Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2020
Abstract
Over three hundred years have passed since Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the first feminist in the Americas, wrote her famous response defending her right to learn and to speak through her poetry. Today, the spoken word poetry of Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Denice Frohman, Mercedez Holtry, Melania Luisa Marte, and Elizabeth Acevedo grapples with the same matters Sor Juana did more than three hundred years ago. This article analyzes the feminist practices within the rhetoric of the spoken word performances of Lozada-Oliva, Frohman, Holtry, Marte, and Acevedo by positioning their work as performed testimonios (Blackmer Reyes and Curry Rodriguez 2012; Diaz 2011). Understanding these spoken word performances as performed testimonios helps us examine the connections between the rhetor’s personal experience of injustice, the collective struggle of the community to which the rhetor belongs, and the political agency that the rhetor demands. This article also traces the historical and cultural intersections between the spoken word poetry of Latinas and Latina feminism by identifying the echoes from Sor Juana’s work in the performed testimonios examined here.
Recommended Citation
Rivera, N. (2020). “If Aristotle had cooked”: Contemporary feminist practices within the rhetoric of young Latinas’ spoken word performances. Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, 20(1), 56-82.
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS)
Included in
Chicana/o Studies Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Poetry Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Women's Studies Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, volume 20, issue 1, in 2020.