Thursday Draft Questions - Karen Velderrain-Lopez

1. Cyphers: Hip-Hop and Improvisation talks about how cyphers can be used to “aggressively [claim] your own voice, your own right to speak” (2). What are some other cyphers you have experienced or know about, besides hip hop? Why are cyphers significant in building resilience?

2. The reading Voicing Citizenship discusses how the use of testimonio is important to artivistas in order to advocate and not become victims of social death. How do we see the concept of testimonio being applied to other situations and how can it be viewed as a form of resilience?

3. Voicing Citizenship talks about how social media can be used to reclaim identity: “social media affords these women a space to express themselves outside this dichotomy of mother-criminal as dynamic subjects” (64). What are other groups that have experienced this type of erasure and what are the consequences of ignoring the depth and dynamic nature of different people, communities, and movements?

4. The Somos Mujeres, Somos Hip Hop reading talks about how Latinas are using hip hop as a way to express themselves and fight back against machismo. The text described Latina rappers as “narrating the history of gender marginalizations as well as the way women have fought back, both past and present” (336). Considering what we have first learned about Chicana feminism and its views with machismo, how can we compare this to Latinas in hip hop culture and the ways it tries to counteract and respond to machismo?

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