p6545:

Our mothers do to us what their mothers did to them and what the mothers of their mothers did to them until one of us stands up and refuses to take it anymore but it isn’t a gesture of self-emancipation or a strengthening of personhood; it is simply an anguished strike against the cycle, the nature of affairs, the ever persistent convention that went on at the expense of the tender hearts of little girls who, like their brothers, deserved to sleep well and dream colorful but would only dream of an escape. Some wounded themselves, other shut down, even more gave up but there is always one child - ferocious of heart and robust of soul - who sees circumstance as chance and chance as a window out of a dark room. And to be that child is agony long before it is freedom.

(via mangoestho-deactivated20161001)

"

The thing is, I DO care about the environment but I cannot stand it when white people pretend they are all connected to the earth and refuse to understand that many of us — Migrant Brown People — come from backgrounds where “environmentalism” is not talked about because we grow up doing unintentional “green” things. For some reason mainstream culture has done a great job of erasing people of color’s legacy on anything “green” or “environmental.” Mainstream media falsely frames sustainable practices as practices spearheaded by white people. A very annoying example of this is permaculture, a “design system” that you can learn if you have thousands of dollars — mind you, a lot of the principles of permaculture are practiced by people of color worldwide, from reusing water to wash dishes and water plants to using food scraps to enrich soil for plants.

People of color that come from families that need to recycle and reuse to make ends meet have incredible amounts of knowledge. I know many folks that talk about sustainability in their communities and practice sustainable living, but our stories are not legitimized by books or newspaper articles nor are they studied in a Global Sustainability class. Acknowledging people of color’s legacy in the mainstream would undermine the classist, racist and xenophobic ideals that our society stands on. We pass down traditions and knowledge that are unintentionally green or sustainable. We do not call them “eco-friendly” practices, we just do them. I call this passed down knowledge, Abuelita Knowledge because so much of these “new age” practices are the ways in which my grandmas and elders live their lives .

"

"I treat myself like I would my daughter. I brush her hair, wash her laundry, tuck her in goodnight. Most importantly, I feed her. I do not punish her. I do not berate her, leave tears staining her face. I do not leave her alone. I know she deserves more.
I know I deserve more."

slaybia-majora:

monosexualkink:

the line between girl and woman is blurred so much that a lot of us don’t even know which to call ourselves because neither feels right

This is due to the oversexualization of young girls and the treatment of women as being incapable of doing anything for themselves.

(Source: kjrejngjkesdfjmsejkfdgmnrjeskd, via ar-rad)

durgapolashi:

Your novels seem to be concerned with boundaries — emotional, geographical, social — and what happens when those boundaries are crossed or broken down. Is that something that particularly affects women of a certain age or class, or does it apply to all?

“The awareness of limits keeps weighing down on women — I’m talking about women in general. This isn’t a problem while we’re dealing with self-regulation: it’s important to set limits for oneself. The problem is that we live within limits set by others, and we are disapproving of ourselves when we fail to respect them. Male boundary-breaking does not automatically entail negative judgments, it’s a sign of curiosity and courage. Female boundary-breaking, especially when it is not undertaken under the guidance or supervision of men, is still disorientating: it is loss of femininity, it is excess, perversion, disease.”

Elena Ferrante

(via macchiatabro)

sukoot:

Non-occidental knowledge is welcomed by the global agendas of Empire because it is useful to the capitalist project of biodiversity. The tolerance of cultural diversity has become a ‘politically correct’ value in Empire, but only in the sense that diversity is useful for the reproduction of capital. 

[…] The ‘recognition’ that is given to non-occidental systems of knowledge is pragmatic rather than epistemical. Although the wisdom of indigenous communities or black communities can now be seen as ‘useful’ for the conservation of the environment, the categorical distinction between ‘traditional knowledge’ and ‘science’, elaborated in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, is still in force. The former continues to be seen as anecdotal knowledge, not quantitative and lacking methodology, while the later continues, in spite of the transdisciplinary efforts of the last decades, to be taken as the only epistemically valid knowledge.

Santiago Castro-Gómez, The Missing Chapter of Empire: Postmodern Reorganization of Coloniality and Post-Fordist Capitalism.