VivirLatino

As many of you know, I have contributed occasionally to the website, Feminist Review. Basically, Feminist Review is a website that does reviews on everything from books to zines to clothes. I never thought to even look at the website before I was approached by one of the editors, Mandy Van Deven, to write up a few reviews for them. It’s a feminist site, and well, I don’t call myself a feminist.

The following is that interview! 1. Can you talk about what Feminist Review is and how it works?

I started Feminist Review three and a half years ago because I’d
gotten really invested in indie media through my work with
Altar
Magazine and Clamor. When the latter closed its doors, I still had this overwhelming desire to make media, but I knew print media was out of the question. Blogging was something I was aware of, but I had never been a part of the scene directly. Actually, at the time I was working at the same nonprofit as one of the founders of a very popular feminist blog, so I heard about a lot of the stuff that would go down in the feminist blogosphere from her, and although I was intrigued by the idea of forming a community online, I was enormously skeptical of it as well. I didn’t want to create a blog that lacked a holistic perspective on the spaces where women and politics collide, and it was important to me to figure out a way to create a site that was inclusive of multiple perspectives (as opposed to my own ego stroking), particularly ones that were not necessarily in agreement. Also, in coming from a grassroots organizing background, I know the importance of representation at the start of a project because the reality is that very, very few projects become truly representative if they fail to start out that way. Publishing reviews of books, film, music, plays, etc. written by a number of writers seemed to fit the bill, as it allowed for diversity (including geographic diversity since our blog isn’t US-centric) in both the content being produced and the content producer. Read more…