Abstract
This chapter analyzes poetry by Aracelis Girmay to identify the importance of diction and discourse that depicts sentient-flesh as vital for social justice activity. While the poetry explored in this chapter does not directly address any one particular social justice movement or organization, analysis of this poetry in conjunction with Aurora Levins Morales’s examination of medicinal stories shows that Girmay’s poetry raises questions for activists regarding subject positions in relation to not only the issue at hand but also the desired outcomes for these movements. In her deeply (ir)reverential depiction of the flesh, of organs, of the “animal kingdom,” Girmay describes different components of a human “being” that pulsate with life. In doing so, it becomes essential to question what current social justice movements still rely on from colonial and other oppressive frameworks in terms of conceptual genealogies, and the possibilities that emerge as a result of resituating their movements from within the flesh.
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Hurtado, R. (2019). Strategic Decolonization: Methods for Resistance and Community Healing. In: Decolonial Puerto Rican Women's Writings. Literatures of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05731-2_6
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