“Soy Aimée, la de Zaida.”

My apologies for being late with this first post, but Mercury in Retrograde has been kicking my butt.  Anyway, as a guest-blogger, I realize that I need to introduce myself to the Feministe community.  I thought I’d start out with an anecdote:

When I was younger, I spent summers in Puerto Rico with my grandparents.  It was an opportunity to get out of New York for a while and meant my mother didn’t have to worry about what to do with me for the months that school was out of session.  Aguadilla is a pretty small town, and my grandparents seemed to know everyone.  I rarely knew these people, and by way of introduction, they would invariably say “Ésta es Aimée, la de Zaida.” Roughly, that translates as, “This is Aimée, Zaida’s daughter.”  Even then I was fascinated by this idea that I didn’t stand on my own, but that my existence depended on my relationship to others, in this case, my mother.

That sense of self, that I exist in relationship to and with others has been a big part of my life and in many ways guides my work.  As a reproductive justice activist (www.protectchoice.org) and general trouble-maker, I am rooted in the real lived experiences of the communities I come from.  Whether it’s my ethnic community (Puerto Ricans), my sports community (Go Yankees!) or my political community (Radicals and Progressives), I see myself as part of a larger group of people with shared values and a shared worldview.  I bring all those people with me to everything I do.  So what does that mean?  It means I focus on issues of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, ability, sexual orientation and sexual identity.  I follow politics to understand how the issues I care about are dealt with (or more often the case, ignored) and how they impact our daily lives.  I think about power constantly – who has it, who doesn’t, how is it being used to advance a more just world and how is it being used to keep people down.

And I think a lot about cancer.  Ten months ago my mother, Zaida, was diagnosed with stage 3 gastric cancer.  I’ll write more about that later.  For now, let’s just say that cancer has become a big part of my life.

So over the next week that we’re sharing this space, I hope we’ll get to know each other, challenge other and support each other.  Respectfully.  In the meantime, allow me to introduce myself, “Soy Aimée, la de Zaida.”