Week 4 Writing: WCC Writer's Workshop

Prompt: Set an intention for your mind, body, and heart, your memory, your thought, and your imagination for the full and magnificent year to come.


Response: Love has been guiding me this entire way. I've been writing and thinking so much about the upcoming changes and journeys in my life that I can't even write or reflect outwardly anymore. I'll just say: Mind elevated. Body healed & elevated. Heart repaired. My memory repaired. Thought elevated. Imagination elevated.

Week 1 Writing: WCC Writer's Workshop

Prompts for Week One

"Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

What is your voice? What are your voices? Where do you hear your voice? When do you raise your voice? What are its frequencies, its resonance? How do you find your voice?

What narratives do you draw on from your history, your culture, your life, to tell your stories? What codes do you speak in and around?
What silences do you observe, which do you break? How do you overcome silence?


Response


My voice is one of a woman of color who has experienced multiple forms of sexual violence and oppression and colonialism. I speak mostly about the injustices that we face. How sex and our bodies are used against us when we are the creators of this world. How hate is used against when the source of love can be found in our vaginas and in our wombs. I write because its one of the fundamental ways that I relate to people and the world around me. I write to make this world more tolerable. Its an art to me, but I rarely write poems. I hear my voice and my inspiration in my people and the people who've experienced the same shit as I have.


I observe silence surrounding sexual violence. The only thing that gives me solace is to talk to the people I know. To end the silence and isolation. To mend relationships.

February Writing

This month I will be participating in Women's Creative Collective for Change's February Writer's Workshop. I'll be posting based on weekly prompts.


Their description:  The February Writers’ Workshop is meant to create space for us to write everyday for a month. What we do with that space is up to each writer. Starting Feb. 1, post weekly, post daily, or post somewhere in between. You could write as little or as much as you want in any format – poetry, journal entry, short story, article. We also have weekly prompts available to get you started, but responding to them is not required. Writing in this workshop is an act of community- we encourage you to join us in visiting your fellow writers’ blogs, commenting, supporting, and nurturing our collective creativity. So if you want to get back into your writing groove and join up with a community of bad ass writers from across the globe, it’s simple!


And you can find more about WCC and the workshop here.

Zine: Updated

It is my belief and the belief of many others that those abused, used and marginalized (or even those not) by mainstream media must take back the media by creating their own and seeking out alternative forms that are not racist, sexist and abusive. Buy a digital camera and record videos about positive events in your community, start a blog about fighting against beauty norms, or start a zine, like me!

zine-an organic magazine, made for us, by us

Starting today until the 19th, I am accepting submissions for a zine that I will be publishing and giving out at UCR. It will feature articles inspired by my time as a summer student at UCLA as well as combine my passion for writing and researching ideas surrounding social identities. I will be including several articles written by myself as well as other authors, therefore, I am also asking for submissions from my peers. Submissions can include but are not limited to articles, poems, essays, advertisements (not for products however), drawings, etc. Of course, anything you submit has to have some type of connection with humanity issues, whether it be about feminism, racism, AIDS, childbirth, whatever. It has to be about people! Please email submissions to mwils008@ucr.edu All submissions will be edited for grammar. Everyone can submit! I am looking forward to reading what you all have to say. Make your voice heard!

Once the zine is published a copy can be sent to you if you do not attend UCR.