11:42 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Arts| California| Culture| Events| Lo Que Hay| Raices| Violence| Women| dance| history| language · No Comments
7 Nov 2009
Porque we remember our loved ones from our familias and community everyday and porque the mujeres that are involved in the creation of this project are beautiful and kick culo.
Mangos With Chili: the floating cabaret of QTPOC bliss, dreams, sweat, sweets & nightmares
proudly presents the premiere of:BELOVED: A Requiem for Our Dead
because we refuse to forget youFeaturing:
Nalo Hopkinson
Charleston Chu
E. Rose Sims
SoliRose
Nico Dacumos
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Ms. Cherry Galette
and moreWith video by Storm Florez, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kortney Ryan Ziegler, and more
November 6th and 7th, 8PM
The Lab
2948 16th St
San Francisco, CA 94103
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of fundsNovember 15th, 8PM
Hechos en Califas Festival
La Pena
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of fundsIn this highly anticipated premiere of the newest Mangos With Chili production, we invite you to join us at the crossroads for a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration. Through elegies of story, song, dance, drag and more, the Bay Area’s noted and notorious queer and trans people of color performance crew will honor our erased, fallen and slain queer and trans people of color family lost to hate crimes, war, colonization, and genocide. We will celebrate our queer legacies and the ways we’ve found to survive through the beautiful resistance of memory, and whisper stories about grief, loss, healing, sweet darkness, and walking between worlds towards rebirth.
Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead will feature the brilliance and blaze of renowned Caribbean speculative fiction storycrafter Nalo Hopkinson; multimedia invocation performance art heart wrench by playwright and poet Nico Dacumos; In Memoriam, a new collaborative dance theater work by Charlston Chu and Cherry Galette; ancestral prayer/spoken love letter by writer and theater artist Rose E. Sims; a mixed media jazz dance cabaret extravaganza by Charleston Chu, an autobiographical musical journey traversing the Middle East and African Diaspora by virtuoso trio SoliRose; the powerful truth renderings of queer Sri Lankan writer and performer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha; and the premiere of Moorish Salt a burlesque-dance theater/ritual performance art piece by fusion dance artist and theater-maker Cherry Galette.
Mangos With Chili is a Bay Area based arts organization committed to showcasing high quality performance of life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences in the Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms Cherry Galette, Mangos With Chili has performed to sold out houses across North America, wowing audiences in world class theaters, underground performance spaces, bars, and campus halls, with their high intensity, breathtaking performance, politics, and storytelling craft, reflecting the lives and stories of queer and trans people of color, while making art that speaks out in resistance to the daily struggles around silence, isolation, homophobia, and violence that QTPOC face. Mangos With Chili is a fiscally sponsored project of the San Francisco based arts organization CounterPULSE, which provides space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators: www.counterpulse.org. Mangos With Chili is supported by the Horizons Foundation, the Astraea Foundation, and the generous support of our community of donors.Both venues are wheelchair accessible. The show contains material of adult nature. Parental discretion advised. Please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that audience members and performers with multiple chemical sensitivity can attend.
For more information:
mangos.with.chili@gmail.com
mangoswithchili.wordpress.com
6:11 pm By la Macha · Celebrities| TV| Violence| Women · 9 Comments
5 Nov 2009This just broke my heart. Broke my heart.
From Huffington Post, a preview on the Rihanna interview:
I think that it is really generous and loving of Rihanna to think about girls at a time in her life when she is hurting and confused and devastated and even humiliated. But that section quoted above–that part where she says, “her selfish decision to love”….Oh, how my heart breaks.
It is not Rihanna’s job to stop violence against women. It’s not any woman or girl’s job to stop violence against women and girls. Even if she stayed with Chris Brown forever–it would never be her fault that women are being killed by men. It is manipulative and even violent to say it is. It is not selfish for a woman or girl to love. Dear god, no.
It is selfish to beat a woman. It is selfish to scare and intimidate her. It is selfish to take her love and use it against her, it is selfish to beat a woman who loves you because you know you can.
It is Chris Brown’s job to stop violating women. It is men’s job to stop violating women. It is men’s job to stop twisting and FUCKING with love so freely and generously given. It is the job of men to grow the fuck up and get into some kind of healing/therapy so that they can teach *little boys* how to not beat the holy fuck out of a person who loves them.
And it’s media’s job to stop putting the lives of little girls onto the shoulders of survivors. They have enough shit to worry about. It’s time to start putting responsibility where it belongs. On the fists of men who make the choice to use them whenever they feel like it.
9:23 pm By la Macha · Women · No Comments
4 Nov 2009Remember Rihanna? Remember how her then boyfriend, Chris Brown, beat the holy crap out of her? And how Rihanna got a lot of grief from fans and the police and even feminists for not “speaking out” after the attack?
Well, Rihanna will be speaking about the incident to Diane Sawyer on Friday:
In an exclusive interview, music superstar Rihanna sits down with Diane Sawyer revealing publicly for the first time what happened last February with singer and ex-boyfriend Chris Brown. The incident resulted in the couple’s seemingly fairytale relationship being shattered and Brown being sentenced to community labor, five years of probation and one year of domestic-violence counseling. During the in-depth interview, Rihanna also talks candidly about growing up in Barbados, her family life, and how she has been doing over the last nine months. The interview will air on “20/20,” FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 (10:00-11:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. Portions of the interview will also air on “Good Morning America” on Thursday, November 5 and Friday, November 6.
Will you be watching?
11:41 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Books| Events| Family| Women| boston · 1 Comment
4 Nov 2009
I met the organizer of this event, TK, at the Allied Media Conference this past summer. Another amazing mami media maker puts together an amazing event. Those in the Amherst area represent and support.
NOVEMBER 13, 2009 * 7PM
Food for Thought BooksPlease join us for a very special evening of women’s voices and responses to benefit To Tell you the Truth. Featuring Who’s Your Mama: Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Edt. by Yvonne Byone) Contributors: JLove Calderon (We Got Issues!/ That White Girl), Marcella Runell Hall Hall (Hip Hop Education Guidebook) and Marla Teyolia (Empowered Mama!). On site childcare provided.

10:46 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Blogs| Linking Latinos| Media| VivirLatino| Women| media justice · No Comments
4 Nov 2009I’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.
7:49 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Culture| Events| Movies| Music| New York City| Women| dance| history · No Comments
2 Nov 2009The history of hip hop is often told in a male voice and from a male point of view. The role of mujeres, from MC’s to B Girls, is told as an aside. Enter the legendary Rokafella, a figure I knew growing up, as an example of fierceness, presenting a new documentary that highlights the lives of six street dancers exploring motherhood, sexual tension, femininity versus masculinity and the rap industry/mainstream images.
This coming Saturday at BAAD!, in the Bronx, NY you can catch a sneak peek screening of All the Ladies Say. The event includes performances by guest artists and photos by Vanessa Bahmani and Emily Lady Caprice. This event is a fundraiser to support the completion of the film and will be followed by an after party with an open jam.
11:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Justice| New York City| Politics| Violence| Women · 2 Comments
30 Oct 2009
How do we deal with men in our communities who hurt the women in our community? And I’m not just talking about our physical communities like our neighbors or relatives. What of those who claim to represent us in public office.
I wrote about my discomfort surrounding the NYC State Senator Hiram Monserrate case when charges first surfaced against him, accusing him of attacking his girlfriend. It feels complicated for me on multiple levels. Monserratte was my local council person and he is my local state senator. That never has stopped me before. That wasn’t it. I had dealings with Monserrate before he was involved in electoral politics, when he worked with the Latino Police Officers Association here in NYC and he and his organization stood with the Latino families of those killed by police brutality and us organizers. As a Latina who has dealt with domestic violence both personally, politically, and professionally, how did this man whom I identified as a defender of the community suddenly become an attacker?
Read more…
6:14 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Health| Immigration| Justice| Politics| Violence| Women| arizona · No Comments
27 Oct 2009
Yesterday, la Macha told us how today is the National Call in Day for Women of Color to Demand Health Care Reform (have you called yet?). And while immigrants have been used as scapegoats, not much attention has been paid to the access for immigrants, especially immigrant women who find themselves detained while pregnant, women like Juana Villegas DeLaPaz who we wrote about last year.
Seems like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who revels in terrorizing Latino communities, wants to make sure that even infants entering into this world know their place in his eyes. From Latino Politico:
During her second night behind bars, the bleeding started. On the morning of October 14, she felt contractions. Her hands and feet shackled, she was in labor and ushered into a paramedic’s van by a detention officer who restrained her to the stretcher.
“That’s not necessary,” the paramedic told the officer.
“It’s my job,” the officer responded. The guard was a Latina.
She thought she would be released from the shackles once she arrived at the hospital, but she wasn’t.
The officer chained her ankle to one leg of the hospital bed.
A nurse requested that she be freed to get a urine sample. But the officer suggested instead that her bed be dragged over to the bathroom.
Later she was changed from her jail uniform into a hospital gown.
“The officer chained me by the feet and the hands to the bed,” she said. “And that’s how my daughter was born.”
It is the lives of women above that make me keep repeating why the issues of immigration reform, health care reform, and prison reform all work together. It is why I am not a reformer because the reform movements tends to separate the issues into neat little blocks. I think of those who cried victory when Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s 287(g) contract was modified to only include checking the status of those in jail, those in jail like the woman forced to give birth in chains.
2:38 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Justice| Violence| Women| mexico · No Comments
18 Oct 2009Women raped, murdered and disappeared in Juarez continues to be an ongoing situation. With over 400 cases reported and an unknown number not reported, the issue fades in and out of the public eye.
I would like to know of ways to support local organizations and local families in and around Juarez. Organizations without big budgets so that the mujeres of Juarez can live and rest in peace.
12:20 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Activism| Media| Women| media justice · 3 Comments
18 Oct 2009Radical women media activist don’t do what they do for the props, that’s for sure. Pero it’s always nice when they get some and it’s always nice when the peeps getting props are close to my heart. Utne Reader has done it again, releasing their annual 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World list. I am happy to see the name of Alexis Pauline Gumbs aka just Lex, for her work on the Mobile Homecoming Project and the million and one other projects she always seems to be working on.
Felicidades.
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by 2 Mujeres Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse and influential Latino and Latina community in the U.S.
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