Books at Duke University Press

Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios
Latina Feminist Group

400 pages (September 2001)
19 b&w photos

Cloth - $89.95	0-8223-2755-4
[ISBN13 978-0-8223-2755-4]

Paperback - $24.95	0-8223-2765-1
[ISBN13 978-0-8223-2765-3]

Telling to Live embodies the vision that compelled Latina feminists to engage their differences and find common ground. Its contributors reflect varied class, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, sexual, and national backgrounds. Yet in one way or another they are all professional producers of testimonios—or life stories—whether as poets, oral historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, or psychologists. Through coalitional politics, these women have forged feminist political stances about generating knowledge through experience. Reclaiming testimonio as a tool for understanding the complexities of Latina identity, they compare how each made the journey to become credentialed creative thinkers and writers. Telling to Live unleashes the clarifying power of sharing these stories.
The complex and rich tapestry of narratives that comprises this book introduces us to an intergenerational group of Latina women who negotiate their place in U.S. society at the cusp of the twenty-first century. These are the stories of women who struggled to reach the echelons of higher education, often against great odds, and constructed relationships of sustenance and creativity along the way. The stories, poetry, memoirs, and reflections of this diverse group of Puerto Rican, Chicana, Native American, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, Sephardic, mixed-heritage, and Central American women provide new perspectives on feminist theorizing, perspectives located in the borderlands of Latino cultures.
This often heart wrenching, sometimes playful, yet always insightful collection will interest those who wish to understand the challenges U.S. society poses for women of complex cultural heritages who strive to carve out their own spaces in the ivory tower.

Contributors. Luz del Alba Acevedo, Norma Alarcón, Celia Alvarez, Ruth Behar, Rina Benmayor, Norma E. Cantú, Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Gloria Holguín Cuádraz, Liza Fiol-Matta, Yvette Flores-Ortiz, Inés Hernández-Avila, Aurora Levins Morales, Clara Lomas, Iris Ofelia López, Mirtha N. Quintanales, Eliana Rivero, Caridad Souza, Patricia Zavella

“Telling to Live is a groundbreaking text—important in its outreach, inclusiveness, and power—that expands, qualifies, complicates, and illuminates the ground of our discourse the way the best texts do—through transformative narratives, stories, and poems that resist the neat paradigms and –isms of our time. It is also a text that will fill an alarming gap in the academy, where silence or simplification of Latina perspectives still prevails.”—Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

“Twenty years after the publication of This Bridge Called My Back, this stunning collection of writings by Latina feminists raises the stakes of collaboration across race, class, nation, and sexuality. Telling to Live challenges prevailing research practices and forges a model of deep collaboration for future generations of scholars.”—Angela Y. Davis, author of Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

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Winner, 2004 Critics' Choice Award
   American Educational Studies Association
Winner, 2002 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award
   Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights

Table of Contents
About the Series
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Papelitos Guardados: Theorizing Latinidades Through Testimonio

I. Geneaologies of Empowerment
Certified Organic Intellectual / Aurora Levins Morales
My Father’s Hands / Yvette Gisele Flores-Oritz
Vignettes of a Working-Class Puerto Rican Girl in Brooklyn, New York / Celia Alvarez
Silence Begins at Home / Patricia Zavella
You Speak Spanish Because You Are Jewish? / Rina Benmayor
Getting There Cuando No Hay Camino / Norma E. Cantú
Reflection and Rebirth: The Evolving Life of a Latina Academic / Iris Ofelia López
Mi Primera Amiguita: Carmelita / Gloria Holguín Cuádraz
The House That Mamá Biela Built / Daisy Cocco de Filippis
Lightning / Mirtha N. Quintanales
My Name Is This Story / Aurora Levins Morales
Resisting the Alcemy of Erasure: Journey to Labor Ideas / Clara Lomas
Esta Risa No Es de Loca / Caridad Souza
A Esconditas: A Chicana Feminist Teacher Who Writes/A Chicana Feminist Writer Who Teaches / Norma E. Cantú
Canto de Mi Madre/Canto de Mi Padre / Inés Hernández Avila
Daughter of Bootstrap / Luz del Alba Acevedo
Beyond Survival: A Politics/Poetics of Puerto Rican Consciousness / Liza Fiol-Matta
I Can Fly: Of Dreams and Other Nonfictions / Eliana Rivero

II. Alchemies of Erasure
The Christmas Present / Caridad Souza
Snapshots from My Daze in School / Celia Alvarez
Point of Departure / Mirtha N. Quintanales
Another Way to Grow Up Puerto Rican / Liza Fiol-Matta
El Beso / Ruth Behar
The Prize of a New Cadillac / Yvette Gisele Flores-Ortiz
La Tra(d)ición / Latina Anónima
Diary of La Llorona with a Ph. D. / Gloria Holguín Cuádraz
Welcome to the Ivory Tower / Latina Anónima
I Still Don’t Know Why / Latina Anónima
Lessons Learned from an Assistant Professor / Gloria Holguían Cuádraz
Don’t You Like Being in the University? / Latina Anónima
Temporary Latina / Ruth Behar
Dispelling the Sombras, Grito mi nombre con rayos de luz / Inés Hernández Avila
Biting Through / Latina Anónima
Sand from Varadero Beach / Ruth Behar
Speaking Among Friends: Whose Empowerment, Whose Resistance? / Luz del Alba Acevedo

III. The Body Re/members
Reading the Body / Norma E. Cantú
Missing Body / Caridad Souza
Malabareando/Juggling / Liza Fiol-Matta
Migraine/Jacqueca / Norma E. Cantú
The Wart / Diasy Cocco de Filippis
Why My Ears Aren’t Pierced / Ruth Behar
Night Terrors / Latina Anónima
La Princesa / Latina Anónima
Forced by Circumstance / Norma Alarcón
Let Me Sleep / Latina Anónima
Depression / Mirtha N. Quintanales
Desde el Diván: Testimonios from the Couch / Yvette Giselle Flores-Ortiz
Telling to Live: Devoro la Mentira, Resucitando Mi Ser / Inés Hernández Avila

IV Passion, Desires, and Celebrations
Shameless Desire / Aurora Levins Morales
La Cosa / Ruth Behar
Boleros / Eliana Rivero
A Working-Class Bruja’s Fears and Desires / Norma E. Cantú
Aún / Yvette Gisele Flores-Ortiz
The Names I Used to Call Your/The Names I Do Call You / Eliana Rivero
Plátanos and Palms / Rina Benmayor
Three Penny Opera or Eve’s Symphony in B Minor / Daisy Cocco de Filippis
Descubrimiento(s) / Celia Alvarez
Entre Nosotras / Latina Anónima
Pisco and Cranberry / Eliana Rivero
De lo que es Amor; de lo que es Vida / Inés Hernández Avila
Eating Mango / Liza Fiol-Matta
Everyday Grace / Mirtha N. Quintanales
Tenemos que Swguir Luchando / Patricia Zavella

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About the Authors