Womxn

A womxn whose ability to carry out this work is through the grace of Anishinaabe mxn and institutions? A womxn without a grove of birch whose bark may be harvested without fear of negative consequences?

“Coyolxauhqui Canto” by Cristina Gorocica, a song written in offering to the moon, documents the moment of recognition when a womxn's body undergoing a metamorphoses to accommodate the growth of life is mirrored back in the phases of [the moon].

Twenty-One Ways of Leaving: […] 19. The womxn in their thirties. The womxn with wrinkles at the edges of their eyes. The womxn who spell lonely with ambition. The womxn in their thirties. The womxn who do not bring up your age at the dinner table. The womxn who bring up your accolades at the dinner table. The womxn who make love to you and introduce you at the dinner table like they have not been intimate with your sheets. Oh honey, run. No. The other way.

She was born in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, and migrated with her family in the early 1990s to the Pacific Northwest. She is also a hip-hop artist with Batallones Femeninos, a womxn's hip-hop collective based in Mexico, and does multimedia production and autonomous organizing with Shades of Silence. She is currently in the process of applying to film school and to a graduate doctoral program to extend her work of supporting womxn and Indigenous communities ...

To every person I spoke with on my many trips across the country, to guides/mentors/friends/fam: to Alexis Pauline Gumbs, for living queer Black brilliance and Black love, for creating space to remember Harriett Tubman, and for continuing to create Black Spaces for us rooted in the ways and words of Black womxn; ...