The University of Arizona Press
March 18, 2024
Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, editors Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda weave together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays.
What made you want write a book about the Mujeres de Maiz movement?
Nadia: We all saw the importance of documenting the work of Mujeres de Maiz. All three of us were working with Mujeres de Maiz in some capacity as well as finishing our thesis and dissertations about the work. We also wanted to highlight other folk who were writing about Mujeres de Maiz in academic spaces. It made sense to weave together this collective history and also highlight and elevate the art and writing that has been produced. The task of documenting Mujeres de Maiz was a big one because we wanted to encompass as many elements of the collective as possible. This meant highlighting the work of early members through testimonies, featuring the work in the zines that have been part of the collective since its inception, and incorporating the art and performances that make Mujeres de Maiz.
Fe: From the very beginning of Mujeres de Maiz we knew we were doing something special. There was an energy, a spark, a connection, emotions, love, and what felt like a change in our DNA. We knew that we had to document it, whether it was through video, writing, or telling our stories in the same traditions that our women of color predecessors had. The book is our story, our documentation of our herstory, and the femmifestation of our prayer and of prophecy. We see it as our own codex.
How do the people of Mujeres de Maiz bring Indigenous systems of communalism and spirituality to today’s urban spaces?
Amber: Mujeres de Maiz is an Indigenous Xicana/x-led organization and movement with many of the individuals belonging to/having heritage within different nations that span the continent. As feminists, cultural bearers, artists, activists, teachers, parents, etc., we bring many overlapping worldviews, spiritual practices, and ways of being, teaching, and learning into the spaces we create. Spirituality is a part of everything we do!
Why does the book include visual art as well as text?
Amber: Mujeres de Maiz is a multidisciplinary, multimedia spiritual artivist collective. Many of the artivists cross artistic genres, whether written or visual. The written work in the book includes testimonios or life writing, academic essays, and poetry, with many authors blending prose, theory, and poetic expression. This hybrid approach that breaks with dominant writing conventions (borders), is part of a long tradition of feminist of color writing. Visual art is equally important in the documentation of MdM’s herstory. The combination of the written and the visual to tell an epic story is also part of a centuries-old Mesoamerican tradition. This book is our present-day Xicana/x amoxtli, our codex.
Why is maiz important to Chicanas?
Fe: Maiz is our sacred mother—it is our creation story, our sustenance, our prayer, our lineage, and our direct connection to the land.
What is your next project?
Amber: We plan to create a suite of teacher resources to accompany the book that will be free and available on our website. We’ve discussed a possible second book that will feature some of the cultural production of MdM artivists and additional essays and testimonios that we either didn’t have space for or were otherwise unable to secure for the first project. We’ve also talked about an MdM archive project. We look forward to translating the book into Spanish.
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Amber Rose González is a queer Apachicana born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, California, and ancestrally rooted in New Mexico and Jalisco. She is a professor of ethnic studies at Fullerton College, a writer-researcher-organizer with Mujeres de Maiz, and a co-author and editor of the open-access textbook New Directions in Chicanx and Latinx Studies.
Felicia “Fe” Montes is a Chicana Indigenous artist based in Los Angeles. Montes is a multimedia artist, poet, performer, educator, professor, and emcee.
Nadia Zepeda is an assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Fullerton. Through collaborative and community-based research, she traces the genealogy of healing justice in Chicana/x feminist organizing.
