon the sensory perception and action of holding something down or back—quashing it to keep it at bay—and recalls the earlier action of taking the pills. The fact that the act of stifling is

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told within the context of needing the physical action of getting out of a labyrinth is significant: In holding the memories away, she is constructing a metaphorical space of “no pensar” as discussed in the previous chapter. However, the labyrinth is one of hurt that is then narrated as a series of patterns. The visual site that she seeks is one that does not see what has happened but instead looks forward to a space without such information. What she is avoiding is accounted for by the sensory perception simile of sound utilizing a symphony. A symphony is carefully chosen musical arrangement. For the hurt to be such an arrangement means that Blanca’s life has been marked by harmful actions created by other individuals, and potentially herself, which are orchestrated at varying intervals and in different ways. Similar to the narratives discussed in the first two chapters of this book, these sensory perception similes and metaphors show that flesh must be brought back to the bones of Blanca’s experiences through carefully crafted narrative persona decisions in order to convey the kind of healing that the sentient-flesh needs.

Ruptures and the Need for Distinction Sensory perception dusmic metaphors and similes can intervene in how traumatic experiences are depicted, and demonstrate the need to engage a decolonial turn away from coloniality and its narrative technologies to acknowledge survival techniques as highly attuned strategies. As the novel continues, the narrative switches between first- and third-person persona to detail the facts of Blanca’s early life in Puerto Rico and subsequent movement to the mainland US following the death of her mother. During this time, the narrator depicts the colonial status of the island, significant interfamilial abuse, and the experiences of Puerto Ricans in New York City during the mid-twentieth century. Blanca, at different points, lives with her paternal grandmother—Paquita—her father, and various other homes. Although Paquita enacts the majority of abusive behavior that Blanca experiences, the novel details other kinds of abuse that those who are marginalized within a society experience. In order to avoid pathologizing Blanca, it is necessary to consider the context in which the labyrinth of hurt that she describes is created. As the first reference to Puerto Rico occurs, the island is described through the statement “she was born in El Fanguito, an arrabal, a shanty­ town, in San Juan” (19). Rather than being directly cited as an area of Puerto Rico, the city of San Juan itself becomes a metonymy for

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the island. The neighborhood—El Fanguito—is a “slum” in the city. That the island is first introduced via this slum unites the nation with the image of a shantytown. The literal translation of the town’s name— “mudhole”—transforms the island into taking on similar attributes. Importantly, silenced in this introduction is not only the nation as a whole but also the coloniality that it grapples with in the mid-twentieth century when Blanca is born. At that time, and still today, Puerto Rico was an annexed territory/commonwealth (colony) of the US and has been since 1898. However, rather than detailing this fact, the island is reduced to a simple shantytown with connotations of poverty and abject status. In this moment, the island and its people transform into worthless mud-dwellers. Similarly, the neighborhood to which Blanca moves in the mainland US is also described utilizing a discourse of the abject. The third-person narrator describes the neighborhood in which Blanca lives, the South Bronx in New York City, and the tensions that exist there: “The heat is thick…Heat drenches the South Bronx skies with sweat. Desolation. Alienation. Hunger. Apathy. A wick drenched in wrath ready to blaze violence” (46). This neighborhood is a space that is marked with negativity. The physical sensation of a wick being drenched, similar to how the sky is wet with sweat, renders a sensation of discomfort and unease. The attributes of this drenching—apathy, hunger, and alienation—are all intangible sensations that are nevertheless physically sensed. Thus, the metaphor for the South Bronx imbues the space with both the tangible, physical experience of living there with the more conceptual, yet still physically experienced, emotions and labels that accompany the neighborhood. Donald Nathanson’s work regarding emotions demonstrates that biological responses—flesh responses—get labeled as emotions that are then agreed upon within a community, but ultimately reflect just how a community considers a specific physiological response to be acceptable or understood (1992). The reasoning behind the sense of discomfort is quickly summarized by the third-person narrator’s statement that “Everyone waits…weary of scrubbing toilets and scavenging trashcans…they flock to the streets seeking relief from the windowless, lightless, cheerless scorch of cold-water tenements. They bunch up in street corners shrinking from the cockroaches” (46). It would be easy enough to blame these people for their experiences in this neighborhood. It could be asked why they do not move, or demand hot water and vermin extermination, or find better jobs. In recollection of Eyerman, a question

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might emerge regarding how much the people of this community contribute to maintaining their abject status. Yet, such questions ignore the reality of a poor/working class neighborhood inhabited by a people from a US colony and within an Anglo-US coloniality of power. Further, as shown in the previous chapter, processes of marginalization that result from the abject status of Puerto Ricans in an Anglo-US coloniality can lead to differing forms of violence. The novel details how Paquita routinely and violently beats Blanca when she is a child, describing how the “beatings were so creative, Blanca developed an extraordinary level of fine motor coordination” from an early age (71). The abuse is also verbal, with Blanca’s own father calling her a “sow” and beating her with a belt (75). Paquita is also involved in the verbal abuse, telling Blanca that she has no friends and is unloveable, while also training Blanca to believe that she deserves the abuse she endures (75). Each type of abuse is directed at a particular sensory perception—touch and sound—which, via repetition, get ingrained into Blanca’s flesh to the point that it alters her behavior, and she navigates the reasons given for the abuse in attempts to survive and/or avoid it. While these abuses are not detailed as metaphors or similes, they provide an understanding of the kinds of abuse Blanca endures and how they target different aspects of her sentient-flesh via sensory perceptions such as touch and sound. These targetings demonstrate ways that fragmentation occurs: Violence is focused onto different aspects of the flesh to create seemingly individually focused harms but also, because a person is a “whole,” inflicts pain across the sentient being. Yet, they are obviously learned behaviors, and the direct targeting of fragmented flesh via discourses of a “body” available for control—as demonstrated elsewhere in this book—draws its lineage from colonial tactics. It is these experiences that call upon the earlier metaphors that began the novel of activity/touch and hearing that the previously noted simile of the symphony recalls. The reliance on visual sensation descriptions is also present in the sexual assault that Blanca endures as a child. After her father places Blanca to live with his friend and the friend’s family, Blanca endures neglect, and emotional and sexual abuse. During one episode of sexual assault, Blanca uses her visual perception to “concentrate hard on the uneven rectangular lines drawn on the soot-blackened wall…at times it became a blur. She followed the red curve intently with stark wide-open eyes, head twisted to the side” (118–119). Blanca’s reliance on her vision in this instance provides insight into the use of sensory-based metaphors

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throughout the novel. Similar to Arroyo’s poem, this description does not detail the rape but only alludes to it. Levine’s work on trauma, PTSD, and dissociation identifies how during a traumatic event specific elements of the experience may be dissociated as a coping mechanism or survival strategy (2010). When considering why Blanca’s vision becomes the method through which her experience is detailed, it is possible to see that this sensory perception is heightened as a method of survival, even as she does not “see” the physical assault itself. In recollection of darkness, not being able to see would void this memory altogether. The sensory perception metaphors at this point in the novel also demonstrate a source from which her sentient-flesh attempts to determine how to construct survival strategies. The third-person narrator details how “every night as Blanca lay in the dark, she counted her fingers to convince herself that she was still there. She feared that once she fell asleep, she would drown under the sheets. Darkness felt vast and wide as an ocean” (55). The reintroduction of darkness not only continues the metaphor that began the novel but also indicates its development in meaning from Blanca’s childhood. Her initial fear of it is as a child indicates the sense of disappearing. What emerges in this moment is a key insight into how a coloniality of power functions on a microlevel to create fight, flight, freeze responses that transform the will to live into emerging from a space of fear rather than being born out of a space of empowerment and compassion. Scholars such as Walter Cannon have noted such physical responses as based on physiological attempts at survival when one is enduring extreme stress. Jeffrey Gray and H. Stefan Bracha have demonstrated how acute stress responses now are understood to exist on a spectrum of physiological responses. However, important in this scene is that Blanca’s fear of disappearing does not drive her to harm others but instead creates methods in which she can remind herself that she is surviving. Responses to violence and violation here demonstrate different ways that sentient-flesh attempts to navigate coloniality. Here, she turns to her sentient-flesh, engaging in the sensory perception of touch with her fingers in order to remind herself of her tangible existence.

Sentient-Flesh and Dusmic Healing Dusmic poetic depictions of sentient-flesh experiences via sensory perception metaphors and similes can also articulate culturally specific methods for constituting a decolonial turn that engages processes of healing

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and empowerment. As the novel progresses, Blanca shuttles between the violence of living with her grandmother; foster homes; relocation to Puerto Rico as part of a century-long pattern of migration/return migration to the island in which many Puerto Ricans have engaged since the imposition of US citizenship; and an abusive relationship in her late teens and early twenties. The novel’s continued use of sensory perception metaphors and similes, and its narration of Blanca’s transformations, elucidated her process of remembering her past. This process enables her to fashion a type of healing that is specific to her experiences as a woman of color in an Anglo-US coloniality, and moves beyond the boundaries of the hospital where she is held throughout most of the ever-present now frame of the novel. Shifting into a space of healing requires that Blanca confront not only the sources that created her labyrinth of hurt, but also the impact that these traumas have had on her own sense of identity. In depictions of her later-life, specifically during her college years in Puerto Rico, the third-person narrator describes how Blanca and her friend, Rosa, would spend time discussing how “the joy they dreamed about, though, had an indefinite, elusive quality. No matter how hard they tried they could not envision the colors of happiness” (206). Once again calling upon the symbolic meaning of color, this metaphor provides insight into how these women perceive themselves in relation to positive possibilities. Blanca, for white, and Rosa, for pink, are named after either the fullness or absence of color, and an actual color. And yet, they do not perceive of themselves as participating in the “color” that creates joy in their lives. Their visions of themselves illustrate a negative conception. In recollection of discussions of hembrismo, navigations of social structures can potentially limit women based on what opportunities are afforded to them within these structures. Further, in Blanca’s search for darkness throughout the novel, as previously noted, she also searches out all colors or the absence of colors, rendering darkness the symbol of happiness, for it holds what she does not: It is her opposite. However, the fact that the women acknowledge that they do not sense themselves as creating joy constitutes a moment in which they can also confront the need to make changes in their lives. An insight emerges regarding the women’s awareness of how they have been excluded from joy in a way that appears to be intrinsic to them. The end of the novel develops sensory perception metaphors of physical sensation and touch. As the novel moves into the ever-present now, Blanca witnesses another patient and ponders, “I wonder whether her

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sense of defeat is fuelled by her treatment at the hospital. I look at her, bent over her plate, drowned in lethargy, and I am stirred by a sense of self-preservation” (222). Although, up until this point, Blanca does not detail where this stirring comes from, her subsequent depiction of how she is shifting her self-perception emerges. Earlier in her life, Blanca was driven by a sense of fear and disappearing. Here, Blanca shifts her need to survive out of this fear and into a sense of an integral right to be alive. Her curiosity at this point is key; Blanca, rather than claiming that the woman’s current state results from an inherent deficiency, is able to identify an external source that frames how the woman responds to her environment. As this shift continues, Blanca continues to confront the realities of her life via sensory perception depictions. She describes, “I become the coarse texture of dreams, the clay amphora brimming with grievances, thick as lard. I am myself and I am another. I can as easily look into myself as step out and examine my own skin from afar. Yet I cannot define what I see, and in that inability rests the tragedy of my inexistence” (225). Blanca appears to be engaged in a self-splitting that could, potentially, support a framing of a mind/body split. However, given what has occurred through the novel, such a framework would not fully capture what Blanca is expressing. In seeing herself as two, Blanca is witnessing the “self,” which has been defined by the coloniality and all of its varying abuses, and her sentient-flesh, which has navigated this coloniality of power. While not an overly celebratory description, this portrayal nevertheless evinces a heightened sense of self-awareness, a stage of mourning, and also a moment of introspection guided by her facultad that evaluates coping mechanisms from the point of understanding that oppression and exploitation create trauma. Underlying the meaning of this quote is a burgeoning awareness: While Blanca might perceive herself as fragmented, she is also attempting to understand the contingencies that have created her as she exists. Indeed, this break enables Blanca’s reflections to begin examining the nature of pain, surviving, and resilience from within her sentient-flesh. As she converses with another patient in the hospital, Blanca tells her “it takes a lot of courage to live with this pain” (227). Blanca, by acknowledging that the events in her life have participated in forming her identity and they must all be recognized for that fact, emerges as more than a series of fragments. Indeed, her fortitude has emerged from her resilience and drive to exist. She demonstrates the perseverance and strength

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present within Spirita. Blanca’s purported fracturing transforms from a representation of her traumatic past into an emblem of her sentient-flesh navigations that enabled her survival. In a similar manner to the reclaiming of hembrismo, here Blanca reclaims her own survival and shifts its description away from pathologization. The depiction identifies Blanca’s internalized understanding that the pain does not have an end, but this lack of ending does not mean she will be forever submerged in pain. As the novel concludes, Blanca’s form of self-healing portrays alternatives to reconfiguring her existence that are autonomous and not brought on by force. As Blanca exits the hospital where she has been interned for the course of the novel, she states, “I pause for a few seconds in front of the outside door, the final door, the door that will open all doors. I push it open and feel the warm air on my face” (233–234). Rather than the stillness of death, she has the freedom of movement. It is not a grandiose vision of complete healing but is, nevertheless, a moment of self-affirmation. Reflective of this change is how, as Algarín and Piñero describe, “[a] dusmic poem fortifies and centralizes the reader. It gives hope without deceptive illusions” (130). Blanca acknowledges that the present is a reality that should not be escaped. She creates an image of empowerment and resilience. While it might not provide a clear-cut pathway to transforming coloniality, this ending nevertheless evinces that reconceptualizing sentient potential to resist destruction remains despite the dehumanizing practice of coloniality.

Literary Devices of the Senses Ambert’s novel demonstrates the importance of sensory perception metaphor and simile as a narrative strategy in the process of detailing not only the sentient-flesh impact of experiencing coloniality, but also the potential for creating and participating in a dusmic poetic that enables a decolonial shift for healing. These metaphors and similes, specific to sensory perceptions, show the way that experiences of trauma imbed within the flesh, and how the flesh knows the trauma and attempts to render its knowledge in ways that elucidate truths about the coloniality itself. Anzladúa’s work on facultad and Lopez’s integral approach elucidate the way that this knowledge is part of a decolonial process in which the flesh senses and produces its own knowledge of the coloniality. This awareness indicates the need for Comas-Díaz’s model of Spirita, a source of healing and empowerment that is not born within the confines of a

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coloniality as the coloniality will never afford true healing and empowerment to those that it imposes upon. Instead, there is a need to create nuances in how these experiences are detailed, the kind of information they convey, and the desire to move beyond a reactionary relationship with the coloniality at hand. As such, Ambert’s novel provides a pivotal point in this book for how depictions of sentient-flesh are conceptualized and what such depictions can hold in terms of insights into decolonial artistic endeavors within the literary arts. Specifically, how attention to the sentient-flesh exposes a realm both in and outside of a coloniality that sees it for what it is but does not feel bound to it even as it is impacted by it. Bringing flesh back to the bone, and the construction of narrative persona, enables the deployment of literary devices such as similes and metaphors that constitute that decolonial turn in the literary arts.

Notes 1. An important question that also arises is born out of whether there is even a desire to take on such an identity. While the coloniality presupposes that being an Anglo, middle-class man should be the main aspiration—in terms of attainment of social value via the connotations of its varying aspects— the coloniality does not even consider that those caught within its grasp might actually dislike the prospect of attaining such an identity. 2.  Importantly, and as noted in the previous chapter, not all methods of survival and adaptation that are undertaken within a coloniality of power should be viewed in this manner. Thus, it is important to distinguish between behaviors that are created within and for a coloniality versus those that are part of sentient-flesh navigation.

References Alexander, Jeffrey. “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma.” Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey Alexander, Ron Eyerman, and Bernard Giesen, U California P, 2004, pp. 1–30. Algarín, Miguel, and Miguel Piñero. Nuyorican Poetry: An Anthology of Puerto Rican Words and Feelings. William Morrow, 1975. Ambert, Alba. A Perfect Silence. Arte Público, 1996. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 3rd edition. Aunt Lute, 2003. Black, Max. “More About Metaphor.” Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edition, edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge UP, 1993, pp. 19–41.

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Boyd-Franklin, Nancy, and Nydia García-Preto. “Family Therapy: A Closer Look at African American and Hispanic Women.” Women of Color: Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities in Psychotherapy, edited by Lillian Comas-Díaz and Beverly Greene. Guilford, 1994, pp. 239–64. Bracha, H. Stefan. “Freeze, Flight, Fight, Fright, Faint: Adaptationist Perspectives on the Acute Stress Response Spectrum.” CNS Spectrums, vol. 9, no. 9, 2004, 679–85. Cannon, Walter. Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Range: An Account of Recent Research in the Function of Emotional Excitement. 2nd edition. Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1929. Churchill, Larry, and Sandra Churchill. “Storytelling in Medical Arenas: The Art of Self-Determination.” Literature and Medicine, vol. 1, 1982, pp. 74–81. Comas-Díaz, Lillian. “Puerto Ricans and Sexual Child Abuse.” Sexual Abuse in Nine North American Cultures: Treatment and Prevention, edited by Lisa Aronson Fontes, Sage, 1995, pp. 31–66. ———. “Spirita: Reclaiming Womanist Sacredness into Feminism.” Psychology of Women Quarterly, vol. 32, 2008, pp. 13–21. Comas-Díaz, Lillian, and Beverly Greene, eds. Women of Color: Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities in Psychotherapy. Guilford, 1994. Cordillo, Eileen, et al. “From Novel to Familiar: Tuning the Brain for Metaphors.” NeuroImage, vol. 59, 2012, pp. 3212–21. De Vega, Manuel. “Language and Action: An Approach to Embodied Cognition.” From Mental Imagery to Spatial Cognition in Language, edited by V. Gyselinck and F. Pazzaglia. Psychology Press, 2012, pp. 177–200. Eyerman, Ron. “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity.” Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey Alexander, Ron Eyerman, and Bernard Giesen. U California P, 2004, pp. 60–111. Gray, Jeffrey. The Psychology of Fear and Stress. 2nd edition. Cambridge UP, 1988. Gwyn, Robert. “Captain of My Own Ship: Metaphor and the Discourse of Chronic Illness.” Researching and Applying Metaphor, edited by Lynne Cameron and Graham Low. Cambridge UP, 1999, pp. 203–220. Katz, Phyllis, and Dalmas Taylor. Eliminating Racism: Profiles in Controversy. Plenum, 1988. Lacey, Simon, Randall Still, and K. Sathian. “Metaphorically Feeling: Comprehending Textural Metaphors Activates Somatosensory Cortez.” Brain and Language, vol. 120, 2012, pp. 416–21. Lakoff, George. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.” Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edition, edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge UP, 1993, pp. 202–51. Levine, Peter. In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. North Atlantic, 2010.

88  R. HURTADO Lopez, Iris. “Sterilization and the Ethics of Reproductive Technology: An Integral Approach.” S & F Online, vol. 9, no. 1–2, 2011. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. “Thinking Through the Decolonial Turn: Postcontinental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique—An Introduction.” Transmodernity, vol. 1, no. 2, Fall 2011, pp. 1–15. Morales, Julio, and M. Reyes. “Cultural and Political Realities for Community Social Work Practice with Puerto Ricans in the United States.” Community Organizing in a Diverse Society, 3rd edition, edited by Felix Rivera and John Erlich. Allyn and Bacon, 1998, pp. 75–96. Nathanson, Donald. Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self. W. W. Norton, 1992. Ortony, Andrew. “The Role of Similarity in Similes and Metaphors.” Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edition, edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge UP, 1993, pp. 342–56. Pingerhughes, Elaine. Understanding Race, Ethnicity, and Power: The Key to Efficacy in Clinical Practice. Free Press, 1989. Sachs-Ericsson, Natalie, et al. “The Association Between Childhood Abuse, Health and Pain-Related Problems, and the Role of Psychiatric Disorders and Current Life Stress.” Trauma and Physical Health, edited by Victoria Banyard, Valeria Edwards, and Kathleen Kendall-Tackett. Routledge, 2009, pp. 5–36.

Envisioning Empowerment: Recodifying the Meaning of Historical Trauma

Engaging a decolonial turn creates a shift in how individual people conceptualize their experiences and how history and community responses to colonial trauma and ongoing oppression are framed. As noted in previous chapters, attempts to pathologize communities experiencing structural oppression occur in how those communities are narrated in their responses to coloniality’s technologies. In an Anglo-US coloniality, pathologization of Puerto Ricans has been extensive and ongoing throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and maintains in the current era. This chapter considers the intergenerational and long-lasting impact of historical trauma in a coloniality that continues to promote traumatizing activity. While previous chapters in this book have explored the need to distinguish between the “body” of coloniality and sentient-flesh experiences, and the possibilities that emerge when engaging in a decolonial turn, this chapter considers how characterization can depict a world-traveler consciousness as part of a decolonial praxis. This chapter specifically focuses on how renarration of historical traumas from such a consciousness provides deeper understanding of sentient-flesh and cellular responses to trauma as well as how sentient-flesh learns—across generations—to navigate, survive, and subvert the dehumanizations wrought within a coloniality of power. I consider how characterization in the literary arts depicts decolonial memories in the sentient-flesh and moves toward healing and empowerment.

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Such a shift requires the decolonization of communal memory that begins with awareness of sentient-flesh strategic navigations of coloniality. Aurora Levins Morales writes in Medicine Stories that a historian can function as a curandera, one who grapples with historical realities of coloniality while attempting to heal the community via revisions of the past (1998). Important to this concept is an awareness of how specific people, incidents, and even entire moments in time have been purposefully removed from historical narratives, creating what she describes as gaps. Further, and as she notes, while it is not possible to fill these gaps with fully documented information, it is possible to discern what should or could be in those gaps given historical data and the realities of different historical contexts. However, such an activity requires confronting the traumas of the past and how these traumas have had long-lasting impacts on different communities and at times have become imbedded in determining community responses to them (Levins Morales 2013). It means reclaiming and renarrating a history that is marked by coloniality but not limited to it. In recollection of the “Sentient Narratives” chapter from this book, the Anglo-US coloniality of power depicts as pathological the communities of color that speak of historical trauma. For Puerto Ricans, both in the mainland and on the island, the history of the island and its people is marked by Spanish and Anglo-US colonialities, as well as the different technologies that maintained them. One example of this social control is that of enslavement on the island, with its subsequent racial codifications by the Spanish and transformation of racial categorization within the Anglo-US coloniality. What results, and as is documented by scholars such as Lillian ComasDíaz, is an attempt by some Puerto Ricans to avoid identification with a history marked by disempowerment and exploitation (1996). This process of disidentification functions to silence Afro-cultural and familial presence on the island. Indeed, and as scholars such as Marta Moreno Vega have explored, the impact of this rejection is an intergenerational component of the construction of Puerto Rican identity (1999). However, and as ComasDíaz recalls, this silencing is nevertheless faulty in that African presence on the island both in culture and family lines is a reality that cannot be avoided (171). Thus, it is necessary to ask how the processes of sociosexual geo-racialization function for Puerto Ricans both on and off the island. Characterization within the literary arts can attend to this question. Implicit in constructing characters via a decolonial turn is a refusal to engage in pathologizing the survival strategies deployed across

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generations while also not lapsing into colonial narratives about the oppressed. This chapter examines the construction of characterization within the literary arts as one technique that can express sentient-flesh experiences. It examines the novel Daughters of the Stone by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa for the depiction of several generations of women in one family who experience processes of sociosexual geo-racialization wrought by coloniality. Each of these women experiences pressures to internalize colonialism and grapples with them in different ways, such as drawing from their inherited supernatural gifts, to navigate social structures. These characters demonstrate the sentient-flesh impact of coloniality down to the very cellular level, and their depictions register questions regarding the very real functioning of intergenerational epigenetic and genetic influences via what they inherit from one generation to the next in terms of supernatural gifts as well as behavioral survival strategies. Each individual woman’s character development demonstrates the manner in which they attempt to balance their own personal needs with those of the people around them. It also shows the kinds of boundaries that they attempt to construct for their individual well-being, and how they attempt to carve spaces of healing and empowerment for themselves and their communities. Important to these depictions is the complexity that a coloniality creates in terms of internalization of its technologies and narratives across generations, and how such an impact can be challenged but must also be understood as part of the history of the community. Coloniality and its systems of sociosexual geo-racialization have a direct impact on a person’s sentient-flesh. In her work on racial health disparities among African Americans, Shannon Sullivan explores the impact of “weathering” on African-American communities and the onslaught of daily racism not merely as a structural phenomenon in the abstract but as something that is a daily endurance that is experienced in the flesh (2013). Reflective of what some scholars describe as “Racial Battle Fatigue,” these concepts demonstrate how individuals are literally “worn out” by constantly navigating racist social structures (Franklin et al. 2014; Smith 2004). Echoing insights from Anzaldúa’s and Moraga’s “theory in the flesh,” the “daily lived experiences” become direct manifestations of how power works (2015). However, it is important to also consider the ways these manifestations show how the sentient-flesh is not only targeted but also responds by navigating oppression for purposes of survival.

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In recollection of the beginning of this book, cellular memory occurs across the life span of not only the cell itself but also the ones it creates in order to navigate new situations. Indeed, studies of cellular memory show that cells retain memories of previous moments across time and thereby enable future cell production to “remember” how to navigate movement and respond to stimuli (Skoge et al. 2014; Ringrose and Paro 2004). Therefore, even as cells change, they carry memories of adaptation in order to survive and regrow. Important to framing this information within depictions of sentient-flesh is that, if different types of macro- and microlevel violence are occurring against different Puerto Rican women as part of sociosexual geo-racialized processes, then their cellular memories of surviving these events will be different because of their subject positions. However, their cellular memories will hold within them information for what the different women need to survive, and thereby demonstrate that sentient-flesh as a concept does not mean that all women are the same or that all Puerto Rican women heal the same. Thus, characterization with a novel such as Llanos-Figueroa’s must demonstrate that—even within a family—people respond to traumatic events differently. And yet, it is not to ignore the fact that within families there is intergenerational sharing of knowledge through both epigenetic and genetic information and environmental constraints. Studies in epigenetics, as noted by Richard Francis (2011) as well as Brian Dias, Stephanie Maddox, Torsten Klengel, and Kerry Ressler (2015), have demonstrated ways that experiences during the uterine phase of fetal development can impact epigenetics and genetics, as can parental style, and the environments that individuals move through. Other scholars such as Sarah Hall et al. (2010, 2013) and Jessica MacDonald et al. (2010), and Jessica MacDonald’s work with A. Jane Roskams (2009) have shown that epigenetics can intervene in gene expression. Indeed, Morgan Heinzelmann and Jessica Gill describe how “[e]pigenetic modifications occur in response to an environmental fact and include DNA methylation, acetylation, and histone modification, which alter DNA accessibility and chromatin structure, thereby regulating activity of the gene in a long-lasting manner” (2013, 2). Epigenetics can activate and impact how different types of genes function at different points in a person’s life. Importantly, the epigenetic impact on genetic predispositions does not necessarily mutate DNA but can impact cellular responses in future generations (Francis 2011). Indeed, this information means that whatever part of the biological response is being activated or deactivated, and to what extent, is not inherently genetically changed but is instead adapting to new situations.

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As Sullivan cautions, it would be easy to “read” the epigenetic alterations that occur via Anglo-US supremacist constructs that would render what is occurring biologically as an inherent deficiency among people of color in the United States brought on by maladaptation (206). Yet, and as I have argued throughout this book, considering the experiences of Latinas via engaging a decolonial turn will move away from such pathologization. Further, it also gives insight, in this chapter, into how Latinas move from survivors to thrivers and have the potential to move into a space of decolonial educators. For, in going back to the cellular level, it is possible to see the importance of Zaneta Thayer and Christopher Kuzawa’s work in which they discuss how epigenetic mechanisms can be considered “biological memories of past environment” (1). Indeed, this information helps current generations navigate the colonialities that have maintained over time. Such biological memories provide a framework for reading the coloniality via the sentient-flesh and perceiving the communities as more than those readings, and assist in “knowing” to a certain degree the gaps to which Levins Morales points. Yet these biological memories must be framed not as a life sentence but instead as biological potential for responding to stressful situations. I contend that it is possible to construct characters within a novel who struggle against and within a coloniality without treating their resulting behaviors as pathological. Instead, they are navigating a system and social structure that is, itself, unhealthy for their development. As such, LlanosFigueroa’s intergenerational matrilineal following of this family demonstrates that even as the women are inheriting the supernatural gift, they also have to find ways to survive a structure that is inherently designed to limit their possibilities. Their sentient-flesh, thereby, becomes not only the site targeted by coloniality to destroy their ability to survive in a non-pathological state but also the site of their own ability to resist that process of pathologization. Importantly, Rachel Yehuda and Linda Bierer demonstrate that no literature exists that directly demonstrates that something such as PTSD is inherited (2009). Thus, there exists a possibility that epigenetic alterations do not inherently become a life sentence of behavior for future generations. However, the literature in their article demonstrates that there is parental influence on how the child is raised. This influence has an epigenetic impact on things such as cortisol levels and can in turn guide future responses to things such as traumatic events. The result is an influence on their responses to those events (genetically and epigenetically) and in turn how they treat their children.

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Thus, while people are potentially not born having PTSD due to inheritance factors, the genetic and epigenetic interventions that occur across generations and at different points in a life cycle contribute to biological and behavioral coping mechanisms that help with survival and, in turn, impact biological responses. Characterization, within the literary arts, can depict how macroand micro-level violence that results within a coloniality of power and occurs intergenerationally can be “known” beyond the limits of coloniality and how to share that memory. While previous chapters have examined individual cases of violence, even as those instances of violence do impact multiple generations, this chapter considers how intergenerational experiences of coloniality not only impact sentient-flesh but also transform the types of healing and empowerment across generations emerging from strategic navigations of coloniality. Developing characters who can accurately depict the kinds of gaps that Levins Morales describes without pathologizing them requires considering the types of traumas they endured, and how they were pathologized by the coloniality. Psychoanalytics of historical trauma, in relation to an Anglo-US coloniality, have produced information regarding how communities such as different Amerindian nations have been impacted by and continue to grapple with their experiences of colonial imposition. Researchers, such as Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, identify the history of coloniality as impacting contemporary generations among the Lakota as well as how ongoing colonial oppression continues to create a space where healing from that history is difficult if not nearly impossible (1998). Epigenetically, the residue of past environments here is compounded with the ongoing nature of the Anglo-US coloniality controlling the environments in which current generations exist and, in many ways, replicate—although in new forms—the same traumatizing environments of the past (Sullivan 2013, 202). Brave Heart’s work also demonstrates that catharsis from historical trauma is possible although severely limited by the functionings of coloniality, and thus requires culturally specific types of practices to navigate that imposition. Les Whitbeck et al. (2004), in relation to Brave Heart’s work, examine how psychoanalysis of historical trauma requires a linkage between loss and perception of loss that impacts the contemporary world. As Karina Walters et al. (2011) have demonstrated in their research on historical trauma, the intergenerational impact of Anglo-US coloniality on Amerindian communities can result in biological changes,

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but the negative consequences—such as depression, alcoholism, and so on—are not genetically inherited, and therefore, culturally specific methods of healing from such trauma can determine the longevity of such trauma as well as the resilience of the communities (2002). Dominick LaCapra cautions against collapsing experience between those directly impacted by a trauma and those who are part of that community but not impacted by it—such as generations living after the traumatic event (2001). However, and as Brave Heart’s work demonstrates, the long-lasting impact of historical trauma is compounded with contemporary technologies of coloniality. Therefore, healing techniques must take the longer history into account via a decolonization of memory to refute the narratives of pathology created within the Anglo-US coloniality. Characterization with the literary arts that engages a decolonial turn must also attend to the meaning of survival and healing as part of the decolonization of memory. The sequencing of responding to trauma— and, as I examine in this book, coloniality—occurs internally and externally; the flesh is impacted by and responds to the environment around it. This impact translates in the flesh across generations. I contend that individuals’ sentient-flesh responses to the impacts of coloniality on their lives elucidate how individuals find ways to survive. However, I also contend that families/communities intergenerationally engage in behaviors and actions that can help—and at times hinder if their strategies have not been adapted or are not adaptable or if they accept the technologies of the coloniality—in the process of the next generation’s survival. The biological ramifications of these moments are witnessed in whether the next generations survive the coloniality (Heinzelmann and Gill 2013; Walters et al. 2011). Important to this work is a conception of the degrees of “success” with which “survival” is considered, and also the need to problematize what is means to be in a coloniality and experience “successful” survival. It thus requires a consideration of the methods undertaken to share knowledge and create visions of culture and community beyond the coloniality, and how to recognize the difference between the coloniality’s own pathologies and the lived experiences of those who are impacted by them. As Joseph Gone’s work on historical trauma and cultural healing has explored, the need to create culturally based forms of healing enable a shift in collective identity from outside of “Euro-American” frameworks to account for both the historical and contemporary experiences of coloniality that Amerindian communities experience (2013).

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His additional work with William Hartmann further emphasizes this point (2014). To recall the previous chapter’s analysis of the need to decolonize healing, models for handling trauma that are specifically rooted with an Anglo, male, middle-class center prove insufficient for what women of color need. In order to shift beyond this centering that emerges from within Anglo-US coloniality, it is necessary to turn to the kinds of consciousness that enable cultural healing to occur. Lugones’s concept of “worldtraveler consciousness” becomes vital for decolonizing memory via characterization in a novel such as Daughters of the Stone and for depicting the role of genetic and epigenetic functioning in the sentient-flesh. Lugones describes the experience of “world traveling” for women of color as one born out of their intersectional identities and the social contexts in which these women navigate the shifting dynamics of how their identities are both confirmed and interpreted. Moving out of different “worlds,” the social spaces that compose a world of meaning on its own, a traveler must learn to adapt in each of these locales while simultaneously having self-reflexivity regarding performance, social mores, and expectations. Thus, world traveling requires consciousness regarding social structures and how intersectionality will not only highlight certain aspects of identity but also inhibit/privilege a person’s actions based on which particular element of identity is emphasized. A worldtraveler consciousness is one in which this awareness is coupled with navigational tools that allow an individual to move through these varying worlds. It also allows the navigation, itself, to avoid becoming a process of “conforming” or “losing” a sense of self. In consideration of sentient-flesh, a world-traveler consciousness emerges from the flesh as part of a facultad that knows and navigates flesh experiences while simultaneously understanding the nuances behind such experiences. In some ways, this facultad and the consciousness that it creates could be seen as being developed intergenerationally via genetic and epigenetic functioning within the flesh. A world-traveler consciousness helps explain not only how the women in this novel are able to navigate the coloniality of power that they confront but also how they learn and teach one another across generations to survive and thrive beyond the limits of coloniality. In what follows, I examine how characterization in the literary arts can depict sentient-flesh experiences of coloniality, how there is an intergenerational navigation of that coloniality, and how surviving coloniality—down to the cellular level—can lead to creative projects of

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empowerment when undertaken as part of a decolonial turn. Specifically, I explore Llanos-Figueroa’s novel for how she depicts the experiences of racialized-slavery as it existed on the island of Puerto Rico and how racism among and against Puerto Ricans altered over time and in tandem with the replacement of Spain’s coloniality of power by the Anglo-U.S. I consider how the women in this novel each engage in different practices that allow them to survive the social structures impinging upon them. While some of these tactics result in negative consequences, determination to maintain memories of healing and empowerment enable these women to become healers in their communities. They are able to draw from the knowledge born of their sentient-flesh to promote change in their homes and among themselves, deploying a world-traveler consciousness that moves outside of coloniality’s dichotomies via their decolonization of memory.

Sentient-Flesh In/Out of Coloniality Characterization within the literary arts can demonstrate how coloniality targets the flesh and the potential for intergenerational inheriting of decolonial memories within the sentient-flesh. These memories challenge the erasures that coloniality attempts to create of these people’s lives and cultures and also the rendering of gaps in which narratives of pathology replace the realities of struggle. Daughters of the Stone begins with Carisa, the great-great-granddaughter of Fela, describing that what will come in the pages to follow will depict her “stories” as she knows them. These “stories” are, in fact, the narratives of her ancestors and the stone that carries a “child-soul” from Fela to each successive generation. The characterization that develops Fela and her experiences on the island demonstrates the importance of sentient-flesh and cellular memory to challenge the extent to which coloniality can successfully control the identities of those it seeks to dominate. Carisa begins the narrative by describing how these stories were passed down to her from one generation to the next. She notes that “[t]hese are the stories of a time lost to flesh and bone, a time that lives only in dreams and memory” (1). Carisa appears to be trafficking in hypotheticals and abstractions rather than in concrete experiences as indicated by the distance of the physical self from seemingly intangible memory. However, and as I have discussed in this chapter and in previous sections of this book, “memories” are themselves held within

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the flesh and so are very much part of Carisa’s tangible reality. Further, and as Brave Heart describes, the impact of trauma that is wrought within a coloniality does have intergenerational impact. As such, Carissa can, in reality, have a sentient-flesh sense of events that came before her time that frame how she understands who and what she is in the current moment. The first chapters of the novel depict Fela, Carisa’s great-greatgrandmother, and her experiences of being kidnapped and taken to Puerto Rico for enslavement. A third-person narrator—presumably Carisa—first introduces Fela as she arrives at the last plantation where she will be enslaved. Soon thereafter, Fela’s experiences at a previous plantation from which she was sold are detailed; she was violently raped. The narrator describes how Fela “remembered the pounding, the violence in that barn. She remembered tensing her body against him…The blow to her jaw—the loose teeth that she spit out just before the final blow that left her sprawled on the barn floor—still haunted her…She remembered his rancid breath on her face” (47). Similar to how trauma is described in A Perfect Silence, Fela’s recollection of the violation is through sensory perceptions that elucidate the ways that such mechanisms of oppression are recorded by sentient-flesh. Here, the flesh is itemized in terms of targeting and also of where the flesh is recording memory. Importantly, Fela’s response to this abuse rejects the coloniality’s narrative of her as property that is naturally available for such exploitation. The narrator describes how “Fela’s rage blinded her to her position” as an enslaved woman—a woman who under the law is no more than a piece of property—and she goes to the patrón’s wife to tell her of what has happened and demand assistance in getting justice (47). However, despite the fact that Fela has clearly been violated, the patróna has Fela’s tongue cut out to “keep the impertinent slave from spreading tales about her husband” (48). The patróna silences Fela as a way to control the narrative about her husband and, therefore, her own marriage. Here, Fela learns of coloniality through very flesh-specific targeting. She learns that within a coloniality she is positioned as property and that those who work to maintain that coloniality believe she has no right to speak of her experiences or to determine how they are narrated. The cutting out of Fela’s tongue—symbolically and literally—verbally silences her within her community. However, and as Carisa’s opening of the novel suggests, while Fela has been verbally silenced, the memories of her experiences within the flesh are not lost. Indeed, Dias et al.’s work on epigenetic

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mechanisms notes that descendants inherit “ancestral imprinting on behavior, physiology, and epigenome” (2015, 102). Thus—and made possible via characterization within the literary arts—Carisa’s telling of what Fela could not say evinces how the voice was not lost but instead finds an outlet in future generations, as a message carried within the flesh and the impulse to share what it knows after fashioning a safe space in which to do the sharing. Fela’s own sense of self and the indignation that she experiences as a result of the rape also illustrates that she has not internalized the messages of the coloniality even as they are deployed to discipline her sentient-flesh. The narrator notes that Fela perceives her experiences to be a kind of penance for a taboo ceremony that she and her husband had conducted in order for her to conceive a child (22, 38, 49). The narrator describes the ceremony in detail, which finishes with a stone that is used in the ritual being placed inside of Fela’s reproductive organs to function as the child-stone that guards the soul of the baby until it can be born (22). However, the ceremony is not completed because their village is ransacked and Fela is kidnapped to Puerto Rico where she is sold into slavery. I do not seek to argue that Fela is responsible for her enslavement because of the ceremony. However, Fela’s conceptualization of the enslavement impacts her ability to view what is happening, not a result of all-powerful Western Europeans or Spanish coloniality but instead an act of the gods. She thus voids the sense of domination that the coloniality utilizes as justification to maintain its power. Fela rejects the coloniality’s logic for framing her experiences via her own personal memories formed within a different epistemology. Indeed, Carisa’s depiction of Fela and some of the people who are enslaved at the same plantation as Fela function as a way to challenge colonial narratives of Afro-Boricuas as only objects to be controlled and exploited. Fela determines that she must complete the ceremony she began in West Africa and become impregnated by her current enslaver, Don Tomás (48–49).1 During her preparations for delivering the baby, Fela seeks out the hacienda carpenter to build her a crib. While choosing the wood for the box, Fela touches different types of wood and the carpenter tells his son: “You still know nothing of the old ways… This piece of wood is more than just wood. Once it lived in the forest and, like every living thing, had a spirit. Here men cut down trees without a thought. But in the old place, we knew that the spirit of the tree must be addressed before the cutting” (53). In this moment, a cultural

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transmission of knowledge that is not governed by a coloniality occurs. The father acknowledges that the coloniality has intervened in how the knowledge is intergenerationally transmitted and that many of the future generations will lose the ability to know how to perform such a task. However, the carpenter does not explain to his son how to go about being able to read the wood and ask for acceptance but rather tells him that a master carver must have “a grateful and humble heart, as is needed for all who do the work of the soul” (53). Rather than a direct task, the father teaches his son how the sentient-flesh can know the world around it. He points to the fact that these are behaviors that participate in a worldview that is not born out of destructive habits and the drive to control. In recollection of Dias et al.’s descriptions of epigenetic influences, it is possible to see how coloniality has directly impacted social transmission of cultural norms and behaviors and how they are being retaught and trained as flesh-sensory-perceptions in this new place. The father demonstrates an alternative way of knowing and cultural memories that challenge the coloniality and directly acknowledges how it attempts to control communities via the erasure of cultural knowledge.

Navigating Coloniality’s Mechanisms The manner in which characters navigate oppressive social structures at the macro- and micro-level demonstrates how their sentient-flesh is impacted by and attempts to survive imposition and internalized colonialism. After Fela dies at Mati’s birth, her daughter Mati grows up to have supernatural abilities that allow her to heal as well as to speak directly to the Lady Oshun—the goddess for whom the fertility ceremony was enacted. These abilities allow Mati to resist impositions by local enslavers and landowners, and to function as methods for her to maintain the integrity of not pathologizing herself. However, her daughter Concha, also born with supernatural gifts, is terrorized by her classmates and attempts to hide her abilities in order to avoid public ridicule. While the two women’s techniques for survival differ dramatically, they both evince how a coloniality of power impacts the sentient-flesh by constructing unhealthy social mechanisms that shift how people behave and attempt to determine acceptable behavior within the parameters of their own needs. The gifts the women inherit and/or are born with include a connection to the natural environment. Mati, from an early age, has gifts

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that appear to come directly from her. She is described, at the age of eleven, as healing a piglet: “She gathered the small body into her lap, examined it, and found a bloody gap in the animal’s belly. She rubbed her hands together until they were warm and then carefully covered the pig’s wound…The strong scent of freesias spread over the batey… After some minutes, she lost the focused look in her eye and released the animal” (65). The act of healing the animal appears to be both supernatural and completely physical. It is through her hands that she is able to grasp the wound. However, the fact that her healing of the pig is accompanied by an environmental response could—conceivably—be a sort of metaphor regarding sensory perceptions and how people impact and are impacted by the environment around them. And yet, the description does not appear metaphorical, but literal. Mati’s supernatural abilities are conjured in the flesh and yet call upon memories and cultural knowledge from before she was born and of which neither Fela nor those around her teach her. The narrative describes how “[f]rom the time she was a little girl, Mati had always had dreams that she kept to herself. She dreamed about the Lady Oshun, who told her stories. The Lady spoke in a language Mati had never heard before and yet Mati understood everything she said” (67). These dreams also depict the village where Fela was from and the ancestors and culture from which she is born (67). I do not attempt to argue that the dreams themselves are somehow genetic. However, it is conceivable that some of the cellular and epigenetic responses that she has could adapt her to responding to such environments—such as knowing what not to talk about—and that her dreams function as a sort of artistic rendering of how refutation of coloniality’s logics occurs within the sentient-flesh. Indeed, this moment in the novel seems to recall Dias et al.’s statement that “descendant generations are not necessarily learning about ancestral environments but are certainly navigating their own worlds by taking into account features in their ancestors’ environments” (101). The dreams show how this character’s sentient-flesh holds knowledge within its memories or knowledge of something that coloniality seeks to erase: awareness that coloniality is a construct that is imposed upon her rather than being the entire source of her being. Here, the gods seem to be more powerful than the actions of Western European colonizers and enslavers who have disconnected her from her ancestral culture and community. Within her sentient-flesh, she knows the information that those acting on behalf of the coloniality attempt to hide and/or

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destroy. This knowledge could be her facultad, as discussed in the previous chapter, as something that is not governed by coloniality but something that allows navigation of power structures via her intuition. This awareness helps guide Mati to resist the power structures that would negatively impact her as she gets older. As the novel progresses, Don Tomás dies and determines to leave his property to Mati who is his only child either by marriage or by force, while simultaneously freeing her. However, the neighboring dons and church officials determine to prevent Mati—a mixed-race ex-slave—from inheriting the property and auction it off among themselves. At this point, Mati determines to utilize her gifts to exact a resetting of balance: “One after another the neighboring plantation owners who had taken her land developed ailments for which the doctors could find no explanation” and “when the situation seemed hopeless, words were whispered in the dark. And then there would be a nocturnal knock on Mati’s door…The land she was given always coincided exactly with the land left to her in Don Tomás’s will. She never asked for or was given a kilometer more or less” (116). Importantly, it is Mati’s decision to use her supernatural powers that enable her to have what was rightfully hers returned to her. Men with power have maneuvered her out of her property via their use of the social mechanisms they create. Mati uses her own techniques to refute their control over her destiny. What is notable in this scene is the fact that she does not attempt to get more than what was left to her. She has not internalized the logics of coloniality and so she does not use her powers out of greed or spite but instead to restore balance. Important within the storyline is what each woman inherits from her mother: supernatural abilities. Concha, the daughter of Mati and Mati’s lifelong sweetheart, also inherits supernatural abilities. These abilities are specifically grounded in an extra-sensory perception based in her feet. The novel describes how “Concha learned her world through her feet. She was a baby when she first became aware of them…She hated it when Mati insisted on covering them…They were like antennae receptors that picked up on the slightest changes” (131). The notion that feet could hold such ability might seem unlikely. However, the feet are full of nerve endings. Research has shown that medical treatments such as foot reflexology can impact issues of anxiety and stress (Stephenson et al. 2000). The feet are part of the sensory system of the flesh. Thus, Concha’s ability to learn through her feet is not necessarily impossible or decidedly unlikely.

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Concha’s use of this ability determines the nature of her inherited supernatural abilities and how they play out in her sentient-flesh. The novel describes how “eyes closed, the girl stepped out tentatively, stretching her bare foot before her and repeating the arching motion. Once she detected what she sought, she walked directly to a plant and began cutting” (133). This interaction is followed by a brief discussion between Mati and Concha in which the child explains that the herbs tell her what she needs through her feet. While her ability could be, arguably, a genetic predisposition, it could also be argued that her use of her inherited gift is epigenetically influenced in terms of how she deploys it for the use of healing others in recollection of Dias et al.’s point about ancestral knowledge and navigations of contemporary circumstances. Importantly, her use of this sensory perception and its deployment do differ from Mati’s in terms of both locale and function, and so it is vital to not collapse the two women’s gifts or experiences. Indeed, Concha’s inherited ability comes into conflict with the society around her, similar to her mother’s experiences. However, Concha’s exposure to her community results in a different adaptive coping mechanism than Mati engages. Concha’s parents, despite Mati’s misgivings, determine that Concha should attend school to learn alphanumeric literacy. After classmates call her a bruja (witch) and ridicule her, Concha returns home and has an intense physical–spiritual experience to which she is unaccustomed. While she had, previously, been able to navigate supernatural experiences such as having extra-sensory perceptions with her feet as acceptable and normal, here—because of her experiences at school—something shifts in Concha. Suddenly, Concha “recognized the fear she had been holding at bay since that day. It had grown with her… taken up residence in her heart and become a part of her…Concha saw clearly, perhaps more clearly than Mati, that her childhood had ended the day she started school” (143). The fear that Concha feels is very much internal. However, the fact that this fear grows out of her social experiences demonstrates a disciplining by the society around her to fit into predetermined criteria of acceptable behavior. Recalling the conversation between the carpenter and his son from Fela’s own experiences, all things from their culture that are not strictly guided by Western European coloniality are intervened in by the coloniality. Thus, Concha’s gift functions as a type of threat to the social order and those around her. Those who have lost their cultural memories as a result of continued imposition by the coloniality in turn act to challenge

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her ability to use her gift. Each successive generation learns to navigate the coloniality in different ways: Fela spoke out and had her tongue cut out; Mati openly uses her gift but does not speak of certain things; and here Concha decides to hide her gift for much of her youth to avoid navigating its place in the world. In recollection of Sullivan’s work on epigenetics and intergenerational experiences of racism, Concha’s experiences illustrate how a community internalizes the coloniality’s logics to the point of self-disciplining. This internalization makes it extremely difficult to resist that coloniality. While her fear leads her to hide her gift, which could potentially symbolize a form of internalized colonialism, a question emerges regarding the epigenetic and genetic impact of hiding a trait that she inherits: Will she be altered down to the cellular level and thus alter the future of her family’s supernatural gifts? Although Concha later reclaims her gift and engages with helping her community, her earlier hiding of the gift demonstrates the need for navigations of coloniality to be adaptable based on the development of individual needs and circumstances.

Intergenerational Empowerment in the Sentient-Flesh In this novel, the effects of coloniality are witnessed in how the different generations of women attempt to grapple with their gifts and live and engage with the communities around them. For instance, Concha, as previously noted, determines to hide her gift so that those around her will not ostracize her or label her as evil, although she later reclaims this gift when she is older. Concha’s daughter, Elena, channels her gift and becomes a nurse. This turn to Western European/Anglo-US medicine, however, does not result in a rejection of her cultural knowledge. Instead, after moving to New York City with her daughter and son, the latter of whom later dies, Elena reclaims her family’s stories and knowledge. Elena’s daughter—Carisa, who narrates this novel—transforms her gift for healing into acts of artistic creation that engage in storytelling and documenting the histories of Afro-Boricuas who are otherwise written out of history. She reclaims a lineage that is not pathologized by the coloniality and its narratives. She creates a voice, one that counters the silencing that her family and those in her community have historically experienced. On the cellular level, these women’s individual navigations and choices are caused by real-life events that impact their sentient-flesh, as I will detail in this chapter. Yet, these women also inherit the ability to

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navigate these structures both in terms of their supernatural abilities and the tactics to maneuver around situations that could cause trauma or lead to difficulties in thriving. Elena’s gift for healing is transformed into an ability to help as a nurse. Her choice to engage in Western European styles of medicine, however, does not define her as having forgone or forsaken her ability to engage in the gifts that she has inherited from her mother and grandmother. When she first arrives in New York City, she goes shopping to purchase items she and her children will need while in the city and comes across a stall that is crowded with women and contains “row after row of giant religious statues…There were framed pictures of an open palm with a huge eye in the center…There were crudely carved statues of African drummers and scores of dolls, rotund figures…Here faded memories of Mati’s room with its candles and its incense crystallized into sharp focus… Suddenly, she longed for her Abuela Mati” (217–228). Seeing the stall filled with these religious and spiritual items brings Elena back to memories of her grandmother. Although these women are not engaged with Western European medical practices but are engaged in what could be considered spiritual healing, or more pejoratively, “folk medicine,” Elena does not see these items and things with rebuke, but instead they remind her of something comforting, something she misses—her family. Thus, it is in this moment that Elena demonstrates a kind of consciousness that allows her to see herself not as a split person engaged in two different cultures but as a sentient-flesh being who navigates different worlds and their meanings. Indeed, this ability enables Elena to navigate the impact of Anglo-US coloniality after moving to New York City. As the novel progresses, Elena’s husband joins her and her children in New York City, but her son dies as a result of the cold winters and a lack of heat in their apartment caused by the landlord’s greed. Following his death, Elena sinks into a depression. She has a close friend who directly confronts her behavior, and her own daughter—Carisa—begins to engage with someone she calls “the Lady”—implied to be the Lady Oshun—who tells Carisa that Elena needs the “stone” (239). Following this interaction, “she remembered Mati’s stories. Elena had almost forgotten. Magic, she had once believed. Elena lay back in bed and thought about all the years and all the stories,” removes the stone from a pouch and smells freesia, and “[f]or the first time in weeks, Elena slept the night through without dreams or interruptions” (239). In returning to the stone, Elena accesses a part of

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herself, her heritage that forms as space of support. Important to consider at this point in the novel is whether or not Elena is inheriting a gift that helps her survive. Can biological and epigenetic responses be interpreted within the realm of surviving and thriving beyond a coloniality? Studies in epigenetics have examined how things such as cortisol levels can be both intragenerationally and intergenerationally impacted by outside stimuli (Francis, 39–40). Indeed, and as Sullivan recalls, studies have provided evidence that the negative experiences of one generation can result in positive biological experiences for future generations, such as the case with one community in Sweden that experienced malnutrition in one generation but in later generations had lower heart disease rates (209). Although it does not immediately come to Elena that she has such potential, Carisa’s ability to remind her of it due to the intervention by Oshun indicates that each generation of women has an ability to heal that is guided by intergenerational knowledge. In the same ways that cortisol levels can determine stress responses and food intake can impact nutrition-related disease, although each of the women has thus far struggled against the strain of different oppressive structures, a heritage of strength and endurance that allows each woman to survive also exists. The need for healing and empowerment across generations culminates in how Carisa learns to decolonize her memory by engaging in creative acts. Subsequent to learning from her childhood school teachers that the narratives of her family are considered folk stories, she nevertheless determines to write stories about her family and the people in her community (253, 261). She also begins to attend college and is described by one professor as having no writing skills and poor Spanish and depicting unworthy subjects (271– 272). After this experience, Carisa sinks into a minor depression and returns to Puerto Rico. On the island, after a brief period of attending university in Puerto Rico where she finds the work being done to be racist and so leaves the school, Carisa begins to work with an artist who travels the countryside documenting old plantations and recording people who are normally marked out of historical narratives (303–304). What emerges in these moments are intuitive consciousness mechanisms that allow Carisa to reconsider the power dynamics of the world around her—judgments about what is considered to be aesthetically pleasing, and subjects that are considered to be culturally relevant by those with authority. Her consciousness enables her to see the different worlds through which she navigates, in recollection of Lugones’s concept. This knowledge allows her to critically engage the historical processes of erasure that silence women of color in order to control

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them and their memories. She creates resistance through the artwork while also finding ways to reclaim the histories and fill gaps, and thereby attends to a need delineated by Levins Morales. This consciousness, born within her sentient-flesh, creates methods of healing and empowerment for herself. In these moments, Carisa is able to construct a pathway that allows her to engage in creative outlets that construct a cultural community around her, leading her to decide to travel to Nigeria in search of her historical roots beyond the island (313). When she describes her plans for the trip, she notes that other people do not understand her purpose because they have lost their cultural memories (318). However, as she confronts the dream woman who has visited her for years, she sees herself (323). This return means that each woman had been engaging Oshun and future and past generations, the stone being the capsule that functioned as the reminder of memories to help with survival. But, Carisa is anticipating an opportunity to do more than survive. She wants to thrive and “create,” engaging the historical methods of cultural strength that have remained within the matrilineal line of her family. Her consciousness that allows her to navigate the differing worlds in which she existed enables her, here, to move with greater fluidity into a space not rigidly demarcated by binaries that maintain a coloniality of power but instead traverse them to take into account all of the navigations that have resulted in her existence. This shift away from the coloniality recalls work by Brave Heart, Walters, and Gone regarding the need for culturally specific healing techniques that take into account the longevity of the coloniality as well as how to reframe the tactics of navigation that have enabled survival to the current moment by generations of communities under attack.

Survivor into Healing This chapter has explored Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone to consider how characterization can elucidate how intergenerational survival occurs in sentient-flesh and enables a decolonization of memory emerging from the knowledge created down to the very cellular level. The intergenerational impact of coloniality is witnessed in the fact that multiple generations not only endure the structures and technologies that it creates but also must navigate reincarnations and adaptations of its functionings within their sentient-flesh. While it is not possible to completely escape the impact of these structures and technologies,

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how the navigations that occur are interpreted impact how they are understood and narrated among those who are imposed upon. The characters in Llanos-Figueroa’s novel individually endure hardships that emerge as a result of oppressive social structures that function as technologies of domination within a coloniality of power. These individual mechanisms, when compounded over time, can result in a culture that has lost its historical mechanisms for healing. And yet this novel’s characters—even though impacted by such oppressive forces—do retain the ability to challenge the process of dehumanization and cultural genocide via their inheritance of knowledge, supernatural gifts, and the ability to navigate the oppression that they face. What emerges is not a map of how to save oneself but a study in how the cultural wisdom that is inherited across generations can enable survival as well as constitute methods of healing when engaged via a world-traveler consciousness. This consciousness sees the coloniality and knows how to navigate spaces that are outside of its grasp.

Note 1. Within the novel, Fela considers different men in the hacienda as possible choices for finishing the ceremony but ultimately rejects them because she sees how coloniality has crushed their spirits. The determination to utilize her enslaver to complete the ceremony requires a polemic. I do not seek to insinuate that the sexual activity between Fela and the enslaver should be framed as anything other than rape. However, a nuance must be made so as to avoid evacuating Fela of her own sense of agency. See Roberta Hurtado’s “Decolonial Resilience” for further analysis of this scene.

References Anzaldúa, Gloria, and Cherríe Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color. 4th ed. SUNY P, 2015. Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse. “The Return to the Sacred Path: Healing the Historical Trauma and Historical Unresolved Grief Response Among the Lakota Through a Psychoeducational Group Intervention.” Smith College Studies in Social Work, vol. 68, no. 3, 1998, pp. 287–305. Comas-Díaz, Lillian. “LatiNegras: Mental Health Issues of African Latinas.” The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier, edited by Maria Root, Sage, 1996, pp. 167–90.

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Dias, Brian, et al. “Epigenetic Mechanisms Underlying Learning and the Inheritance of Learned Behavior.” Trends in Neurosciences, vol. 38, no. 2, 2015, pp. 96–107. Francis, Richard. Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance. Norton, 2011. Franklin, Jeremy, William Smith, and Man Hung. “Racial Battle Fatigue for Latina/o Students: A Quantitiatve Perspective.” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, vol. 13, no. 4, 2014, pp. 303–22. Gone, Joseph. “Redressing First Nations Historical Trauma: Theorizing Mechanisms for Indigenous Culture as Mental Health Treatment.” Transcultural Psychiatry, vol. 50. no. 5, 2013, pp. 683–706. Gone, Joseph, and William Hartmann. “American Indian Historical Trauma: Community Perspectives from Two Great Plains Medicine Men.” American Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 54, 2014, pp. 274–88. Hall, Sarah, et al. “A Cellular Memory of Developmental History Generates Phenotypic Diversity in C. Elegans.” Current Biology, vol. 20, 2010, pp. 149–55. Hall, Sarah, Guge-Wei Chirn, Nelson C. Lau, et al. “RNAi Pathways Contribute to Developmental History-Dependent Phenotypic Plasticity in C. Elegans.” RNA, vol. 19, 2013, pp. 306–19. Heinzelmann, Morgan, and Jessica Gill. “Epigenetic Mechanisms Shape the Biological Response to Trauma and Risk for PTSD: A Critical Review.” Nursing Research and Practice, 2013, pp. 1–10. Hurtado, Roberta. “Decolonial Resilience: Resistance and Healing in Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s Fiction.” Label Me Latina/o, vol. 7, Special Issue, Summer 2017. LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Johns Hopkins UP, 2001. Levins Morales, Aurora. Kindling: Writings on the Body. Palabara, 2013. ———. Medicine Stories: History, Culture, and the Politics of Integrity. South End, 1998. Llanos-Figueroa, Dahlma. Daughters of the Stone. St. Martin’s, 2009. Lugones, María. Pilgremeges/Perigranejes. Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. MacDonald, Jessica, and A. Jane Roskams. “Epigenetic Regulation of Nervous System Development by DNA Methylation and Histone Deacetylation.” Progress in Neurobiology, vol. 88, 2009, pp. 170–83. MacDonald, Jessica, et al. “MBD2 and MeCP2 Regulate Distinct Transitions in the Stage-Specific Differentiation of Olfactory Receptor Neurons.” Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, vol. 44, 2010, pp. 55–67. Moreno Vega, Marta. “Espiritismo in the Puerto Rican Community: A New World Recreation with the Elements of Kongo Ancestor Worship.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 29, no. 3, 1999, pp. 325–53.

110  R. HURTADO Ringrose, Leonie, and Renato Paro. “Epigenetic Regulation of Cellular Memory by the Polycomb and Trithorax Group Proteins.” Annual Review of Genetics, vol. 38, 2004, pp. 413–43. Skoge, Monica, et al. “Cellular Memory in Eukaryotic Chemotaxis.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 111, no. 40, 2014, pp. 14448–53. Smith, W. A. “Black Faculty Coping with Racial Battle Fatigue: The Campus Racial Climate in a Post-Civil Rights Era.” A Long Way to Go: Conversations About Race by African American Faculty and Graduate Students at Predominantly White Institutions, edited by D. Cleveland, Peter Lang, 2004, pp. 171–90. Stephenson, Nancy, Sally Weinrich, and Abbas Tavakoli. “The Effects of Foot Reflexology on Anxiety and Pain in Patients with Breast and Lung Cancer.” Oncology Nursing Forum, vol. 27, no. 1, 2000, n.p. Sullivan, Shannon. “Inheriting Racist Disparities in Health: Epigenetics and the Transgeneration Effects of White Racism.” Critical Philosophy of Race, vol. 1, no. 2, 2013, pp. 190–218. Thayer, Zaneta, and Christopher Kuzawa. “Biological Memories of Past Environments: Epigenetic Pathways to Health Disparities.” Epigenetics, vol. 6, no. 7, 2011, pp. 1–6. Walters, Karina, et al. “Bodies Don’t Just Tell Stories, They Tell Histories: Embodiment of Historical Trauma Among American Indians and Alaska Natives.” Du Bois Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 2011, pp. 179–89. Whitbeck, Les, et al. “Conceptualizing and Measuring Historical Trauma Among American Indian People.” American Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 33, no. 3–4, 2004, pp. 119–30. Yehuda, Rachel, and Linda Bierer. “The Relevance of Epigenetics to PTSD: Implications for the DSM-V.” Journal of Traumatic Stress, vol. 22, no. 5, 2009, pp. 427–34.

Strategic Decolonization: Methods for Resistance and Community Healing

This book has thus far considered how different literary depictions of sentient-flesh can engage a decolonial turn that moves from surviving to thriving within and beyond a coloniality of power. In previous chapters, I have considered how enfleshment brings flesh back to the bones of Puerto Rican women’s experiences; narrative persona constitutes integrity of choice in depiction; metaphors express sensory perception experiences of sentient-flesh; and characterization depicts intergenerational practices of healing and empowerment. This chapter explores how depictions of sentient-flesh in diction can result in a discourse that lends itself to social justice practices that move from thriving to educating. This chapter, however, does not seek to be a prescriptive analysis of diction and discourse or to provide a particular mapping of how social justice movements should represent sentient-flesh or even how they should develop and engage in decolonial activity. Instead, it aims to consider how the discourses constituted via specific choices in diction can engage representations of sentient-flesh and the power of decolonial imaginaries. Further, it seeks to understand if these discourses can create new spaces of potential that constitute arenas for social justice activity and the vitality of resilient strategies to navigate an Anglo-US coloniality of power. This chapter considers how the literary arts can be a space to articulate decolonization of sentient-flesh. Thus, it is necessary to consider the kinds of knowledge present within word choices as well as any selfreflexivity regarding consciousness, language, and power. I am led to © The Author(s) 2019 R. Hurtado, Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05731-2_6

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question whether or not there is a discourse specific to sentient-flesh and whether there is a discourse specific to decolonial consciousness, social justice, and resilience for Puerto Rican women. As these questions expand and become more complex, it is necessary to consider the source from which such discourses emerge: the sentient-flesh. Sentient-flesh is flesh that holds within it consciousness of being. It is consciousness that reaches to the cellular level and has been developing and undergirding survival techniques for generations. It moves from survivor to thriver to educator and then back again. This motion is caused by what Gloria Anzaldúa describes in “Now Let Us Shift” as a multidirectional spiral that is the pathway to conocimiento: It is a process of coming to consciousness that eschews the concept of chronological progression and instead embraces shifts (2002). Diction that depicts sentient-flesh experiences creates a discourse that is both decolonial in nature and constitutive of the shift needed to move beyond the limits of coloniality. This chapter examines three poems by Aracelis Girmay, two from Animal Kingdom and one from Girmay’s latest collection, The Black Marías.1 It begins with the premise that the literary arts function as a realm in which it is possible to construct discourses born out of sentient-flesh experiences that can be adapted for social justice projects. This potential usage emerges from the decolonial imaginary that subverts Anglo-US coloniality’s imposition on to what is known and how it expresses knowledge. As discussed in previous chapters, a decolonial turn enables an opportunity to discuss the experiences of Puerto Rican women without reifying technologies manifested by an Anglo-US coloniality. Yet, these discussions must not only account for the experiences of that coloniality and what exists beyond its mystifying technologies; they also must participate in a self-reflexive process that refutes attempts to be restricted to solely reactionary or pathologizing practices. This activity, within the literary arts, is pertinent because—and as scholars such as Richard Gerrig and David Rapp have shown (2004)— literary works can have an affective impact on readers and even reader responses to believability. Word choice can also reflect both knowledge and its creation. Importantly, a relationship exists between the language that is used and the social context from which it emerges (Bourdieu 2003). Indeed, as scholars such as Trevor Purvis and Alan Hunt have shown, ideology and discourse are interconnected (1993). Discourse functions as a cultural product that has a self-reflexivity, which participates in determining what

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is and is not conceptually possible (Foucault 1975). Discourse, within a coloniality of power, has proven to be an important tool for projects of domination (Doxtater 2004). As Gabriela Veronelli (2015) has shown, language within a coloniality holds significance in justifying, for those enacting domination, a right to behave within specific parameters; colonial discourse also becomes a method of indoctrination that leads to the internalization of beliefs and ideas, as noted in the introduction of this book. However, and as Asselin Charles has argued in “Colonial Discourse since Christopher Columbus,” these discourses have also been countered by what he describes as “antidiscourses,” which challenge the discourses deployed for subjugation and the underpinning ideologies and epistemologies on which they reside (1995). The reality of antidiscourses within colonial settings demonstrates that, even as people endure coloniality, they do not inherently accept the teachings that have manifested to enable these impositions. Language can provide insight into experiences of social norms, mores, and the individual in a social setting (Hook 2003). Indeed, the language that is used to describe experiences of coloniality and how the sentient-flesh responds to it can provide insight into both. Importantly, feminist scholars have explored within embodiment studies how power manifests in “body” experiences (Price and Shildrick 1999). As feminist scholars have shown, it is the “body” that is a tool for domination within a coloniality of power (Schiebinger 2000; Grosz 1992). As part of the decolonial turn that moves away from reliance on the Anglo-US coloniality of power, a language that depicts sentient-flesh experiences is one that can—as well as demystifying what narratives of the “body” create— decolonize the flesh from within the knowledge that the sentient-flesh does not inherently need to rely on the coloniality. It means going back to where discourses of the “body” start—the flesh—and considering whether alternative depictions of that same source can emerge. The presence of antidiscourse demonstrates that a coloniality of power does not inherently have the ability to destroy those elements— such as the sentient-flesh—that it seeks to obfuscate with its different technologies. However, the process of finding language in which to express experiences that convey the essence of what the sentient-flesh knows can be difficult. Scholars such as Derek Hook have examined how language can be reflective of the process of identity-making but also limited by social mores and conventions (2003). Further, even as language can attend to issues of social experience, it can also be limited to and

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by how these experiences manifest in the flesh. For instance, research in trauma studies has demonstrated that some types of extreme trauma may not be able to reach a point of verbal communication and remain within the realm of physical sensation or things such as memory flashbacks (Van der Kolk and Fisler 1995). It could be argued that these experiences remain buried within the flesh. However, because these events impact the flesh, processes of narration can be deployed to account for—if not the event itself—the essence of experience or even the experiences of the event’s aftermath (Mitchell 1998). Important to these narrations are the kinds of words that are deployed, which have been shown to convey perceptual meanings and emotional processing (Hellawell and Brewin 2004; Jaeger et al. 2014). Such communication demonstrates that people who narrate trauma engage discourses that circulate in their cultures and social structures as a means of rendering their experiences intelligible. The realities of classical models of colonial discourse and counterings by antidiscourse, as well as how discourse can reflect knowledge and trauma, lead to the importance of how language can convey sentientflesh experiences as part of a decolonial turn. The poems analyzed in this chapter engage the concepts of representation, experiences in the sentient-flesh, and movement beyond the confines of colonial labels. It is important to note before beginning that Girmay does utilize the term “body” within her poetry and not “sentient-flesh.” Girmay—when discussing her work—describes how: I have been thinking of, for the past year or so, constellations. I have been asking myself, What does the constellation have in common with the body? How is the body a constellation?…I have been thinking of exile & displacement—how it is possible for a body to slowly or quickly shed pieces of itself: skin, hair, limbs—all the time acquiring other pieces of the world. I have been thinking about how this is a perpetual lesson of loss & life. I have been thinking about this in the context of nation & gentrification & cities. How does this relate to Santa Ana, to New York, to New Orleans? I have been thinking about this in relation to the body that has been named “I.” (Poetry Society of America)

Although, here, Girmay is indeed utilizing the term “body,” her use of the term suggests a shift toward nuancing the experiences connected to the term. As she describes the “body,” it becomes a constellation in the process of making and remaking, a continual cycle of regeneration. It is more than a site where action occurs. It is, instead, where

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she becomes “I” within a larger cycle of social and cultural meaning and activity. Given the work conducted in Chapter “Introduction” of this book, I contend that her use of the term “body” seems closer to my own definition of sentient-flesh than it does with an Enlightenment, or the conceptual lineage leading back to the Enlightenment, discourse of body/mind. However, and as she later discusses, Girmay’s conception of the “body” also requires a nuance: the constellation that goes beyond the boundaries of the immediate flesh’s physical limit. She describes: When the piece of a body is left (or a home is left) then the body begins being a constellation: one piece is there! one piece is there! If I leave my hair in the comb in my mother’s house & walk out the door to go to the airport, then all of a sudden the body is everything between me & that lost piece. The body is made up, then, of roads & crickets & azucena & mud. How large we are. How ramshackle, how brilliant, how haphazardly & strangely rendered we are. Gloriously, fantastically mixed & monstered. I have been asking myself to be more attentive & porous—to pay attention to the way every inch of me is animal, every inch of me is earth. I am trying to remember this. Where is my cloud? Where is my sea? What do the lungs hunt? What does the eye have in common with the teeth? (PSA)

Here, Girmay depicts what she defines as the “body.” The “body” is a story of movement, of shedding, and of growing. What she describes as the “body” moves toward a potential of connectivity. This potential contributes to the underpinnings for a discourse of sentient-flesh; it is one that challenges what is known about the “body” and shifts toward considering the potential that exists in the flesh and its composition. I believe that this contribution emerges from a decolonial consciousness that is foundational for discourses born out of sentient-flesh experiences. Decolonial consciousness emerges from engaging a decolonial turn to function within a space of constant reflection and critique regarding the limitations imposed by a coloniality of power and from growing beyond those limits. It leads to a drive to move from survivor to thriver to educator. This consciousness and movement reflects the dynamics occurring in what Emma Pérez describes as the decolonial imaginary, which is a space where it is possible to reconceptualize history and decolonize a subject (4–5). The decolonial imaginary is a space of opposition but not necessarily a reactionary challenge. It is a space of creation. The consciousness emerging from this space has at its core an

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understanding that the Anglo-US coloniality of power is not the limits of potential conjured by those who control the technologies of domination. I claim that this potential manifests from shifting inside, through, and outside of a coloniality. It emerges from seeing the coloniality for what it is and knowing in an intimate way, as I have shown in previous chapters, the macro- and micro-level manifestations of that power. The potential of decolonial consciousness emerges in the space that it creates from that ability to know the coloniality but not be limited by it. The literary arts can function as a space where it is possible to depict sentient-flesh experience within the language used to convey this consciousness. In her discussion of “mujerista discourse,” Ada María IsasiDíaz describes how “mujerista thought attempts to be beyond the controlling rationality of dominant discourses. To do this, we use the experience of Latinas as the source of knowledge: This is a nonnegotiable understanding in the struggle for our liberation” (45). The daily experiences of Latinas within a coloniality of power provide key insights regarding power structures as well as what the sentient-flesh knows and needs to flourish beyond that coloniality. In knowing how power controls through language and its implicit knowledge and ideologies, it is possible to attend to visions of not being controlled and imagining what would replace those experiences that are manifested within a coloniality. Further, it points to decolonial imaginary navigations that are required to articulate the possibilities that exist as part of decolonial activity. The discourse that emerges must also take into consideration whether it will fall into a historical pattern of being a reactionary response to power structures or if it will move beyond them into the decolonial imaginary. Isasi-Díaz argues that “[o]ur work is not to elaborate and explain our understandings against the background of ‘regular’ knowledge, using the dominant discourse to validate our insights. As a decolonial discourse, mujerista thought seeks adequacy and validation from its usefulness in Latinas’ struggles” (45). She goes on to describe how “dominant thinking,” or ideologies that are provided within a colonial structure and its technologies of categorization, impacts Latinas. However, this impact does not mean that Latinas are limited to it even as they may experience an opportunity to look to lessons learned from these elements. Such a discourse is neither reliant on hegemonic discourses that circulate within a coloniality of power nor locked into a reactionary state of opposition to it. Further, it does not position Latina knowledge as “other” against an Anglo-US coloniality that positions itself as the center of comparison.

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Instead, this discourse can enable an opportunity to express Latina experience from within that subject position and all its varied manifestations, using the knowledge constructed in sentient-flesh. The potential for a discourse emerging from depictions of sentient-flesh experiences within the literary arts, and the kinds of decolonial imaginaries it brings forth, points to whether they can lend themselves, if at all, to social justice practices. As I have shown in previous chapters, writings of sentient-flesh are never merely endeavors designed to remain on the page. Instead, I contend that they are actively engaged in constituting new cultures that move beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-US coloniality of power. Anzaldúa has written of this potential in Making Face/Making Soul: Haciendo Caras, in which she describes that artists are engaged in processes of both reflection and creation (1990). If the construction of art is also the construction of a culture, then it has the ability to express sentient-flesh experience and to gather from those experiences what it knows beyond the coloniality of power and forge a realm of new cultural productions. These productions exist in the decolonial space and function as technologies with which to construct that new space of potential. As an endeavor that moves through and beyond the limitations of an Anglo-US coloniality, the creation of culture within a decolonial imaginary underlies the development of social justice practices. Foundational to this creation is the awareness underpinning Isasi-Díaz’s concept of a mujerista discourse, which is an awareness of both the knowledge from which it comes and a refusal to get locked into dichotomous thinking of either colonial or decolonial. Dichotomous thinking ignores the fact that what emerges from within the sentient-flesh is not only an awareness— down to the cellular level—of how to survive coloniality but also a history of surviving and thriving that would be lost if it were placed within that dichotomy. This loss would emerge because the navigations would be transformed into merely reactionary activities; they would become limited to being part of a time that has passed rather than being a source of information that explicates what has happened in the past and creating knowledge for the kinds of changes and transformations that can occur in the future within the process of conocimiento, as Anzaldúa describes it (2002). Such dichotomous thinking would also fail to account for the complexities of survival within these paradigms. Thus, such awareness requires constant self-reflexivity, as Anzaldúa notes in her posthumously published Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro (2015), as well as a

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willingness to work within the community to find ways to avoid lapsing into this dichotomy, and share such techniques. This self-reflexivity requires grappling with how to avoid falling into this dichotomy while simultaneously accounting for it as part of the platform for creation. In her work on the historian as curandera, scholar Aurora Levins Morales points toward the healing potential for storytelling and how historical correctives or future imaginings can emerge from within the act of storytelling (1998). The language that gets utilized in these stories—in recollection of Foucault’s concept of discourse, culture, and power (1975)—thus becomes the culture and the creator of the culture. The medicinal stories, as Levins Morales describes them, emerging from this project heal and create shifts in how to conceptualize sociocultural structures. Importantly, although these stories emerge as part of a decolonial project and account for experiences emerging from experiencing a coloniality of power, they are not inherently limited to being in battle with that coloniality. The idea that stories can function as medicine moves back to what it means to heal without imposition by a coloniality and what the stories teach in terms of creating visions of possibility. I contend that it is through the specifically chosen diction—among other literary devices—that movement from survivor to thriver to educator can occur.2 Implicit to this process is the deployment of creative productions so that they may flourish and transition—as this book postulates—into a turn that then moves sentient-flesh out of the coloniality of power and into a space of potential for people to tap into their decolonial consciousness. In what follows, I examine Girmay’s poetry for both understandings of discursive potential for representing sentient-flesh and the ability to engage a decolonial imaginary that can participate in social justice activity. The poems examined in these sections are “The Black Maria” from her 2015 collection, “Starlight Multiplication” from her 2011 collection, and “La Boda del Mar y Arena” also from her 2011 collection. Through my analysis of her poetry, I argue that select Puerto Rican women’s literary arts can construct a discourse of sentient-flesh that engages a decolonial imaginary not bound to the limitations of potential dictated within Anglo-US coloniality. This discourse builds a praxis in which Latinas are not locked in a reactionary battle with Anglo-US coloniality but instead builds a culture beyond it. Finally, in constituting this culture via discourses of the sentient-flesh, and the potential born within a decolonial imaginary, what emerges is an artistic illumination of the possibility for decolonial movement from thriver to educator.

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Sentient-Flesh Discourses Diction assists in depicting sentient-flesh experience and communicating knowledge of coloniality and a decolonial turn. Language choice can also indicate thought process and implied meaning that can be insinuated. Within this reality is the fact that word choice also participates in conjuring images, characters, settings, and more within the literary arts. As such, discursive engagement with a decolonial imaginary, or the expression of this imaginary, enables an opportunity for exploring the potential that sentient-flesh holds. In her poem, “The Black Maria,” Girmay explores the interconnection between power, language, and the flesh. In this poem, she draws out the connections between the means of communication that exist among and between individuals and the way language has an impact down to the cellular level. The poem “The Black Maria” draws attention to the self-reflexive activity of how language choice and the deployment of that language functions in the process of creation. The poem begins by providing an overview of the term “black maria” and its historical uses by European astronomers to describe the “moon’s dark marks” that they believe were also “seas” during the 1600s when Africans were being enslaved and forcibly moved to the Americas for enslavement (9–10). She moves on to describe how the black marias were retitled by Italians with names such as Cognitum, Crisium, Fecunditatis—Know, Crises, and Fertility, respectively—and then provides her own terms: the sea as “mar” and “bahri” and the moon “luna” (11, 14–15, 17–18). The process of naming illustrates how the terms that are used to describe something have deeply intimate meanings for the way a person makes sense of the world. The process of naming and renaming demonstrates shifts in knowledge and in how the world was being conceptualized (Bourdieu 2003; Greenblatt 2012). Notably, the change in names for the black marias occurs alongside the emerging processes of racializing slavery, and thus the two seemingly unconnected social phenomena become connected. Although appearing to be separate issues, the contemporaneous reality of these phenomena demonstrates a shift in regard to the power of naming as part of a colonial task and its ability to “recreate” people as part of this colonial process (Sestigiani 2014; Spurr 1993; Mignolo 2005). Emerging in this poem is an awareness of how language can intimate a process of creation and recreation. Girmay provides an anecdote of a Saharan woman who rereads a single page of the novel Anna Karenina,

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and how the repetition of reading this one page is “like” the waves that exist in the black marias (19–22). The connection indicates an almost gravitational pull that leads this woman to move through the same lines of writing over and over again, pulled by a force beyond herself. It indicates a striving to seek something out or find some sort of meaning within the same repetitive action. Further, it raises questions as to the kind of impact that would occur should the woman have the opportunity to read the rest of the words of this novel, or if she had purposefully removed that one page having read the rest of the novel and found something particularly compelling on that one page. The lack of context here, however, does not indicate deprivation but instead potential and possibility. The possibility manifests from the source of what is offered: discourses and language. As the poem continues, Girmay describes how “language is something like this [the waves of the black marias]. A hard studying of cells under a / microscope” (23–24). The poet connects language, the moon’s seas, and the studying of cells by their magnification via technology. The language makes the moon’s seas “known.” However, the terms do not truly make it possible to “know” the moon’s seas as the act of naming is not inherently about “knowing” something so much as providing a framework via which to conceptualize it (de Saussure 1999; Duan 2012). Similarly, studying a cell via a microscope does not really “know” the cell so much as label it so that interpretation of it can occur through a specific framework. Studying the cells means watching their movements and reactions. The use of “hard” indicates the intensity undertaken to “know” these cells even as their appearance only occurs via the intervention of a technology designed to make them accessible for those without the ability to see them in their “true” (microscopic) context. It also recalls the changing colonial landscapes occurring during the renaming of the black marias, and how Western European depictions of Amerindians and Africans transformed the way these people were “known” to colonists via technologies of domination (Mignolo 2005). This need for reflexivity regarding knowledge develops as the poem considers what the cells represent in terms of potential. The poet writes that they are “cells on their way to becoming other things: a person, a book, / a moon” (25–26). That the cells have multiple potential outcomes is reflective of the three names provided to the moon’s seas that she noted were given by Italians. In this case, the “person” would be know, the “book” would be crises, and the “moon” would be fertility.

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Further, and although Girmay does not necessarily make this link, there is a return to the importance of three in relation to the moon’s seas later in the poem when it reflects on the names of individuals who have been murdered as a result of institutionalized white supremacy—Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd (39–40). The ideologies enabling and fostering those murders can be directly traced to the emergence of racialized slavery and the process of a Western European claim to authority and power throughout the world. In rendering these connections within the poem, and establishing a historical interconnectedness, this poem moves within its language into a shift from thriver to educator. Yet, naming and using language cannot be taken as a “unifying” concept that can overcome difference and ultimately solve—on its own— social injustices. Indeed, Girmay writes that “Naming, however kind, is always an act of estrangement…& someone who does not love you cannot name you right” (42, 44). The idea that naming something moves away from a proximity to it would, on the surface, seem contradictory. Indeed, naming something does not make it intimately “known.” Further, even within the act of naming, the framework within which the application of a word occurs requires scrutiny because of the kinds of knowledge and meaning that then gets imbued into it (Doxtater 2004). Thus, in the movement from thriver to educator there must be a process of self-reflexivity in awareness regarding language and its potential to function as a technology of erasure and/or domination. However, as the poem progresses, and Girmay names/lists murdered individuals, the issue of naming takes on a unique nuance that demonstrates the importance of language within social justice activity. Providing these people’s names indicates that they are not lost. This point is important, as she shows when she writes that “If this is a poem about estrangements & waters made dark with millions / of names & bodies—the Atlantic / Ocean, the Mediterranean & Caribbean Seas, the Mississippi, then these / are also the names of the black maria” (46–49). Those who have been harmed by a coloniality of power require more than a superficial representation via language, pointing to what Spivak writes of in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” However, here, and as the conclusion of Girmay’s poem indicates, a discourse must develop that attends to both the sentient-flesh significance of experience while not falling into traps of naming for the sake of naming alone. The discourse must eschew superficial gestures. Indeed, in her last representation of Emmett Till’s assassination, and the subsequent depiction of his

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murder, she writes that he is “somebody’s / child, our much more than the moon” (52–53). Till was murdered, and the discourse—the language used to describe him—must at every point pay homage to the project of honest and clear representations to reach the pain caused by the coloniality as a wound within the sentient-flesh.

Healing Discourses Discourse, made possible through language, plays a vital role in expressing sentient-flesh experiences. However, the act of expressing consciousness regarding these experiences cannot be locked into a reaction battle with Anglo-US coloniality. I argue that a significant task taken up in the creation of this discourse is the development of a culture beyond the coloniality that does not exist in a binary with it. It is in this manner that literary artists can participate in the process of healing and empowerment that is vital to social justice efforts. However, it is not to argue that healing is an end-goal result. Here, I consider Anzaldúa’s Coyolxauhqui imperative and her depiction of healing as a process of making and unmaking (2009). Thus, it is vital to consider what some of the elements of the culture will be, what they will look like, or what is the realm of possibility for things as yet unknown to manifest into. In this section, I consider the role of healing discourse in the construction of such a culture through analysis of Girmay’s “Starlight Multiplication.” This poem is written to her deceased grandmother. However, rather than reconsidering her relationship with her grandmother or describing her own sentiments about loss, Girmay’s poem considers the grandmother as a sentient being who had—during her lifetime—known erotic love in the flesh. Although this poem utilized the term “body” in two places, I contend that Girmay’s depiction of her grandmother moves away from the “body” as object or concept and instead focuses on specific elements of the flesh. I would posit that this use of the “body” is not so much in accordance with an association of the “body” as a real, living, breathing being but instead because the “body” needs to be reconfigured. For example, the poem begins with the statement that “it is good to praise god in the body / of the grandmother who is dead” (1–2). Although in religious dogma the “body” is considered to be a temple of the religion, here Girmay is not praising a religious deity in a living “body” but instead in a corpse. A question arises regarding the conceptual difference between a living being and the material matter that is left after a person

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has died. I do not intend, in this book, to explore issues of the afterlife or religious dogma regarding the dead. However, Girmay, in going back to an elder female relative in a manner similar to that of Llanos-Figueroa, considers the importance of female lineage and the intimacy of relationships within the family. It is thus necessary to consider what it is about the grandmother that was so important, and the kind of risks that occur when attempting to challenge narratives about women (Torres 1993). Rather than looking to the “body” as object, Girmay’s poem begins by moving directly to the source of social interactions and familial lineage and relationships. As the poem continues, Girmay engages in a process of enfleshment that transforms into a discourse of erotics. She writes of a “Holy love” in line 2 but moves in lines 3–4 to discuss this love as being “of bread and lovers who held your hands / as they kissed the soft meat between your legs.” Girmay’s depiction could be considered irreverent to the grandmother–granddaughter relationship, as the poem itself expresses in later lines where she remarks about her grandmother’s embarrassment that the poet would discuss such a topic in relation to her (6). This moment in the poem alters the dynamics of how she is depicting this relationship and the significance of cultural codification of women’s sexuality and how that sexuality gets inculcated into identity (Castillo 1993; Irigaray 1980). As with Daughters of the Stone, elder female relatives are not denied as having erotic urges but instead it emerges as an integral part of the sentient-flesh. Sexuality, here, moves away from something clinically controlled as examined in the first chapter of this book, or as a tool of violence as explored in second and third chapters, but is viewed instead as something that can be celebrated. In specifying that her grandmother received cunnilingus, the poet not only engages a topic that is relatively taboo in the Anglo-US mainstream culture but also describes the anatomy being engaged as “meat between your legs.” In reducing the anatomy to what it is—literally, flesh—she avoids over-celebratory overtones and instead engages the flesh in its barest of essences and existence. As the poem continues, the narrator’s “song” to her grandmother further develops the significance of the flesh, the erotic, and discourse. She describes a desire for her grandmother to be “kissed again…Like that” (7). However, she then continues by noting that her “head is so full of ideas / I say your name as I am building the house of the city in this poem” (8–9). The narrator’s description of what she wants for her grandmother might seem questionable. Seemingly inappropriate,

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she demonstrates a wish for her grandmother to once again experience erotic sensations. However, the subsequent lines in which the grandmother’s name is spoken when “building” a “house” counter the danger that might emerge from exposing the vulnerability of her grandmother’s desire. The house—the poem, itself—functions as a safe space in which to conjure these moments of transgression while simultaneously reconstituting the potential of their relationship. The poem’s conclusion further develops this sense of interconnectedness that allows the poet to reclaim the grandmother from discourses that limit her potential, and also offers a kind of healing for the sentient-flesh. The narrator continues to depict the grandmother’s erotic engagements, moving more specifically to the grandmother’s husband, and then describing the essence of erotic stimulation with descriptions such as “red horses you saw” when being kissed on the ankle by her husband (20). She then moves toward abstractions that are nevertheless significant in considering how to express the sentient-flesh experience of erotic pleasure, first asking “what is the sounds of two lines crossing” and then “what is the word the salt says,” the answer to both being “Haragu” (26–27). As the poem concludes, the narrator states “your body & your name here, at first, / then vanishing, like the stars” (29–30). The poet, although returning to the “body,” appears to lean more toward an essence of her grandmother than a colonial concept of who and what her grandmother was when alive. The poem’s final lines transform the grandmother from a stereotype, or a stock figure who had existed only in relation to the narrator, into a being who was sentient and whose flesh held the ability for erotic pleasure. She emerges as more than a narrative of the “body,” and instead her sexuality takes on a potential beyond the labels ascribed to her (Hammonds 1997). The narrator’s depiction thus draws out elements of the sentient-flesh and brings their potential into a discourse of decolonizing the flesh.

Discourses of Change The literary arts that create a discourse for depicting sentient-flesh do not, by their manifestations, automatically create social justice or liberate those who endure oppression. However, what such discourses do create is a language through which to express/envision a culture beyond the constraints of coloniality. This discourse provides a language that can be utilized as part of social justice practices for activists who seek liberation

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as a process of continual transformation. The need to consider justice as a process emerges from the reality of having to shift from dichotomous abstractions that are fundamental to a coloniality of power and its logics. Instead, and as I demonstrate in my analysis of Girmay’s “La Boda del Mar y Arena,” it is through engaging the sentient-flesh, its wisdom, and being willing to engage in a self-reflexive process of transformation that a decolonial turn can lead to liberation. Broken into seven stanzas, this poem continues the depiction of the flesh. Unique to this poem is Girmay’s depiction of “Love” as concept, and of the decolonial consciousness that love without artifice requires and creates. The poem begins with a communal call. The narrator states, “If we, for long enough, look, / with the clean eyes of children” (1–2). In calling to a community through the invocation of “we,” the narrator moves from the action being asked for from being an individual task to one that others can join. The metaphor that Girmay produces in the second line, “clean eyes of children,” takes on both political and tangible meaning. Although it is a metaphor, there is a literal reality of children’s eyes and adult eyes being “clean” by way of biological mechanisms that protect the eyes. However, the metaphor functions as both a concrete reality and an essence—“clean” here meaning free from adulteration (no pun intended) because with age comes experiences that sully what is seen and transform the “seen”—potentially—into something that it is not. Indeed, with age comes knowledge of culture and ideologies within a given society and the limits that those things impose (Foucault 1975; Hook 2003; Purvis and Hunt 1993). Thus, the poem begins with a need for individuals to engage in a collective act of freeing their vision from those things that hinder their ability to see potential. The potential that can be collectively witnessed recalls the significance of previous generations’ wisdom, as discussed in the “Envisioning Empowerment” chapter of this book, as well as in the previous segment of this chapter. Girmay describes that this clean vision will enable an ability to see “what this big house is saying” and “we will start to understand / the language of our parents” which ultimately leads to being able to interpret “what the salt means” (3–6). The big house can, here, metaphorically represent the community, a culture, the family lineage, or harken back to Audre Lorde’s famous depiction of the “master’s house” (1984). However, the lines subsequent to the depiction of the “big house” move toward the “language of our parents.” The shift to consider multigenerational knowledge and wisdom raises questions as to

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what the parents had said or what their language attempted to express. The significance of language here exists in the kinds of information that is communicated via the specifically chosen terminology—the very particular crafting—that is used to create understanding (Bourdieu 2003). This knowledge will allow current communities to understand “what the salt means” and will lead to a need to expand the potential of “salt” as a whole. Similar to “Starlight Multiplication,” salt once again emerges as symbol of meaning that here must be explored. In practices of spirituality, salt has connotations of friendship, godly gifting, and purity (Goldsmith 1897). In terms of environmental studies, salt is a crystalline mineral. Salt becomes both symbolic of natural processes of chemical creation as well as of the relationships between people and the world. It also demonstrates the interconnectedness of sentient-flesh with other elements within the environment without having to stray into hypothetical realms where the tangible reality of the flesh is forsaken in a dichotomous reaction to coloniality’s depictions of the “body.” The narrator moves to create a discourse of love immediately following this depiction of what unadulterated vision creates in terms of potential. The narrator states, “I do not want to marry the wind” and “I want my love to know my ear. / My love, I want to know your ear” (7, 11–12). Here, I do not seek to equate marriage with love. Marriage is a legal, binding agreement that does not have to be constituted through romantic or erotic love. The statement that “I do not want to marry the wind” could indicate a desire to be free from such a contract or from a desire to not “marry” a particular thing, such as the wind. The subsequent lines of wanting the “love” to know “the ear” shift the poem’s meaning. The “ear” is where sound is accepted and enters the flesh to make meaning. Although other areas of the flesh also interpret sound through elements such as vibration, the “meaning” of spoken language is made possible through the ears and then cognitive processing (Lakoff 1999). The repetition of “I want” in these lines demonstrates the desire born within a shift to educator regarding what can be shared and the importance of language in a decolonial turn. This reciprocal relationship moves away from social conventions and contracts and into a deeper sense of connectivity made possible through the sentient-flesh. As the poem concludes, the narrator not only references the title of the poem but also indicates how the establishment of a discourse of sentient-flesh helps create a language of decolonial consciousness and social justice praxis. The narrator describes how “the sea and beach move into

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each other’s mouths / particle by particle” and concludes by beseeching “O, god, let us love / like they love” (16–17, 19–20). With the imagery created of the sea and the sand, the narrator produces an unadulterated vision of a love and erotic of being able to go—down to the most basic level of physical matter—with another being into a moment of sharing that is beyond social convention, mores, and restrictions. Instead, there exists truthfulness about imperfection and beauty, an ability to be the basic flesh and be accepted in that bareness. That truthfulness allow the poem to end with a call to have a love that is so “clean” that it can interpret the salt—the residue that is left after the union of the sea and beach has long since passed. It means being able to love in a way that finds empowerment in the knowledge that it can exist and the potential to engage in such a love. If decolonial consciousness is born out of the ability to move beyond the limitations of a colonial logic, then—here— the ability to love so openly and without reserve becomes the foundation of social justice movements, and thereby produces a discourse that can express the sentient-flesh and what it knows about liberation (Sandoval 2001).

Sentient-Flesh Discourse Sentient-flesh experiences that are depicted in the literary arts require a decolonial consciousness to manifest a discourse that moves away from the logics and narratives that are provided by a coloniality of power. The construction of such a discourse requires the ability to understand the deep connections between the flesh and knowledge, as well as the power of language to both create and destroy. The poems by Girmay that I have analyzed in this chapter demonstrate a need to examine history and to question how the power of naming can work as a technology of oppression as well as liberation, and the significance of the flesh and the vitality of the sentient-flesh to move away from culturally imposed limitations. These explorations highlight the kinds of potential that can be illuminated but not conscripted. Instead of providing an actual vision of what a decolonial culture will manifest in terms of social justice movements—instead of dictating what the future will look like—this discourse challenges issues of sacredness of relationships that restrict the ability to look to people in their barest, rawest sentient-flesh desires and transform these elements into the centers from which liberation from coloniality can occur.

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Notes 1. It is important to note Girmay’s subject position and the choice to include her work in a text that otherwise examines literature by women who, although living in the USA, identify as Puerto Rican. Unlike the authors explored in the first chapters of this book, Girmay identifies as having African-American, Eritrean, and Puerto Rican heritage, and all three are represented throughout her different collections of poetry with no one lineage being depicted as more important than the rest. The decision to examine her work alongside work by women who do identify as specifically Puerto Rican was made due to two intertwined realities: the first being that all Puerto Ricans are of mixed ancestry, and so to not include a writer because both of her parents are either not from the island or ancestrally from the island would be problematic. The second is that it is not possible to splice up her work or even her flesh to determine which parts of her are more or less Puerto Rican than the others given the fact that all Puerto Ricans are mixed. While some of her poems are clearly directed through her use of Spanish at a potentially Puerto Rican—or, at least, a Latino— population, I am interested in considering what her work does to expand the possibilities of depicting sentient-flesh in the literary arts in a manner that moves into a decolonial consciousness and the possibilities of social justice. 2. The drive to create such a movement is indeed part of a social justice praxis. As witnessed in the Young Lord’s biweekly publications during the Civil Rights era, creating platforms within the community about coloniality as well as the potential to not be limited by it has been a major goal of different community organizations during the twentieth century and beyond.

References Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Let Us Be the Healing of the Wound: The Coyolxauhqui Imperative—La Sombra y El Sueño.” The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, edited by AnaLouise Keating. Duke UP, 2009, pp. 303–17. ———. Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. Edited by AnaLouise Keeting. Duke UP, 2015. ———. “Now Let Us Shift.” This Bridge We Call Home, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 540–78. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Harvard UP, 2003.

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Castillo, Ana. “The Distortion of Desire.” The Sexuality of Latinas, edited by Norma Alarcón, Ana Castillo, and Cherríe Moraga. Third Woman, 1993, pp. 143–46. Charles, Asselin. “Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 1995, pp. 134–52. de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Roy Harris. Open Court, 1999. Doxtater, Michael. “Indigenous Knowledge in the Decolonial Era.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 28, nos. 3/4, 2004, pp. 618–33. Duan, Manfu. “On the Arbitrary Nature of the Linguistic Sign.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2012, pp. 54–59. Foucault, Michele. The Archeology of Knowledge. Translated by R. Sheridan. Routledge, 1975/1995. Gerrig, Richard, and David Rapp. “Psychological Processes Underlying Literary Impact.” Poetics Today, vol. 25. no. 2, 2004, pp. 265–81. Girmay, Aracelis. “La Boda del Mar y Arena.” Kingdom Animalia. BOA Editions, 2011, p. 27. ———. “New American Poets.” Poetry Society of America. n.d. Visited on July 6, 2017. Web. https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/new_ american_poets/aracelis_girmay/. ———. “Starlight Multiplication.” Kingdom Animalia. BOA Editions, 2011, p. 37. ———. “The Black Maria.” The Black Maria. BOA Editions, 2016, pp. 73–74. Goldsmith West, Marie. “The Symbolism of Salt.” Popular Science Monthly, vol. 52, 1897, pp. 241–46. Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. W. W. Norton, 2012. Grosz, Elizabeth. “Inscriptions and Body Maps: Representations and the Corporeal.” Space, Gender, Knowledge: Feminist Readings, edited by Linda McDowell and Joanne Sharpe. Arnold, 1992, pp. 236–76. Hammonds, Evelynn. “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence.” 1997. Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, edited by Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick. Routledge, 1999, pp. 93–104. Hellawell, S. J., and C. R. Brewin. “A Comparison of Flashbacks and Ordinary Autobiographical Memories of Trauma: Content and Language.” Behavior Research and Therapy, vol. 42, 2004, pp. 1–12. Hook, Derek. “Language and the Flesh: Psychoanalysis and the Limits of Discourse.” Pretexts, vol. 12, no. 1, 2003, pp. 43–64. Irigaray, Luce. “When Our Lips Speak Together.” Signs, vol. 6, no. 1, 1980, pp. 69–79. Isasi-Díaz, Ada María. “Mujerista Discourse: A Platform for Latinas’ Subjugated Knowledge.” Decolonizing Epistemology: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy, edited by Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Eduardo Mendieta. Fordham UP, 2012, pp. 44–67.

130  R. HURTADO Jaeger, Jeff, Katie Lindbolm, Kelly Parker-Guilbert, and Lori Zoellner. “Trauma Narratives: It’s What You Say, Not How You Say It.” Psychological Trauma, vol. 6, no. 5, 2014, pp. 473–81. Lakoff, George, and Mike Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic, 1999. Levins Morales, Aurora. Medicine Stories: History, Culture, and the Politics of Integrity. South End, 1998. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Crossing, 1984. Mignolo, Walter. Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, & Colonization. Michigan UP, 2005. Mitchell, Juliet. “Trauma, Recognition, and the Place of Language.” Diacritics, vol. 28, no. 4, 1998, 121–33. Pérez, Emma. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Indiana UP, 1999. Price, Janet, and Margrit Shildrick, editors. Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. Routledge, 1999. Purvis, Trevor, and Alan Hunt. “Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology…” The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 44, no. 3, 1993, pp. 473–99. Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppressed. U Minneapolis P, 2001. Schiebinger, Londa. “Skeletons in the Closet: The First Illustrations of the Female Skeleton in Eighteenth-Century Anatomy.” Feminism and the Body, edited by Londa Schiebinger. Oxford UP, 2000, pp. 25–57. Sestigiani, Sabina. Writing Colonisation: Violence, Landscape, and the Act of Naming in Modern Italian and Australian Literature. Peter Lang, 2014. Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. U of Illinois P, 1998, pp. 271–316. Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire. Duke UP, 1993. Torres, Lourdes. “Risking all for Margarita.” The Sexuality of Latinas, edited by Norma Alarcón, Ana Castillo, and Cherríe Moraga. Third Woman, 1993, pp. 166–68. Van der Kolk, Bessel, and R. Fisler. “Dissociation and the Fragmentary Nature of Traumatic Memories: Overview and Exploratory Study.” Journal of Traumatic Stress, vol. 8, 1995, pp. 505–25. Veronelli, Gabriela. “The Coloniality of Language: Race, Expressivity, Power, and the Darker Side of Modernity.” Wagadu, vol. 13, 2015, pp. 108–34.

Conclusion: Sentient-Flesh Subversions

Throughout this book, I have attempted to identify the distinction between the “body” as it emerges out of a Western European conceptual genealogy from the sentient-flesh, and the decolonial potential within the literary arts to depict sentient-flesh experiences as part of a decolonial turn. For this reason, I have explored different literary devices to consider how they can—individually and together—create visions of possibility beyond the boundaries of an Anglo-US coloniality. I believe, and have argued throughout this book, that the sentient-flesh holds the necessary knowledge for this kind of turn. My decision to focus on depictions of sentient-flesh was made to highlight the subversive potential it holds for Puerto Rican women—and potentially other women of color and other communities at large. This book opened with the question of how Puerto Rican women’s literary arts show that they are more than the sum of Anglo-US coloniality’s narratives and action. To unpack how Puerto Rican women writers do this act, I went back to the flesh, the sentient-flesh, and how it is specifically targeted by a coloniality of power. I wanted to know why the physical dimension of oppression seems so insidious, so carefully crafted. For, if oppression is only about psychological domination, there would be no need to so brutally exact control over the material realities of the people coming under a colonial power. And, if oppression were only ever physical and we could say that the flesh is only flesh, then psychological violence and violation would not occur.

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I do not wish to conclude by falling back into a mind/body dichotomy. Thus, the issues that I raise here require direct and candid attention. A coloniality of power constructs logics that not only create oppression but also justify and maintain it. The technologies that emerge from these logics are specifically designed to create a power so strong that it can simultaneously change over time and maintain its structure. These technologies not only focus on the immediate way to exact this control but also consider the ability for constituting its longevity across one generation and multiple generations. Thus, while there is a sentient impact that occurs when a person or community is narrated as “inferior” within a coloniality, the physical component that occurs in terms of materiality must match this discourse. The sentient-flesh becomes the targeted site. The reason for this focus is clear: If people believe themselves to be better than how a coloniality narrates them, then they will not only refute that coloniality’s authority but also actively strive en mass to overthrow it. Martín Espada has written of the internalization of colonialism and the manner in which the Puerto Rican population has been so targeted that it has been reduced to a “shuffling” forward for welfare (1999, 67). Although his comment is not all-encompassing, it does provide insight into the chilling success of the Anglo-US coloniality of power. This coloniality so viciously attacks the sentient-flesh that it creates a disorientation where even the basic means of survival requires begging, requires reliance on a social structure that demands outright submission. Importantly, a coloniality of power seeks to impoverish the communities it targets so that they are dependent on it, or believe themselves to be dependent. This kind of soul-murder does not exist only in a “mental” faculty but becomes internalized down to the very cellular level. And, as Anzaldúa and Moraga have shown, the survival tactics engaged within a colonized community hold the information about the coloniality of power and the potential to know how to move beyond it (2015). The act of decolonization begins in the sentient-flesh. It requires accepting the truth that facultad tells about in relation to the social injustices we endure. It requires learning from the lessons the flesh tells and allowing it to guide us all to conocimiento as Anzaldúa describes it (2002). It also requires being able to let go of the harmful lessons that have been so insidiously fed to all of us and imbedded in our flesh, a willingness to accept that what has occurred has happened. It requires mourning these realities. It also requires a shift in which to see beyond

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the coloniality’s logics that render our seemingly unhealthy responses to our oppression as not our limitations. This last component is vital to a decolonial turn. It is vital because the coloniality wants us to see ourselves and the pain that exists in our communities as emerging because there is something inherently wrong with us; something so pathologically engrained that we need to be colonized by our oppressors as they try to save us from ourselves. We must engage in this decolonial turn so that we can witness the coloniality of power as the truly pathological structure that it is and consider what responsibilities we have to fashion new cultural outlets for our own healing and empowerment. It requires the ability to accept that healing and empowerment are never the endgoal but, instead, are ever-moving processes that allow us to shift where we stand as sentient-flesh beings and into the realms of potential that the coloniality of power so fears us tapping into. Important to this shift is the healing process. To describe soul-murder within a coloniality of power is to identify centuries of violence and violation. It necessitates asking: How can we get back to the sentient-flesh while also accepting the navigations we have had to construct? How do we reframe and engage the wounds in and among ourselves that have inspired harmful activities within our own communities? How do we heal ourselves when there is so much pain? I believe that this is where the literary arts provide a space for social justice activity as part of a decolonial praxis, or perhaps where a decolonial praxis emerges as necessary for the foundation of social justice movements. In the previous chapter of this book, I explored the importance of diction and discourse in constituting a language that can be used for social justice activity. The importance of the literary arts and creative cultural acts is not new or unique to Puerto Rican communities in the mainland US. Indeed, the construction of the Nuyorican Poets Café stands as just one example in which this community has actively sought to create space for the production of literary arts. A spoken-word venue, activity in the café has given rise to printed works such as the anthology Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poet’s Café (1994). Other communities have created similar spaces where verbal communication has been an arena in which to challenge boundaries and envision consciousness. But I believe that the sentient-flesh and the creative expressions that emerge from it frame a decolonial praxis that can lead to social change. At this moment, the changing landscape of the literary arts world can be witnessed as symbolic of the kinds of consciousness shifting

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that is occurring. Publication of novels that depict the experiences of women who have been written out of history and reimaging the lives of women whose representation has only ever been through a framework of objectification are just two examples. The emergence of a Chicano national poet laureate from 2015 to 2017 marks a shift in who is considered to be writing “real” literary arts on a national stage. Perhaps more important than the act of being nominated and appointed by a committee is the work that Juan Felipe Herrera—as well as other Latino poets who have held regional poet laureate positions—conducted while poet laureate. During his tenure in this position, which was comprised of two appointments, Herrera created the Casa de Colores program that sought to bring together writings by people of color and offer spaces where things such as family and migration experiences could be documented and shared. Although Herrera is Chicano and not Puerto Rican, his nomination and tenure—and his activities during this tenure—symbolize the work being created by the Latino community in the US for change. It affirms identity and forces the creation of space for the multitude of voices this community encompasses. Included in Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings: Subversion in the Flesh, María Luisa Arroyo’s time as poet laureate of Springfield, Massachusetts, also heralded important community programs, such as providing spaces for young or emerging poets to share their work in public platforms. And the importance of language and diction is not limited to the construction of spaces for the literary arts or for those engaged in creative acts that form poetry or other similar genres. The words and phrases that people use as part of campaigns, rallies, and organizing can also construct important connections between the changes that people seek and the futures that they want as a result of those changes. For instance, following the refusal by the US government to account for the actual death tolls following Hurricane Maria, protestors outside of the United Nations in Manhattan wore T-shirts with the phrase “V.I.P.,” and Puerto Rican flags as capes to demand audits. One New York Times article quotes a protestor noting that—as numbers began to rise to estimates of almost five thousand dead—people would be outraged if it were five thousand dead kittens or animals, and yet Puerto Ricans—actual people—received barely an acknowledgment (Mays 2018). The shirts thereby take on an important nuance. Wearing a shirt that states “V.I.P.” could, technically, be taken as the people wearing the T-shirts claiming to brand themselves with the phrase “very important person.” However, rather than a brag

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or sign of arrogance, the term V.I.P.—in this context—transforms into a statement about the value of Puerto Rican lives. The combination of the flag and the term, both of which are being upheld on the flesh as well as enshrouding it, creates a visual rhetoric of the fact that Puerto Rican lives are important. And not just important. Very important. The flag, here, alters from a symbol of quasi-nationalist or cultural nationalist rhetoric and into a proclamation regarding Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican identity. In combining it with the phrase on the T-shirt and marking the flesh with these, a statement is created that Puerto Rican lives are important. Integral to this statement is that the flag functions as something that must be seen. And as such, the lives need to be accounted for and the deaths marked with accuracy. Also key to this phrase is the term “person,” which reflects a process of humanization in which Puerto Ricans emerge as more than objects to be counted within a colonial audit. The sadness of this discourse—that Puerto Ricans have to argue to be important enough to accurately record in their deaths brought on by the hurricane and its aftermath—is clear. Yet, this sadness does not appear as self-limiting. Instead, such a statement also transfers into future visions of how Puerto Rican lives and people should be treated in the future. However, the combination of social justice, language, and sentient-flesh is not new as part of a decolonial praxis among Puerto Ricans. Indeed, it has been an important component of radical shifts in this community as witnessed in discussions of gender violence and machismo. One such example exists in the Young Lords Party platform and program. Originally drafted as thirteen points, one point specifically addressed machismo and the role of Puerto Rican men. Originally listed as point 10, this program declared: “We want equality for women. Machismo must be revolutionary not oppressive” (Palante). However, organizers pointed to the contradiction in this statement: Could machismo—which to that point had been a gendered form of oppression—ever be truly revolutionary? To better explicate this point, party members asked if racism could ever be revolutionary and not oppressive. The answer is no (Palante). As such, organizers were able to transform the language of this point, and it was then moved to become point 5. Notably, this point was the only one to receive such intense revision. It could be argued that the women in this organization had to fight to get their compañeros to recognize the way that their particular subject positions exist in the Anglo-US coloniality. And they did. Yet, to relegate the change that occured in the document to being proof of Puerto Rican men’s initial inability and/or struggle to

136  R. HURTADO

see their privilege in a patriarchal structure would limit the result of the revision. Rather than being solely reactive, this revision points to the ways individuals and communities are moving through layers of decolonization, getting into deeper levels of unpacking the narratives provided by coloniality, which uphold oppressive behaviors by instilling them into the very identities of those who are colonized. Yet, it is important here to note that not all activism claiming to seek “social justice” is, inherently, decolonial in nature. Indeed, an important component of a decolonial praxis is that it seeks to unpack the coloniality and move beyond its limiting possibilities. It seeks transformation. It would be easy enough to claim decolonial activity but actually be reifying the very discourses of the coloniality or upholding its oppressive technologies by engaging them. That is not to say that it is impossible to not reify them. However, it is to require constant attention to the words that are spoken, written, communicated, and the visions of the future that are brought into the community. It is a requirement of constant self-reflexivity and questioning, an ability and willingness to shift as time moves on and the coloniality transforms and adapts. It is through my examination of the literary arts that I have attempted to articulate how creative acts can participate in a community decolonial turn. I consider that it is in the imagination where our strength to continue to transform our possibilities exists. And he imagination is in the flesh; it is through the sentient-flesh that imagining first takes place. I do not seek to provide a prescriptive method for liberation. To do so would be a fool’s task. Nor do I wish to spend time attacking people for attempts that have not resulted in liberation. But, as I finish these pages, I conclude on the note that the sentient-flesh holds the wisdom to subvert colonial tactics of domination and shift us into a new era of liberation. That the potential of a future where removing the shackles of oppression that the Anglo-US coloniality of power needs within our very cells has occurred is a possibility born within each of us and spurs our pathway beyond the boundaries of this system.

References Algarín, Miguel, and Bob Holman, editors. Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café. Holt, 1994. Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Now Let Us Shift.” This Bridge We Call Home, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating. Routledge, 2002, pp. 540–78.

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Anzaldúa, Gloria, and Cherríe Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color. 4th ed. SUNY P, 2015. Espada, Martín. Zapata’s Disciples. South End, 1999. Mays, Jeffrey. “Protesters Demand Audit of Hurricane Maria Death Toll in Puerto Rico.” New York Times, June 2, 2018. https://www.nytimes. com/2018/06/02/nyregion/protesters-puerto-rico-hurricane-maria.html. Young Lords Party. “Thirteen Point Program.” Palante, January 15, 2019. http://palante.org/YLPProg.html.

Index

A abject, the, 43 acceptance, 56 Achteberg, Jeanne, Bridges of the Bodymind, 1 Acosta Belén, Edna, 6–7 activism, xiv–xvi, 20–21. See also decolonialization, social justice movements and; political movements adaptation, 92–93, 105–108, 136 affect, 3–4, 18–19 affect theory, 3–4 African Americans, 19. See also black women, sexuality of impact of “weathering” on”, 91–92 racial health disparities among, 91–92 renarration of slavery and, 19 African ancestry, Spain and, 4–5 Africans depictions of, 119 enslaved, vii–viii, 4–5 Afro-Boricuas, 90, 99, 104–105 agency, 56–57, 75

Albizu Campo, Pedro, xi Alexander, Jeffrey, 70–71, 78 Algarín, Miguel, 74, 85 ALIANZA, 51–52 Allende, Petra, xvi Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, 133 Ambert, Alba, 7–8, 82 A Perfect Silence, 11, 19, 21–22, 70, 72–73, 76–86 Amerindians, vi–vii, 4–5, 94–96, 119 analysis, 11 anatomic dissections, 34 anatomy, 34 Anglo-U.S. coloniality, 2, 5–6, 10–11, 16, 18, 19–20, 22, 29–30, 36, 51–52, 56–57, 70–71, 80–81, 90, 96, 115–117, 132, 136. See also coloniality of power Amerindians and, 94–95 “bodies” and, 37–44 domination and, 19 experiences of, 7–8 knowledge of, 2–3, 7–8, 23

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 R. Hurtado, Decolonial Puerto Rican Women’s Writings, Literatures of the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05731-2

139

140  Index navigation of, 111 pathologization of Puerto Ricans and, 89–90, 94–95 Puerto Rican women and, 2–3, 36 racism and, 96–97 reactionary responses to, 118, 122 sexual assault in the home and, 51–52 shift away from, 113 subversion of, 112 technologies of, 45 Anglo-U.S. domination, xvii, xviii– xix, 1–2, 4, 15–16. See also domination Anglo-U.S. male identity, 49–50 Anglo-U.S. medical science, 1–2 Anglo-U.S. supremacism, 93 animals, 33–34 “antidiscourses,” 145.10, 113–115 anti-Spanish movements, xv Anzaldúa, Gloria, xviii–xix, 7, 8–9, 11–14, 49, 57, 74–75, 85–86, 91–92, 132–133 Coyolxauhqui imperative of, 122 on healing, 122 Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro, 117–118 Making Face/Making Soul:Haciendo Caras, 117 Arawak nation, vi, 4–5 Arroyo, María Luisa, 7–8, 18–19, 133–134 “still bedwetting at nine,” 35.90”, 21, 50–51, 57–66, 81–82 art, construction of, 117 assimilation, 35–36 authority, 56, 120–121 automatism, 16–17 autonomy, denial of, 18 B Baartman, Sarah, 35

Bae, Albert, 1 bedwetting. See enuresis behaviors, 16–17, 103–104 Belpre, Pura, xiv–xv Bernard-Carreño, Regina, xviii–xix Beverly, John, 51 Bierer, Linda, 93–94 binaries, 3–4, 15, 16, 69–70, 107, 117–118, 122 biological memory, 93–94 biological responses, 105–106 birth control, x–xi, 1–2, 5–6, 29–30, 37–44, 49. See also mass sterilization birthing, 39–40 Black Panther Party, xv–xvi black women, sexuality of, 35 blanqueamiento (“whitening”), vi–vii, 4–5 “body”/”bodies,” 4.90, 3–4, 9, 16, 33 of children, 51–52, 59–60, 62–63 coloniality and, 3–4, 30–31, 37–44, 113, 125–126 colonized, 17–18, 23, 34–35 control of, 32–33, 44–45, 66, 81 delineating, 37–39, 61, 62 differentiation from sentient-flesh, 57, 61, 62, 69–70 disciplining of, 16–19, 23 discourses of, 32–33 domination of, 15, 50–53, 113 Enlightenment and, 33–34 experiences of, 15–16, 19–20 exploitation of, 34–35 female, 17–18, 34 flesh and, 8, 15–16, 20–21, 32–35, 39–44 in Girmay’s “Starlight Multiplication,” 158.40, 124 Girmay’s use of the term, 114–115 humanity and, 35–36 identification of, 57, 58

Index

information and, 16–17 Latinas and, 18 literary arts and, 15–20 meanings of, 18 memory and, 54–55 narratives of, 18–19, 22, 30–31, 34–35, 37, 39–42, 42–44, 44–45, 113 non/thinking, 32–33 as object of power, 16–18 objectification of, 18–19, 23 pathologizing of, 22, 61 power and, 113 Puerto Rican women and, 19–20, 36 rendered vulnerable to abuse, 57–61 representations of, 34–35, 69–70 science and, 32–33 self-control and, 59 sentient-flesh and, 15–16, 30–31, 66, 131–132 social control and, 51–52 social difference and, 34 sociosexual geo-racialization of, 30 “spirit” and, 17–18 subversion of, 57 viewing of, 40–41, 42, 49–52, 63 vulnerable, 57–61 Western European conceptual genealogy of, 15–16, 32–33, 131 Western European ideologies and, 15–19, 32–33, 36 boundaries, challenging, 133. See also dichotomous thinking Boyd, Rekia, 120–121 Bracha, H. Stefan, 82 brain, impact of stress on, 54 Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse, 94–95, 107 Briggs, Laura, 29–30

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C Caballero, Diana, xiv–xv Cannon, Walter, 82 Capetillo, Luisa, viii capitalism, 16, 39–40 Caribbean, the, 4–5 Casa de Colores program, 133–134 catharsis, 94–95 cellular memory, 1–2, 9, 51–56, 92, 107–108 cellular responses, 92–93, 100–101, 104–105, 117–118 cellular effects of, 90–91, 100–101, 104–105, 117–118 Chaby, Lauren, 54 change, xix, 124–127. See also shifts; transformation characterization, 20–21, 22, 90–91, 93–94, 111 decolonial turn and, 95 in Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone, 92–94, 96–100, 107–108 world-traveler consciousness and, 89–90 children, bodies of, 51–52, 59–60, 62–63 Churchill, Larry, 71–72 Churchill, Sandra, 71–72 clitoris, discovery of the, 34 coffee, ix–x cognitive development, 9, 21, 22 cognitive research, 21, 54 collective consciousness, 19 collective identity, 19, 95–96 collective memory, 10–11, 19, 93–94, 98–99 Collins, Patricia Hill, 49–50 colonial discourses classical models of, 114–115 of Enlightenment, 35

142  Index colonialism, vi–vii, xi–xii, xviii–xix flesh and, 1–2 internalization of, 10–11, 90–91, 100, 132–133, 134–135 internalized, 54, 55–56 Puerto Ricans and, 132 sexual assault and, 52–53 surpassing boundaries of, xix coloniality of power, xvi–xvii, 4, 7–8, 14–18, 22–23, 29–36, 38–39, 42–44, 49–57, 66, 70–72, 74–76, 80–82, 84–86, 89–90, 93–94, 96, 107–108, 111–118, 121–122, 127, 132–133, 136 agency within, 56–57 authority and, 55–56 behavior patterns and, 52–53 “body” and, 3–4, 69, 113 cellular effects of, 90–93 communities and, 90–91 creates “victims” who are blamed for their experiences, 50–51 dehumanization and, 15–16, 56–57, 85 of difference, 22 discourse of, 34–35, 37–39 experiences of, 21, 42–44, 50–51, 76, 85–86, 94, 113, 116 of gender, 5–6, 35 historical trauma and, 89 ideologies of, 78 impact on cultural transmission, 99–100 in Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone, 97–107 intergenerational experiences of, 22, 94–97 internalization of, 9–10, 90–91, 103–104, 112–113 knowledge of, 2–3, 30–31, 113, 119–122, 125 Latinas and, 116 liberation from, 127

macro- and micro-level, 49, 51–52, 72, 74–76 naming and, 119 navigation of, 30–31, 93–94, 103–104 pathologies of, 95–96 predetermined central identity of, 35–36 racial classification and, 34–35 residual effects of, 14–15 resistance to, 1–2, 103–104, 106–107 resistance to internalization of, 99–102, 112–113 responses to, 95, 113 science and, 35 self-identity within, 55–56 sentient-flesh experiences of, 56–58, 70, 89–91, 93–100, 107–108 sexual assault and, 54 shift away from, 107, 112–113 sociosexual geo-racialization and, 90–91 “Spirita” and, 75–76 strategic navigations of coloniality, 93–94 stresses caused by, 72 structures of, 107–108 subversion against, 50–51, 57, 136 surviving, 95–96, 103–106, 117–118 technologies of, 90–91, 94–95, 107–108, 112–114, 132 transcending of, 117–118, 122, 124–125, 127, 131–133, 136 trauma and, 76–79 violence and, 40–41, 54 colonial matrix, 4, 23 colonial mechanisms, navigating, 100–104 colonial narratives, xvii–xix, 18–22, 29–31, 34–36, 42–44, 49–50,

Index

55–57, 79, 89–91, 94–95, 98–99, 127, 134–135 of Afro-Boricuas, 99 escaping, xvii subversion of, 14–15 used to oppress and subjugate, 14–15 colonial policies and practices, 9–11, 19, 21–22, 29–30, 75 colonial status, gender and, 17 colonial structure, technologies of categorization and, 116–117 colonial subjects, xvii, 2 colonial technologies, 19 colonial violence, 2–3, 15 colonized, the agency and, 75 denial of autonomy to, 18 violence and, 52–53 color, symbolic meaning of, 83 Columbus, Renaldus, 34 Comas-Díaz, Lillian, 52–53, 75–76, 90 “Spirita,” 36.180, 85–86 Women of Color, 70 Comité de Mujeres Puertorriqueñas, xviii commerce, 39–40 communal memory, decolonization of, 90. See also collective memory communication, 13, 113–114. See also language communities, 125. See also specific communities coloniality and, 90–91 healing of, 90, 111–127 history of, 90–91, 93 literary arts and, 133 pathologization of, 89–90 resilience of, 94–95 self-disciplining, 103–104 survival methods and, 107, 132

  143

trauma and, 72, 76, 78, 89–90 communities of color, 131–132 impact of “weathering” on, 91–92 pathologization of, 90, 93 violence against, 16, 19 community activism, xv–xvii, 11. See also political movements compassion, 66, 82 conceptual metaphor theory, 73 connectivity, sentient-flesh and, 126 conocimiento, 9–10, 13–14, 111–112, 117–118, 132–133. See also knowledge consciousness, 14–15, 32–33, 111–112, 115–116, 133 of being, 111–112 critical, 30–31 cultural healing and, 96 decolonial, 22, 111–112, 115–116, 118, 126–127 expression of, 122 language and, 116 shifts in, 111–112, 133–134 world-traveler, 13–14, 22, 89–90, 96–97, 105–108 control, 16–18, 35, 45 Cordillo, Eileen, 73 Corisica, 4–5 corporeal dissection, 32–34. See also anatomic dissections cortisol levels, 10–11 creating/creative expressions, xvi–xvii, 117, 118, 133 act of, xix decolonial turn and, 136 language and, 119 sentient-flesh and, 133–134 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 2, 49–50 critique, 2–4, 11, 115–116 Cuba, viii–ix, 5–6 Cubans, xiii cultural erasure, vi–vii

144  Index cultural genocide, 107–108 cultural healing, 95–96 cultural icons, 7 cultural identity, 6–7 cultural production, xvi–xvii cultural resistance, xvii cultural transmission, 99–100 cultural trauma studies, 19 cultural trauma theory, 70–71 culture(s), construction of, 44, 117–118, 122–125, 133 Cuvier, Georges, 17–18, 35 D darkness, 77, 81–83 Dávila, Arlene, Barrio Dreams, xiv Davis, Kingsley, 30 decolonial consciousness, 22, 111– 112, 115–116, 118, 126–127 decolonial discourse, 22, 111–112, 115–122 decolonialization, 7–8, 14–15, 19–21, 69–70 of communal memory, 90 community-based, 11 of the flesh, 113, 124 of healing, 70, 95–96 Latinas and, 14–15 of memory, 96–97, 106–107 of sentient-flesh, 111–112, 132–133 social justice movements and, 111 strategic, 111–127 strategies of, 14–15 decolonial memory, 89–90, 97–98 decolonial praxis, 15–16, 22, 89, 117–118, 134–136 healing and, 23 literary arts and, 133 of resistance, 23 social justice and, 133–134 of subversion, 23, 30–31

decolonial turn, 71–72, 75–76, 78–79, 83, 85–86, 91, 93, 113, 115– 116, 124–126, 132–133 characterization and, 95 creative expressions and, 136 engaging a, 89 in literary arts, 85–86 knowledge of, 119–122 language and, 114–115 dehumanization coloniality and, 14–16, 22, 50–54, 56–57, 72, 85 rationalization of, 35 resistance to, 23, 107–108 science and, 35 subversion against, 35–36 of women of color, 35 description, act of, 50 Dias, Brian, 92, 98–100, 103 Díaz-Quiñones, Arcadio, xvi–xvii dichotomous thinking, avoiding, 117– 118, 125–126. See also binaries diction, 21, 111, 118–122, 133–136 difference, 2, 22 discourse, 22, 116–118, 123–124 change and, 124–127 colonial, 112–113 controlling rationality of dominant, 116 decolonial, 112 decolonial consciousness and, 111–112 healing, 122–124 knowledge and, 112–115 of love, 126 sentient-flesh and, 111–113, 115– 116, 117, 118, 119–124, 127 social justice activity and, 133 trauma and, 114–115 via diction, 20–21 disempowerment, 52–53, 90 disidentification

Index

intergenerational, 90 dissociation, 81–82 distinction, need for, 79–82 “docility,” 43.130, 18 vs. resistance, 16–17 domestic abuse, 49 domestic violence, 49–50, 51–52, 53 domination, 4, 8–9, 18–19, 30, 34–35, 35–36, 44–45, 49–50, 58, 66, 70–71, 136 discourse as tool for projects of, 112–113 flesh and, xviii–xix language as technology of, 121 physical, 132 psychological, 131–132 technologies of, 107–108, 119 Dominican Republic, ix–x Duany, Jorge, 6–7 dusmic healing, sentient-flesh and, 82–85 dusmic poetics, 20–22, 70, 74–75, 75–76, 79, 85–86 E early modern era, 32–34, 36 education, xiv–xvi, 111–112, 115– 116, 118, 120–121 El Barrio, xiv–xvi Elias, Norbert, 59 embodied-minds, 33 embodiment, 3–4, 15–16 embodiment studies, 113 emotions, 3–4, 80–81. See also affect empire, 19–20 employment pools, low-paid, 1–2, 6–7 empowerment, xix, 2–3, 12, 13, 15–16, 21–22, 35–36, 82–83, 85–86, 90–91, 122, 132–133 decolonial projects of, 20–21 envisioning, 89–108

  145

intergenerational, 104–107, 111 in Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone, 104–107, 111 love and, 126–127 memory of, 96–97 sentient-flesh and, 104–107 through hembrismo, 72 writing as decolonial act of, 7–8 encomienda system, 4–5 enfleshment, 21, 30–33, 36, 39–45, 66, 69, 111 English-only policies, xiv–xv, 5–6 Enlightenment, 32–36, 78, 114–115 enuresis, 21, 55, 57, 60–66 epigenetics, 11–12, 22, 92–96, 98–101, 103–106 erasure, 106–107, 121 Erickstad, Michael, 1 erotic, the, 123–124, 126–127 Espada, Martín, 132 Esteves, Sandra María, 74 ethnicity, 5–6, 38 eugenics movement, 29–30 European immigration, vi–vii exploitation, 2–4, 18, 30, 34–37, 49–52, 58–60, 90, 98–99 expression, xix. See also creating/creative expressions Eyerman, Ron, 70–72, 78, 80–81 eye witness, 34 F facultad, xviii–xix, 11, 30–31, 57, 74–76, 84–86, 96, 100–101, 132–133 families, intergenerational sharing of knowledge in, 92 family planning. See birth control feminist scholars, 113. See also specific scholars

146  Index feminists of color, 22. See also specific feminists flesh, the, xvii, xviii, 10–11, 74–75. See also body; sentient-flesh “body” and, 8, 15, 20–21, 32–35, 42–44 coloniality and, 1–2 communication of, 44, 57, 63–64 decolonization of, 113, 124 domination and, xviii–xix experiences buried in, 113–114 imagination and, 136 knowledge and, xvii–xix, 1, 9, 53–54, 73–74, 85–86, 127 of Latinas, 2–3 memory and, 56–57, 63–66, 98 metaphors and, 73–74 of Puerto Rican women, 2–3 representations of, xviii–xix as sentient, 19–20. See also sentient-flesh shift in perspective to, 9 targeting of, 1–2 trauma and, 10–11, 55, 85–86, 95 violence and, 21 Flores, Juan, 6–7 From Bomba to Hip Hop, xvi–xvii Florida, xiii Foucault, Michel, 118 frame narrative, 72–73, 76–77 Francis, Richard, 93 Fried, Susana, 49–50 G gaze, the, 37–38, 63. See also viewing authority vested in, 35 colonial, 34–36 gender, 16–17, 38 coloniality of, 5–6, 35 colonial status and, 17 configurations of, 4

knowledge and, 34 violence and, 21, 49–50 women of color and, 4 gender violence, 19, 134–135 genetics, 92. See also epigenetics genius, 33–34 genocide, cultural, 107–108 genre conventions, 20–21 geography, 4–6, 13–14, 38 Gerrig, Richard, 112 Gill, Jesica, 92 Girmay, Aracelis, 7–8, 13, 19–20, 22, 118–122, 127 Animal Kingdom, 112 “The Black Maria”, 112, 119–122 “La Boda del Mar y Arena”, 124–127 “Starlight Multiplication”, 122–126 terminology used by, 114–115 Glisson, Francis, 33–34 Gone, Joseph, 95–96, 107 Gosnell, John, 55, 60–61, 64–65 Gramsci, Antonio, xviii–xix Gray, Jeffrey, 82 Green, Beverly, Women of Color, 70 Griffith, Jennifer, 30, 38 Grito de Lares uprising, vii Groisman, Alex, 1 Guam, viii–ix, 5–6 H Hadorn, Ernst, 53–54 Haiti, viii Hall, Sarah, 92 Harlem, xiv, xiii Hartmann, William, 95–96 healers, historians as, 90 healing, 13, 15–16, 21–22, 69, 76, 82–83, 85–86, 89–91, 103–107, 122, 132–133

Index

in Ambert’s A Perfect Silence, 76–79, 82–85 community, 111–127 cultural, 95–96 culturally specific techniques, 107 decolonial praxis and, 23 decolonization of memory and, 70, 94–95 decolonizing meaning of, 20–21 dusmic, 82–85 healing discourses, 122–124 healing projects, 2–3, 15 intergenerational practices of, 111 meaning of, 95 memory of, 96–97 pain transformed into, 21–22 as process of making and unmaking, 122 sentient-flesh and, 70 storytelling and, 118 survival methods and, 107–108 trauma and, 70–71 via creative acts, 71–72 vs. surviving, 21–22 women of color and, 70–71 health care, standards of, 70 Heinzelmann, Morgan, 92 “hembrismo,” 100.110, 83 Herrera, Juan Felipe, 133–134 historians, as healers, 90 historical correctives, 118 historical trauma catharsis from, 94–95 coloniality and, 89 intergenerational impact of, 89 psychoanalitics of, 94–95 recodifying meaning of, 89–108 renarration of, 89 history gaps in, 90, 93, 104–107, 133–134 need to examine, 127 reconceptualizing, 115–116

  147

Holyoke, Massachusetts, xiii home, intimacy of, 49, 51–52 Hook, Derek, 113–114 Howson, Alexandra, 51–52, 59–60, 62–63 humanity access to, 18, 35–36 “body” and, 35–36 Hume, David, 33 Hunt, Alan, 112–113 Hurricane Maria, xii, 134–135 hyper-reflexivity, 66 I identity, 18–19, 83–85. See also specific identities collective, 95–96 construction of, 71–72 language and, 113–114 self-identity, 55–56 sexuality and, 123 trauma and, 70–71, 83 imagination, 14–15, 136 flesh and, 136 independence movements in Latin America, vii–viii, 5–6 in Puerto Rico, xi, 5–6 women in, viii indigenous identity, vi–vii, 4–5 indoctrination, 112–113 information, the, 16–17 intentionality, 71–72 interconnectedness, 123–124 interfamilial abuse, 79, 81–82 intergenerational inheritance, 10–11 intersectionality, 5–6, 96–97 intimacy, 49, 51–52 Isasi-Díaz, Ada María, 116–118 “mujerista discourse,” 150.130, 117–118 island/mainland divide, 4–8

148  Index J Jones Act, x–xii, 5–6 Jones–Shafroth Act, x. See also Jones Act K Klengel, Torsten, 92 knowledge/knowing, 9–10, 93, 106–107, 112–113 alternative, 75–76 ancestral, 103 of biological sex and gender, 34 of coloniality, 2–3 creation of, 112–113 cultural, 100–101, 104–105 discourse and, 114–115 flesh and, xvii–xix, 1, 9, 53–54, 73–75, 85–86, 127 Latinas and, 116–117 mapping of, 9 metaphors and, 73–74 power and, xviii–xix, 116 self-reflexivity and, 120–121 sentient-flesh and, 63–66, 69, 70, 74–75, 89, 96–97, 100–101, 116–117, 119–122, 136 sharing of, 92, 95–96, 105–106, 125–126 subversion and, 13 in tergenerational, 92, 105–106, 125–126 trauma and, 15, 76 word choice and, 111–112 Kristeva, Julia, 35, 43 Kuzawa, Christopher, 93 L labor, 34–35, 39–40 LaCapra, Dominick, 94–95 la gran familia, 7

Lakota people, 94 Lamy, Guillaume, 33–34 language, 111–112, 119–122, 121, 134–136 coloniality and, 112–113, 124–125 consciousness and, 126–127 creation and, 119 decolonial consciousness and, 126–127 decolonial turn and, 114–115, 126 education and, xiv–xv experience and, 74 identity and, 113–114 power and, 116 power of, 127 sentient-flesh and, 114–115, 134–135 social context and, 112–113 social conventions and, 113–114 social justice and, 121–122, 126–127, 133–135 storytelling and, 118 as technology of erasure and/or domination, 121 in the United States, xiv–xv Laqueur, Thomas, 38–39 Making Sex, 34 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, Tears of the Indians, 4–5 Latina Feminist Group, 60–61 Telling to Live, 53–54 Latin America, independence movements in, vii, 5–6 Latinas, 14–15 “bodies” of, 17, 18 coloniality and, 18, 116–117 control of, 18 critique and subversion of social structures by, 2–4 daily experiences of, 116 as decolonial educators, 93 decolonialization and, 14–15

Index

domestic violence and, 51–52 experiences of, 8, 9, 30–31, 36, 44–45, 51, 66, 93, 116 flesh of, 2–3 knowledge and, 116 sociosexual geo-racialization and, 51–52 survival methods and, 31 voicelessness of, 66 Latina writing, epistemic shift in, 22 Latino communities, 133–134 domestic violence and sexual assault in, 49–50 education and, xiv–xv Lawlis, G. Frank, Bridges of the Bodymind, 1 Lebrón, Lolita, xi Levine, Herbert, 1 Levine, Peter, 54, 55, 64–65, 70, 77, 81–82 Levins Morales, Aurora Medicine Stories, 90, 93, 94, 118 Leys, Ruth, 3–4 liberation, xiv–xv, 124–127, 136 libraries, xiv–xv literary arts, 8–15, 36, 131 “body” and, 15–20 change and, xix communities and, 133 decolonial praxis and, 133 decolonial turn in, 85–86 depiction of sentient-flesh experience and, 116 Puerto Rican, xix. See also specific authors and works “Spirita” and, 75–76 social justice and, 112, 133–134 literary devices, 20–21, 85–86, 131. See also specific devices Llanos Figueroa, Dhalma, 7–8, 122–123 Daughters of the Stone, 19, 22, 90–94, 96, 107–108

  149

Locke, John, 33–34 Loomis, William F., 1 Lopez, Iris, 13–14, 21–22, 29–30, 75, 85–86 Lorde, Audre, 125–126 loss, 94–95 love discourse of, 126 social justice and, 126–127 vision of, 126–127 Lugones, María, 4–6, 9, 13–14, 22, 35, 51–52, 96 M MacDonald, Jessica, 92 “machismo,” 74.230, 134–135 Maddox, Stephanie, 92 maladaptation, 93 Malebranche, Nicolas, 33 manufacturing, x–xiv Martin, Trayvon, 120–121 Marxism, xv–xvi Mass, Bonnie, 30 mass deportation policies, 1–2 mass migration movements, 6–7, 19 Mayow, John, 33–34 McBridge, Renisha, 120–121 medical science, 17 Mediterranean colonization, vi–vii memory, 32–33, 54–55, 81–82, 99 in Ambert’s A Perfect Silence, 82–83 biological, 93–94 cellular, 1–2, 9, 52–56, 92, 107–108 collective, 93–94, 98–99 communal, 90 cultural, 103–104, 107 decolonial, 89, 97–98 decolonization of, 90, 94–97, 106–107 of empowerment, 96–97 flashbacks, 113–114

150  Index flesh and, 56–57, 63–66, 98 of healing, 96–97 metaphors and, 73–74 sensory perception and, 98 sentient-flesh and, 63–66 sharing, 94 Menchú, Rigoberta, I, Rigoberta Menchú, 51 mental health practices, 70 metaphors, 20–22, 70, 73, 76–79, 125 flesh and, 73–74 knowledge and, 73, 74 memory and, 73–74 neuroscience research and, 73–74 sensory perception and, 69, 70, 72–86, 100–101, 111 methodology, 14–15 metonymy, 79–80 Mexico, vii Miami, Florida, xiii Mignolo, Walter, 4, 14–15 migration, 6–7, 19, 82–83 mind/body dichotomy, 3–4, 15, 32–35, 78, 84, 114–115, 132 Mirandé, Alfredo, 49–50 modernity, 18 Moraga, Cherríe, 8, 11, 49, 91 Moreno, Marisel, 7 Moreno Vega, Marta, 90 motifs, 20–21, 30–31 mourning, 84 movement, 115–116 Moya, Paula, 18, 35–36 N naming, 119, 121–124, 127 coloniality and, 119 power of, 127 narration act of, 71–72 decolonial, 71–72

of experiences, 113–114 narrative persona, 20–21, 69, 71–72, 76–77, 79, 85–86, 111 narrative, power and, 16 narratives colonial, xviii–xix, 13–15, 30–31, 34–36, 42–44, 49–50, 55–57, 79, 89–91, 98–99, 127, 134–135 hegemonic, 7–8 of pathologization, 94–95 subversive, 7–8 narrative style, 71–72 narrative technologies, 51–52, 55–56, 71–72, 89 narrative voice, 50–51, 56–66 Nathanson, Donald, 80–81 Nationalist Party, xi natural disasters, xi–xii navigation, tactics of, 107 Nebraska, xiv–xv negotiation, xviii neuroscience research, 21 metaphors and, 73–74 New York City, xiii–xvi, xviii–xix, 80–81 New York Times, 134–135 no pensar, 53–55, 60–61, 79 Nuyorican Poets Café, 133 Nuyoricans, xviii–xix O objectification, 17, 18, 35, 49, 56–57, 133–134 objects, delineating, 61–63 Oliver, Denise, 29–30 Operation Bootstrap, x–xi, xiii, 6–7 oppressed, the agency and, 75 colonial narratives about, 90–91 pathologization of, 132–133

Index

oppression, 15, 49–50, 75, 131, 134–135 adaptation and, 105–106 communicating experiences of systemic, 53–54 community responses to, 89 creation of, 132 embodied reality of, 3–4 experiences of, 51 justification of, 132 macro- and micro-level, 100 responses to, 132–133 who is allowed to speak of, 51–54 organic intellectuals, xviii–xix Orlando, Florida, xiii Ortega, Mariana, 13–14 Ortiz Cofer, Judith, 7–10, 18 “The Gift of a Knife,” 34.180, 10–11, 21, 30–31, 37–45 overpopulation, 39–41 P Page, Linda, 62 pain, 21–22, 72–73, 83–85, 132–133 Pantoja, Antonia, viii Paro, Renato, 53–54 past, revisions of the, 90 Patai, Daphne, 51 pathologization, 93–94, 112, 132–133 of communities of color, 90, 93 narratives of, 94–95 of the oppressed, 132–133 resistance to, 84–85, 93–94 of survival methods, 90–91 patient’s bill of rights, xv–xvi patriarchy, 49–52, 59–60 Pérez, Emma, 22, 115–116 Perrault, Claude, 33–34 Philippines, viii–ix, 5–6 physiological responses, 3–4 Piñero, Miguel, 74, 85

  151

plantation colonialism, 4–5 poetic-testimonio genre, 21 poetry, as part of revolutionary practice, 74 political movements, in Puerto Rico, xi–xiv politics, craft and, 12 Ponce Massacre of 1937, xi population reduction, 29–30 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 54, 81–82, 93–94 power, xviii–xix, 8–9, 13–14, 16, 19, 51, 70–71, 111–112, 116, 118, 120–121, 132 “body” experiences and, 113 challenging power structures, 72 coloniality of. See coloniality of power experiences of, 49, 66 knowledge and, xviii–xix, 116 language and, 116 longevity of power structures, 132 macro- and micro-level, 49, 115–116 narrative and, 16, 51–52 navigation of power structures, xviii–xix, 100–102 power structures, xviii–xix, 8–9, 13–14, 16, 19, 51, 70–72, 75, 100–102, 116–117, 132 Puerto Rican women and, 75 resistance to, 102 responses to, 102, 116–117 technologies of, 69–70 puberty, 64–66 Puerto Rican communities, xiii, xiv, xvii activism in, xiv–xvii sexual assault in, 53 silencing of slavery’s traumas within, 22

152  Index Puerto Rican Community Development Project, xvi Puerto Rican culture, 7 Puerto Rican diaspora, xiii, 15 Puerto Rican folk tales, documentation of, xiv–xv Puerto Rican identity, 6–7, 90 Puerto Rican/Latino Education Roundtable, xiv–xv Puerto Rican Leadership Alliance, xvi Puerto Rican literature, xvii, xix. See also specific authors and works Puerto Rican men, 134–135 Puerto Rican rights, viii Puerto Ricans abject status of, 80–81 avoidance of identification with history of enslavement, 90 citizenship of, x, xiii–xiv, 5–7, 82–83 colonialism and, 132 education and, xiv–xv humanization of, 134–135 labeling of, ix–x “mainland,” 14.10, xiii–xiv, xvi–xvii, 6–8, 82–83 migration to U.S. mainland, 6–7, xiii–xiv, xvi–xvii, 82–83 pathologization of, 89–90 persistence of, xiv, xvi–xvii reproductive rights and, 1–2, 5–6 resistance of, xiv socially oppressed in United States, xiii–xiv targeting of, 132 treatment of, ix–x, xviii unemployment and, xiv voting rights of, 5–6 Puerto Rican women, xviii, 36, 111–112 attempts to control, 15–16 “bodies” of, 9, 17–20, 23, 30–31, 36, 37

cellular memory and, 1–2 decolonial consciousness and, 111–112 dehumanization of, 15–16 depicted as victims, 29–30 experiences of, 2–4, 7–8, 15–16, 19–20, 30, 39–45, 111, 112 exploitation of, 3–6 flesh of, 2–3 on the island, 7–8 knowledge of coloniality, 2–3 literary arts and, 2–3, 7–9, 131– 132. See also specific authors and works objectification of, 23, 32–33 pathologizing of, 75 power structures and, 75 reproductive rights and, x–xi, 29–30, 40–41 resilience and, 15 as site for domination and exploitation, 2 social justice and, 111–112 stereotypical servitude attributed to, 72 violence against, 92 writing on the mainland, xvii, xix Puerto Rican writers, xvii–xix, 20–21, 23, 74 women writers, xviii–xix, 20–21, 23. See also specific authors Puerto Rico, viii–xi Afro-cultural presence in, 90 attempt to enforce English-only policies in, 5–6 black population of, vi–vii capitalist exploitation of, xi–xii colonialism and, viii–x, 5–6, 29–30, 90 as colonial possession of the United States, viii–ix, 5–6, 29–30

Index

as a colony of the United States, viii–x connection to, 6–7 constitution of, x controlled by U.S. policy, ix–x cultural identity and, 6–7 depicted as overpopulating the island, x–xi economy of, ix–xii, 1–2, 4–5 federal representation of, 5–6 history of, vi–xii, xv–xvi, 4–8, 90 independence movements in, viii, xi, 5–6 as “laboratory,” 11.160, 1–2, 5–6, 29–30 mass sterilization in, x–xi. See also sterilization, mass forced mounting debt of, xii naming of, 4–5 narrative of needing saving from itself, x–xi as a non/colony of the United States, 5–6 persistence of, xii–xiii political movements in, xi–xiv racism in, 96–97 resistance in, xi return migration to, 82–83 role in U.S. commerce, ix–x sexuality and, x–xi social stratifications of, 4–5 spelling of name, ix–x status of, viii–x, xiii–xiv, 5–6 trade and, x used for U.S. financial gain, ix–xii, 6–7 used for U.S. military purposes, 6–7 U.S. imperialism and, viii U.S. invasion of, vi U.S. manufacturing in, x–xi U.S. occupation of, vii U.S. take-over of, viii–x

  153

Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), viii–xii Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, viii–ix Purvin, Diane, 49–50 Purvis, Trevor, 112–113 Q questioning, 136 Quijano, Aníbal, 4, 34–35 R race, 4–6, 17–18. See also racialization identification of, 34–35 racial classification, vi–vii, 34–35, 90 racial identity, 35–36 violence and, 21 racialization, 16–17, 30, 35–36, 49–52, 90–92, 96–97, 119, 120–121 racial violence, 19 racism, 2, 7–8, 91–92, 96–97, 103–104 Rapp, David, 112 Rappel, Wouter-Jan, 1 readers, effect of literary works on, 112 rebellion, v–vi, viii reflection, 115–117 reflexivity. See self-reflexivity regeneration, 114–115 repetition, 81 reproductive rights, x–xi, 29–30, 40–41, 75 resilience, 11, 13–15, 70–71, 84–85, 111–112 community, 72 decoloniality and, 12 depiction of, 22 lineage of, 22

154  Index projects of decolonial empowerment and, 20–21 sentience and, 10–11 resistance, xviii–xix to coloniality, 1–2, 99–104, 106–107, 112–113 cultural resistance, xvii decolonial praxis of, 23 to dehumanization, 23, 107–108 to discourse, 112–113 methods of, 111–127 to pathologization, 84–85, 93–94 to power, 102 of Puerto Ricans, xi, xiv respeto (“respect”), 53, 59, 61–62 Ressler, Kerry, 92–93 revolutionary praxis, 75–76 Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, 51 Ringrose, Leonie, 53–54 Rivera, Carmen Haydée, 6–7, 13 Rodríguez de Tió, Lola, viii Rothschild, Babette, 54–55 ruptures, 79–82 S salt, 125–127 Sánchez González, Lisa, xvii, 7 San Juan, 79–80 science, 32–33, 35 Sedgwick Eve, 3–4 self-control, 59, 62 self-healing, 84–85 self-identity, 55–56 self-perception, 83–84 self-reflexivity, 96, 111–113, 118–121, 124–125, 136 self-splitting, 84 sensation, image, behavior, affect, and meaning (SIBAM) model, 55, 64–65, 70, 77 sensory perception, 21–22, 54–55

literary devices and, 69–70, 72–74, 76–86, 100–101, 111 memory and, 98 sentience, 9–11. See also sentient-flesh sentient-flesh, v–vi, xvii, xix, 2–4, 9, 11, 15, 19–22, 36, 44, 51–54, 75–76, 78 in Ambert’s A Perfect Silence, 82–85 “body” and, 15–16, 30–31, 61, 62, 66, 69–70, 131–132 coloniality and, 56–58, 70, 89–91, 93–100, 107–108 communication of, 56–57, 70 connectivity and, 126 consciousness of being and, 50–51, 111–112 creative expressions and, 133–134 critical consciousness and, 30–31 decolonial consciousness and, 118 decolonization and, 111–112, 132–133 depicting experiences of, 113, 116 depictions of, 30–31, 76–79, 85–86, 92, 111, 116, 124–125 discourse and, 111–112, 115–124, 127 dusmic healing and, 82–85 enfleshment and, 31, 36 epigenetics and, 96 the erotic and, 124, 127 experiences of, 15–16, 20–22, 44– 45, 50–51, 58, 63–64, 71–72, 90–91, 95–97, 111, 113–117, 119–124 expression through characterization and, 90–91 healing and, 70 interconnectedness with other elements, 125–126 intergenerational empowerment and, 104–107

Index

intergenerational survival and, 107–108 knowledge and, 56–57, 63–66, 69–70, 74–75, 89–90, 96–97, 100–101, 116–117, 119–122, 136 language and, 114–115, 134–135 literary arts and, 8–15 literary depictions of, 111 in Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone, 97–100, 104–107 memory and, 63–66, 98 narratives of, 15–16 narrative voice and, 56–57, 66 navigation strategies of, 91–92 obfuscation of, 18–19 objectification of, 49 pathologizing of, 72 reclaiming, xviii–xix reconceptualizing, 31 representations of, 23, 111, 118 responses of, 57, 113 response to sexual abuse, 57 similes and metaphors of, 74–75 social justice and, 22, 134–135 subversion and, 11, 89–90, 131–136 survival methods and, 54–55, 57, 65, 75–76, 79, 81–82, 84–85, 89–92, 95–97, 100, 117–118 targeting of, 132 transformed by coloniality, 49 trauma and, 54–57, 69–70, 89–90 violence and, 54 sex, 4, 34 sexual abuse, 21, 55, 57–61, 63–66 sexual anatomy, 34 sexual assault, 49–54, 58–61, 81–82 sexual difference, discourse of, 34 sexuality, x–xi, 17–18, 35, 123–124 sexualization, racialization and, 35 sexual violence, 10–11, 49

  155

shifting, 111–112, 132–133, 136 silence, 13–14, 64 silencing, 55–57, 90, 98–99, 104–107 similes, 69–70, 72–86, 111 Skoge, Monica, 1 slavery, vi–vii, 4–5, 90, 98–99 intergenerational effects of, 22 racialization and, 90, 96–97, 119–121 renarration of, 19 trauma of, 22 Sneider, Allison, 51–52 social change, decolonial praxis and, 133–134. See also social justice social context, language and, 112–113 social control, 90 “bodies” and, 51–52 social conventions, language and, 113–114 social coping mechanism, 70–71 social hierarchies, 34, 49, 53 social injustices, 121, 132–133 social justice, xv–xvii, 2–3, 10–11, 13– 15, 20–21, 111–112, 117–118, 121–122, 124–125, 133–136 decolonial consciousness and, 22 decolonial praxis and, 133 decolonization and, 111 diction and, 133 discourse and, 133 language and, 126–127, 133–135 literary arts and, 112, 133–134 love and, 126–127 representations of sentient-flesh and, 111 sentient-flesh and, 22, 134–135 social stigma, 65–66 social structures, vi–vii, 9–11, 13–14, 49, 74–75, 83, 93–94, 96–97 Latinas’ critique and subversion of, 2–4 navigation of, 90–91, 104–105

156  Index oppressive, 100–104, 107–108. See also coloniality of power racist, 91–92 sociosexual geo-racialization, 30, 35–36, 49–52, 90–92 Sotomayor, Sonia, 2, 11–12 soul, the, 33–34 soul-murder, 132, 133 Spain, vi–viii, 4 African ancestry and, 4–5 independence movements and, vii–viii indigenous identity and, 4–5 political exiles fleeing, xiii Treaty of 1898 and, 5–6 Spanish-American War, viii–ix, 5–6 Spanish coloniality, 10–11, 29, 90 racism and, 96–97 Spanish colonial policy, 4–5 Spanish colonizers, vi–vii Spanish conquest, 4–5 Spanish conquistadors, vi speculation, 17–18 “spirit,” “body” and, 17–18. See also “Spirita” “Spirita,” 104.40, 85–86 spirituality, 11–12, 75–76, 85–86 Spivak, Gayatri, xviii Springfield, Massachusetts, xiii Spurr, David, 35–37 Rhetorical of Empire, 34–35 Statue of Liberty, xv–xvi sterilization, mass forced, 1–2, 5–6, 9–10, 21, 29–30, 37–44, 49, 52–53, 75 Stoll, David, 51 stories, as medicine, 118 storytelling, 104–105, 118 strength cultural, 107 heritage of, 105–106 stress, 54, 72, 82, 94, 103

Stycos, Mayone, 30, 40 subjectivity, 14 subversion, 2–4, 9, 11, 12, 13, 23, 31, 36, 51, 57, 70, 90, 112, 136 subversions, sentient-flesh and, 136 sugar, x Sullivan, Shannon, 92, 93, 104, 106 survival, 22, 85, 95 survival methods, 30, 31, 55, 57, 65, 76, 79, 82, 84, 85, 90–92, 95–97, 100, 104, 106–108, 112, 116, 118, 132 T Taíno, viii, 5 taxes, xii Taylor, Jordan, 33 testimonio genre, 11, 21, 51, 53, 57 Thayer, Zaneta, 93 “theory in the flesh,” 32.60, 11, 49, 92 third space feminism, 9, 13 Thomas, Ann, 34 thriving, 11, 105–106, 111, 118, 121 Till, Emmett, 122 tobacco, x Torres-Padilla, José, 7 transformation, 22, 136 trauma, xix, 11, 15, 19, 22, 38, 53–57, 70–73, 76, 78–79, 83–84, 86, 90, 94–96, 108, 114–115 travel narratives, 17 Treaty of 1898, 5 Treaty of Paris, ix tres raíces (three roots), 5 Trump, Donald, xii tubal ligation, 29–30, 39, 42, 44 U unemployment, xiv, 19

Index

United Nations, Hurricane Maria protestors at, 135 United States, vii–xv, xvii, 2, 4, 6–7, 21, 29–30, 75, 83 U.S. Congress, xi, 6 U.S. corporations, xi, 7 U.S. Federal Zero-Population Growth programs, 21 U.S. imperialism, viii, xii U.S. Library of Congress, viii U.S. military, 7 U.S. military draft, x U.S. Supreme Court, ix, x, 2, 6 V Van Kolk, Bessel, 54 Vásquez, Enriqueta, 53 Vega, Manuel de, 73 Veronelli, Gabriela, 113 victim-blaming narratives, refuting, 21 victimhood, 11, 14, 51, 75 Vieques, 7 viewing, 35, 37, 38, 50 violation, 51, 82, 132–133 violence, 9, 11, 16, 19, 21–22, 37, 41, 49–55, 57, 61, 64–66, 70–71, 73, 79, 81–82, 92, 94, 123, 132–133, 135 vision, freeing, 125–126 voice, 51 voting rights, 6 vulnerability, xviii, 52, 57, 61

  157

W Walters, Karina, 95, 107 Warner, Sam, 50 Western European coloniality, 4, 22, 33 Western European ideologies, the, 16–19, 33, 36 Whitbeck, Les, 95 white supremacy, institutionalized, 121 Willis, Thomas, 33 Wilson, Woodrow, x women, viii, 134 women of color, 4, 9, 12, 16, 18, 22, 35, 51–52, 71, 96, 107, 132 word choice, 112–114, 122 world-traveler consciousness, 14, 22, 90, 96–97, 105, 108 writing, act of, xix Y Yehuda, Rachel, 93 Young Lords Party, xvi, 135 Yue, Haicen, 1 Z “Zero Population Growth” policy, 6, 29, 30