Chica/Mujer is a collection of vignettes about women and for women who are biracial but hide their identities or who wear them on their sleeve. It is also for women who grieve the loss of an unborn child or who resist motherhood after giving birth. It is for women who were raped, and for those whose wounds are raw. It is for women who have sex for empowerment. It is for women who are going through menarche but don't quite know how to welcome it or for those who deem it a beautiful, strengthening, cleansing ritual. It is for women who studied so hard to end up working in an entirely different job than they first envisioned or who forewent a full-scholarship due to an unforeseeable traumatic event.
Read MoreLuna Luna Will Not Be Striking March 8
Privilege or protest?
Read MoreTrumpectomy: An Individual and Collective Reckoning
As a woman and mother who self-identifies as a multiracial Mexicana and who is a special education professor, I see our new president as the antithesis of all I have ever believed in and strived for. His views on women, immigrants, Mexicans, and those with disabilities have begun to impact federal, state, and local policies that aim to protect – though not always well – the rights and liberties of "minorities" or all those who are not "privileged" by their gender, status, or background in our country. I have watched in horror and unabashed astonishment as constitutional rights, such as the right to assemblage and freedom of speech, have been narrowly interpreted and have limited, to varying degrees, freedoms to which we have had access.
Read MoreThe Utah Vote: Why It Matters That Mormons Went For Trump
Political commentator/comedian Bill Maher may have been right when he announced, about a month or so before the election, on his show Real Time with Bill Maher, that the Republican Party can no longer consider itself the "Socially Conservative Party." Republican candidate and, now, President-elect Donald Trump has been caught on tape agreeing with Howard Stern that his own daughter Ivanka is a "Piece of ass," has been quoted saying that pregnancy is an "inconvenience" and, finally, was recorded in 2005 bragging about sexually assaulting women and getting away with it because, as he put it, "When you’re a star they let you do it." It strikes me as a contradiction that, despite all the evidence excluding Trump from the socially conservative category, 88 percent of evangelical voters, notorious value voters, backed him as their nominee.
Read MoreGet Out & Vote — How Many Have Died For This Right?
It was several years later I learnt black South Africans didn’t get their right to vote till 1994. I remember seeing photos on TV, photos of people lining for up to twelve hours at times to cast their ballots, a first for many, an experience Joyce’s parents never got to have. Imagine, that in 1994, the rest of us were watching Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction. This was not that long ago.
Read MoreWhat Donald Trump Has In Common With Fifth Graders And The Book of Genesis
Linguists have had a field day with Donald Trump. His speeches are geared for a fourth-grade reading level, with very few four-syllable words. He doesn’t use any complex sentence structures. His vocabulary is notoriously poor and centers around a few repetitive words such as "tremendous" and "problem." Most insidious of all, he ends his rambling nonsense with words such as "problem," "liars," and "losers"--which is what most of his viewers eventually take away from his speeches. I never thought I’d see a presidential candidate make Dubya look like an eloquent orator, but here we are.
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