Tag Archives: blogging

It’s Not Like Riding a Bike – Trying to Get Back Into the Blog Game

Posted on by
Reply
Share

I’m not doing such a great job at maintaining this blog, despite the extra hour and half of child free time in my day. Hell I’m not doing a great job maintaining my political/culture blog. I am going blame the fact that I am trying to play catch up with how far behind I’ve fallen with bills this summer because my income was essentially cut in half. I will also not blame but admit that being in a serious long distance relationship means a different kind of attention and time commitment (insert your comments here for those that have followed/have been involved in past relationships with me). I also just fell out of the habit when self-censorship took effect. Clearly I don’t need to and probably shouldn’t blog about everything (who really wants to read about my sex life—or do you?). I think the distance was/is good in that I was forced to be more introspective, channel thoughts into poetry or my journal, or ::gasp:: have more conversations with people.

But the truth is I am also having less conversations with people (except for my kids, my pareja, and my immediate familia). So I want to come back and find my voice again, find my passion.
I’m trying to get better.
I don’t have the same time I did when I was a single mami to one kid.
What I have been trying to to is jot bloggable thoughts in my notebook so that when I do have time I don’t have to grasp for a fake-ass issue to write about.
It also adds a layer of editing.

A ver como funciona and if I can get back into it.

Going to try this personal blogging thing again

Posted on by
Reply
Share

Since I am working less hours this summer, the least I can do is make the effort to take up,use space and time in other maybe important ways.

I returned to live-journal this morning (yes people still use that)

I will return here as well. Things I want to write about:

1: My long distance relationship
2: monogamy (or not)
3: queer identity (or not)
4: mami’hood
5: poesia
6: my organizing/activism
etc

In the meantime I also have to work on the rest of my website to promote my readings and other activities.

My vida is a sort of open book again.

A Favorite Latina on the Web Needs Our Support

Posted on by
1
Share

Crossposted from VivirLatino:

I’m really honored that Guanabee named yours truly one of their favorite Latinas on the web.

Some deal explicitly with Latino issues, some don’t. Some are funny, some are creative, some are activists, all are uniquely amazing, inspiring women who, we think, are some of the best at what they do.

I am especially honored by some of my company on the list, including dear mami amiga, Noemi Martinez of Hermana Resist. As a single mami media maker, I appreciate what Noemi does and understand the struggle it is to express yourself in a given medium with no source of funding and with kids yelling, learning, laughing and getting sick as your background soundtrack. Which is why I am asking you to help my mami hermana.

Continue reading →

Casa Mala Lives, Pero Mala is Worn the Hell Out

Posted on by
2
Share

In many ways I’m feeling like a failure, even though in the eyes of the world I’m not. I’m just doing what I have to do. I’m working long ass hours so I can pay rent and keep taking care of my children. This means however that the things I do out of love and compulsion: writing, blogging, poetry, organizing aren’t done, or are done in pedacitos because by the time I get home, or poroto is napping or asleep for the night, all I want to do is lay the fuck down. I have to prioritize what pays my rent, my utilities, my metrocard and food. Health care is a luxury I haven’t had the benefit of in almost three years, even as mujeres in my family get cancer or cancer scares and hey, I’m getting to “that age”.

I have small moments that sustain me. Margaritas, sex toys and cupcakes (oh my) with some amazing sister/mujeres after a reading. Late night phone convos that remind me that I am not alone in how I think and why I do do what I do to the point of exhaustion.

What I think I sacrifice the most is my mental well being. This isn’t sustainable and I need to know how to make it so.

Netroots Nation : Invisibility and Identity in Progressive Spaces Part 2 (Immigration)

Posted on by
Reply
Share

Si Se Puede 2.0 Panel

Si Se Puede 2.0 Panel



Here’s a little more context so some of what went down at Netroots Nation and my feelings about in relation to larger blogging/community issues.

I can’t believe that even after writing this, there is still stuff that is churning inside my gut. I just need to find the way to process it.

Personal vs Political business : Tokenizing and White Knights

Posted on by
18
Share

Remember when the internet was about personal experiences and tying those into wider, more universal realities?

When I started online many years ago it wasn’t about action alerts and news. It was about my life. It was about me as a single young activist boricua mami feeling mad isolated as I protested, mami’ed, spit poetry and fucked. Yes, I said it fucked. It was how I came into contact with amazing other mamis and eventually how I helped start VivirLatino, which has since blown up to a level that still bugs me out. Like for real, to think I go to national conferences and am on radio shows because so many years ago I started writing about my life is una locura. And I am constantly reminded that the way the internet has changed, shifted from personal to political to careerist and that changes how we deal with one another.

The internet used to be about communication and connection. It was a space that was an extension of real life experiences and where the way we talked with each other mattered. It was why the mami’hood was born, because white “radical” mami spaces had no problem using racial epithets and men had no problem moving their attacks on mujeres to new spaces. Pero now, with people making careers out of blogging, with the blogosphere being about what orgs pays you to parrot their message, suddenly talking about how we interact with other in public is considered divisive and airing dirty laundry and not fucking critical in terms of how we build movements together.

I call bullshit.

I call bullshit porque I have never been good about that line between the personal and political. It has gotten me into trouble, has made me feel unsafe physically, and has led to heartache, and not just my own. Pero if we cannot talk about how we interact with each other personally, how the fuck can we expect to work together to move shit forward in the struggles?
Continue reading →

Maybe No one Gives a Fuck About the Latina Mami’Hood

Posted on by
24
Share

If I had written this post last night, when I wanted to, when I was crying with frustration and disgust, it might have read a little differently.

I admit the last few days have been hard enough. I’m PMS’ing, my heart had a momentary lapse and my mother basically told me that I needed to get a real job so I could send la Mapu to a Catholic school, instead of working my ass off out of love writing for VivirLatino, doing important movement building work with SPEAK! and The Sanctuary, poetry, radical tutoring, and mami’ing my hijas the best I can. Apparently that’s not real enough. It certainly isn’t paying me in real enough money to keep up with rent (which I’m still $250 short on) and feeding my kids. Pero it is real enough for national organizations to court me as long as I don’t ask too many questions and it’s real enough for me to be on the radio. Pero it’s not real enough for people who said they would come to a listening party to support something that means alot to me and other hermanas that I love. It’s not real enough for them to visualize my carrying a stroller with a 30 poundish toddler up and down subway stairs, walking miles not for exercise pero so that I don’t have to buy subway fare and can afford milk, walking to change a bag of pennies, thinking of pawning some earrings. It’s real enough for me to go talk to young people about identity, media, gender and race, pero it’s not real enough for people to think it’s important to support what we do beyond a cursory pat on the head for a job well done little spic girl who we can’t even be bothered to name. I have been invited to two national conferences this summer, pero there is no money to get me there and of course the orgs who want my face, my race and my gender can’t be bothered to actually spend money. They will find another woman of color, mami of color, Latino blogger to take my place, one who they deem more worthy because they can pay their own way or because they play the game well, etc etc.

And I know that I and mujeres whom I love something fierce will be told, as usual, to put on our big girl panties, that we are ungrateful, and jealous and under all that the message is that we are not worthy of their money, that we don’t deserve to go to writing workshops or media conferences because I guess well we are not real writers or media makers. And I’m thinking really specifically about the message that was sent to my 11 year old hija who was with me last night, waiting for people. What message did she receive about being a Puerto Rican woman who follows her corazon.

Pero tonite there will be a reading somewhere else, a conversation somewhere else and everyone will buy books and nod their heads at the white woman at appropriate moments, and have their book signed and pose for pictures.

And meanwhile I have never been so close in all my years of doing this to saying fuck it and fuck you.

Analyzing the F Word from a Radical Mami of Color Perspective

Posted on by
2
Share

I don’t read Feministing. The comments more than the content tend to annoy me, especially when it comes to centering the discussion of feminism from a woman of color perspective.

Fabiola, a fellow rmoc, wrote about this very topic over at Feministing.

She writes: Like many feminists and reject the feminist label feminists, I embrace and challenge the complexity of feminisms, and recognize its definite contributions to humanity’s advances. Similarly dispose of its negative/marginalizing connotations and actions. Thus feel that the smoothing process of the love/hate relationship with feminism is to engage in the movement of movements surrounding makeshift feminist labeling, and like me, non label of feminist while we act on our ideas in our offline lives.  In my opinion and experience, it’s okay to reject the feminist label because of the racist history of feminism, of its exclusivity centering white/middle-class/straight women at the backs of women of color; reject it because of the damage and many times inability to accept its harsh history and also actions and inaction. I write this with the understanding that I will not tell another person what to do and fully believe in their autonomy/empowerment while fighting the system of poverty, war, criminalization of people of color, colonization of our communities and minds simultaneously healing around change in art/culture in the communities that I belong to.

Her frustration and reasons behind her legitimate choice are made clear the reactions to her post by some, who claim that Fab’s moving away from the term feminism is playing the oppresion olympics. It is precisely this perspective that makes feminism as a label and as a wider movement a huge fail in terms of being an umbrella that women of color can feel safe under. Feminism, as a mainstream movement has done a poor job of including women of color and respecting and representing the very specific intersections of race and gender that we as women of color live in. I am not a woman first and a Latina second, or vice-versa. I cannot seperate the two and often feminism, not necessarily all women who choose to call themselves feminist, has asked us to that. To put aside the way in which race and gender work together in terms of how we are made to be less equal. Feminism has asked us to not to make our personal realities political when really, when it comes to our survival and in the words of the Allied Media Conference, our evolution beyond survival.

New Year, New Beginning

Posted on by
1
Share

This new year, I have vowed not to keep secrets. To be shameless in my writing and in order to do that properly I needed to reclaim my space to speak, to write, be poetic, be Mala as I reenter single mami’hood and start fresh pero with old knowledge guiding me.

I sucked it up, faced my fear of tech, and purchased my own hosting space and here is Mamita Mala’s new blog casita.

Originally I was at MamitaMala.com pero I didn’t have control over much of the backend. I created a temporary exile tent city.

Recreate with me. Reinvent. Revolutionize, welcome.

Oh and please be patient as I mess with the sidebars, add links, change headers, etc. I am a poet who blogs, not a blogger who does poetry.