All right.
Welcome, welcome.
Welcome, everyone.
Bienvenidos to this great conversation.
Another one for us.
Welcome to Las Doctoras podcast.
We're again excited to be bringing you, I think, a really important conversation.
And, you know, I think Christina and I have been trying to figure out how we can speak to the moment in a way that makes sense to us.
um and feels good to us and so i think that our guest is gonna um yeah be able to do that for us so and i want to say i love y'all stories i can't wait to hear it again you know and from you both so this is such an honor to be you know to be here yeah so thank you welcome our guest please introduce yourself
Hi, everybody.
My name is Cynthia Silverstein.
I am a photographer.
I like to consider myself a visual activist.
I grew up in Orange County, now live in Los Angeles.
My work generally revolves around birth and the ways in which birth imagery in our visual culture can help or hinder maternal health outcomes.
And yeah, I'm always so bad at introducing myself.
A little bit of your ancestry.
And then if you have some astrology or any kind of thing like that, that you'd like to share.
I'm terrible at that.
I just know I'm a cancer, but I've never.
I get it now.
It all makes sense.
A friend did my daughter's chart.
And then weeks after, I was like, wait, why didn't I ask for mine?
I was so concerned about hers.
Wait, when's your birthday?
July 15th.
Mine's July 19th.
Oh, wow.
I love it.
The cancer love is real.
I love it.
I cry a lot.
Yes.
Whatever my chart, whatever that is, I cry a lot.
Yes, that's a cancer for sure.
I cry.
I was born in Nayarit, Mexico, and came to the United States when I was six with my parents.
So I'm mixed heritage background, like most Mexicans.
Split right down the middle.
All that fun, all that fun mestiza head.
Trauma and beauty and beauty and beauty and beauty.
For sure.
So, yeah, I just want to say that I think it was, you know, just navigating everything that's happening in the Middle East right now, particularly in Gaza, has been a really heavy thing for so many of us.
And I found myself very much like,
just witness to so much like divisiveness, you know, divisive like rhetoric and dialogue online more than I'd ever witnessed.
And so I was like looking for like the voices of reason or like what is something that can give me some sense of like grounding.
And I noticed, I can't remember specifically, but I think I came across you with Leslie's work of Latinx parenting.
And and you started like posting all these things.
And I was like, like pausing and like reading every that's the academic right like nerd in me like reading all your stuff.
And then I was like, I have so many questions.
And I think that's been so hard is to find safe places to ask, like really genuine questions without feeling like.
you're going to be judged or, you know, like, you know, like places to be like messy with our questions.
And so I was like, let me DM you.
Like, and you were so like open and generous, I have to say with your responses.
And, you know, every time like something, like I started thinking like, oh, like, you know, is this what it's happening?
And again, you were just always so generous.
So I've been so grateful to kind of build that,
you know, our like relationship and DMs over the last month.
You have been such a like it is definitely a very difficult time, but you have been such a like buoy of like, OK, this is exactly what I'm
wanting to happen and while I'm wishing to happen across all my DMS and across interactions, um, which hasn't really been the case, but it has been such good practice to, to like pause and think, um,
I think for me, it was really tough.
I'm not usually vocal in that way about my Jewishness, but so many things were happening that I really just found myself typing essays in my stories, which is why you had to hold it down.
It was like six paragraphs of just...
really disbelief, I think, at first with what I was seeing and what I was hearing.
And part of that, my husband always tells me that I assume the best in people too much, probably.
And I was like, why?
That's the cancer.
That's the cancer.
The cancer is also the long essays in Instagram, let's say.
Yeah.
And so it was really nice, like, first to have somebody see it and
be willing to ask a question, but also I could tell that you were really thinking about it.
And I was like, that's all I want when I'm sitting here, like trying to get my toddler off of me, trying to type to know that somebody's reading or reacting or thinking even shifting their perspective in the slightest way.
Yeah.
So I was so excited.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I guess, so my question is just speaking, you know, to what you've just said, and I love this connection.
I love you all, Cancer.
It's just so beautiful and emotional.
And I just, I just treasure it.
I want to know more about your story, you know, like how it is that you came, you know, to be a part of the Jewish community.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I am what is called a Jew by choice.
I converted when I was 20.
So my parents came from Mexico.
My mom came first.
It's such a crazy story.
So we're living in Nayarit.
My parents had a business and they were doing fairly well.
one of their godchildren was kidnapped.
And when they found, they found them, everybody was all right, but they found a list and my name was on the list.
And I was like five at the time.
And my mom was like,
curse i curse too much but i can censor you can absolutely curse my mom was like fuck this shit we're not staying here and she's always been a very like strong-willed powerful woman so she basically told my dad like do what you need to do sell the business sell the house um i'm gonna go with your tia my tia lived in her his tia lived in irvine
at the time.
And so she's like, I'm going to go and see what's there.
And then I'll come back and get Cynthia.
And she did.
She came here by herself, found a job pretty quickly as a nanny for a family who had a six month old at the time.
The mom was Jewish, but had converted to Christianity.
And
The rest of her extended family still remained Jewish, but the mom converted to Christianity.
My mom moved in with them and would cry herself to sleep because I'm her only child and I wasn't with her.
And this woman who actually happens to be a midwife, her name is Lisa.
She came home and was like, here's a plane ticket.
Go get your daughter.
She can live with us.
until you get settled, until your husband comes.
And so she did that.
I came here being told that I was going to go to Disneyland so that I wouldn't tell, I wouldn't give it up that I was moving.
And side note, I still hold it against them.
They didn't take me to Disneyland for like three years.
But it took me a long time.
The deal was hold up to that promise.
I know.
And it's, like, right there, too.
Right there.
They didn't want to tell me, like, you're moving completely because, you know, like.
Yeah.
But.
Oh, the heartbreak.
I can feel it.
Yeah.
It's still there.
Even though I went, like, so much in my youth.
I'm like, but it took too long.
Yeah.
We're just keeping it.
Yeah.
So I essentially they became my they became family and I grew up with their extended family.
Lisa's mom, Grandma Eileen, was like my pseudo grandma.
So that was my first introduction to Judaism that kind of like stayed with me.
Then I went to study anthropology at UCLA and part of the coursework was to take a religious course.
Mm hmm.
So I took Intro to Judaism.
And after that first class, I was like, oh, well, this makes sense.
This is what I want to do.
This sounds like the framework and foundation if I ever have a family that I want to rest in.
I never really felt connected to Catholicism.
My parents were like, we'll go to church if necessary.
my grandma calls and is like, have you been to church?
I did my first communion because my grandma called my dad and was like, why are you failing as a parent?
Something needs to do for her first communion.
But yeah, after that first lecture, I went up to the rabbi who was the Hillel rabbi at the time.
And I was like, Hey, so question, how did I become a Jew?
And he was like, come to my office and we'll talk about it.
And then I never looked back.
Wow.
So I did the whole process.
Yeah, I think, I guess I started when I was 20.
So I think I officially finished the process when I was like around 22.
It takes a while.
Yeah.
I'm so interested.
What was it about Judaism that felt so right to you?
I think it's being an immigrant and feeling disconnected and
I grew up in Laguna Hills, South Orange County.
So not really a place where I could feel any connection to my roots.
I mean, we were close enough to Santa Ana to like go up there and get food and get supplies, I guess, to return back to our little Laguna Hills bunker.
But it was just me and my parents.
And so there was always this kind of feeling of loss or disconnection.
And I think when I was learning more about Judaism and the community aspect and the social justice aspect, that just hooked me.
And I was like, oh, this is all about community.
That's really what I understood it as from day one is,
This is coming together, uniting in this vision for justice and making it a part of everything that you do.
And yeah, I think that was really it.
I was definitely more religious back then.
I think I was more into the prayers.
Now I would say I'm just more spiritual.
Yeah.
I don't do the blessings as much.
I don't pray.
I don't do the daily ritual so much anymore.
I married an atheist Jew, so that makes it interesting.
So tell us, I mean, it's an, it's, this is a very unique story.
I mean, like all the way around.
And so what do you feel has been your experience as somebody who is, you know, converted to Judaism, but also is a Mexican immigrant.
You married a Jew, right?
Like how, what's that experience been like sort of at the intersections of all of these things?
There's been so many really interesting intersections because of course I had to tell my Catholic parents, Hey, I know that we don't go to church, but like, it's still important that we like believe in Jesus.
I'm not going to do that anymore.
Yeah.
And my mom has always been more spiritual.
Like she's always been, when she tells me to pray, like when I was little, it was like, pray to your grandma, right?
Like, talk to your grandma.
Your grandma's always with you.
Kind of thing.
So, I mean, she would still tell me to say, like, the padre nuestro.
What is it?
Our father.
Yeah.
And... But it was always, like, have a cup of water for your grandma.
Like, light a candle for your grandma.
Like, that was where my... The ancestral work.
Idea of, yeah, of, like, praying was.
So she...
She was like, I think her first question was like, are you going to separate your dishes now?
Because she knew growing up with or having been around Lisa's sister who kept kosher, you separate your meat dishes from your milk dishes.
And so I think my mom saw it more as like a logistics issue.
Interesting.
You're going to have like rules now.
Like, am I not going to be able to use a fork when I go to your house?
But my dad had a pretty hard time with it.
I think there was a lot of,
because his parents were still alive, having to explain that to them.
And my grandmother's very, very religious and his grandmother was very, very religious.
And so I think he had a hard time explaining to them.
And it did come up with my grandma.
We went to visit when my grandfather passed away.
And at that point I had had my eldest son and literally while we're like,
at the velorio for my grandpa, my grandpa pulled my dad aside and was like, she has to baptize her child.
Like, you can't.
How is this working?
Like, how are you allowing for this to happen?
Which was really interesting because I was like, oh, my grandfather just passed away.
Like, is this the time?
Like, is this the time?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's always the time, though, for the abuelas.
You know, they're like, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
To shame you.
Yeah.
But he's come around.
He lives outside of Rosarito right now, but he sent us a text to wish us happy Hanukkah.
And I was like, oh, that's great.
That is.
The NFL football game reminded him that it was the first night of Hanukkah.
But I was like, you know what?
I'll take it.
I'll take it.
It's so fascinating.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that was interesting.
And it's been interesting to like be around family or go back to Mexico and be like, here are your Jewish cousins.
Like, here we come.
Because I feel like there's such, there's not much knowledge around Judaism.
I'm pretty sure I'm the first Jewish person that like my cousins or my aunts and uncles met.
And it's always interesting because we went, there was like, you know, there was a Jew that used to live in this town.
And like, it's always like this like rumor or mysterious thing.
And I feel like that's that from my family has been what it feels like of like, this is a thing.
This is such a mystery.
And like, what do you know now?
Or like, what is this?
What is this about?
Yeah.
So that's been interesting.
It's also interesting because as a person of color, there aren't many of us.
There's more now.
I just went to, last night I was at a Jews of color Hanukkah party, which was great because a lot of brown and black faces and that's rare to find.
But when I converted the rabbi,
told me like this is going to be difficult because it is about community but you might not see yourself in the community that you're going to be going into and so kind of like a heads up like this is this might be a struggle on that level um and he introduced me to a peruvian student who also wanted to convert so we kind of had a connection because he i think he
Because culturally Judaism is so rich, I think he recognized, hey, you need to also engage with people in your culture or on the periphery of your culture to have that connection.
So it was difficult to show up at synagogue and folks to be like, what are you doing here?
What are you doing here?
Yeah.
you know, or thinking that I'm there for a friend's bar or bat mitzvah.
And they'd be like, no, like, I'm a congregant here.
Like, I have a membership to this congregation.
And then I married a Black Jew.
And that became exponentially harder.
Because if we go to these things, we roll up as five brown people.
Wow.
And that's not as common.
Although it is changing.
And yesterday gave me some hope because it's like, oh, there's 10 years ago or 15 years ago when I went to like Jews of color Hanukkah, it was a few of us.
But yesterday it was like 30 people.
Wow.
Um, it's a, that's such a, again, a fascinating story.
And I, I I'm, it feels really nice.
At least what I'm hearing that the rabbi kind of had the foresight enough to like, tell you like, Hey, this is going to be not just because of the conversion part, but because you are a woman of color and that is going to add another layer.
Like, I think that's so powerful for him to like be upfront with you about that.
He was amazing.
And all of this happening now has really made me look back and be so grateful that he was the rabbi that I approached because he's the one that gave me context for what's happening now in a way that I don't know that I would have had otherwise.
had I gone a different route.
I mean, he's the one that introduced me to most of the books that I've been sharing on Instagram, um, particularly around Israel as an ethno state.
Um, he's the one that really introduced this idea of Judaism, not being biological, um, and really think about thinking about it as a culture and as a religion, as a faith, as a practice, um, but not being completely sold or buying into, um,
it being strictly an ethnicity that you can only belong to biologically.
And I don't know if he did that cause I was like converting, but I feel like that's his general stance.
He just did a teaching that I missed because I had to take my kid to the doctor, but a friend of mine who went,
sent me a clip of the transcript.
And I mean, he still holds up.
He's retired now as a rabbi, but he said something like, we really have to consider the text as basically historical or like a suggestion.
He said something like, we need to be able to
take what applies now and be willing to grow past what doesn't and i was like yeah i'm that sounds that tracks that sounds like the man that i spoke to
Yeah, it's so, I mean, again, in our conversations and DMs, I'm always trying to, like I was telling Christina earlier, I was, as somebody who's not really familiar with the history of the Middle East specifically, but I am familiar with the history of colonization generally, right?
Like I understand it as a concept, but hearing so much opposing rhetoric, it was really hard for me to like,
yeah like why does the colonization right as the concept apply and um and i i it was so helpful to kind of hear that so i was always like taking what you were posting or you were saying and like applying it to what i do know right and so again it it's it's ring so like so i was all i was raised catholic and um you know again and christina raised fundamental christian
So, you know, this idea of the Bible and this doctrine and and, you know, I've always said for a very long time, like we have to recognize that the Bible was written by men in a very particular time within a very particular historical context.
Right.
And people want to say, oh, but it's.
you know, the word of God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, yeah, but you still have to like understand the context that it was written for.
And it was never meant to apply in perpetuity in the very same way.
Right.
And so again, it's like, how can we take what serves us, right.
Or, or, or modify it.
Right.
Like, and still hold on to, you know,
the context.
Anyway, these are like larger questions around like Christian doctrine, but, but again, to have that kind of doctrine, you know, that's within.
To say like, we're still doing what the Bible says.
We're just not doing it the way the Bible says it.
We're not following it by the letter because there's a lot of things that they don't apply anymore.
We have evolved as a society in a way where we cannot implement what these things say.
Right.
And I think I would say, I mean, for me as a Catholic, I would say, and I use Catholic very loosely, Mexican Catholic, cultural Catholic.
But like, I would say Jesus would never want us to, you know, never meant it to follow like that way.
Right.
Like if we, you know, I always say like,
I don't know what Bible y'all were reading.
Cause when I left Catholic school, I came out with like, Jesus was a revolutionary, right?
He was a social justice warrior out there doing some shit.
And so it's always so confusing for me when people come up with these other ideas of Jesus.
I'm like, I don't know what y'all, what Bible y'all were reading.
Cause that's not how I understood him, you know?
Yeah.
So again, like making those comparisons to like, how do we take religious doctrine and like meet the moment, you know?
Yeah.
It's, it's crazy.
Cause one of the things that also kind of pushed me towards the conversion is there's this push in Judaism to continually question.
And I think Jesus might've been the best Jew in that sense of like, he didn't take it at face value and was like, why does this have to be this way?
Yeah.
And so I appreciate an approach to studying Torah or the Bible or the Old Testament with questions.
I mean, that Jewish tradition is that.
There are literal books that rabbinical students or just students of the Torah have where you'll open up the pages of the Torah and all around it will be questions from rabbis from centuries.
And
that's what you're supposed to do.
Like you're supposed to reread it and go, wait a minute.
Actually, now that I'm reading this for the 500th time, these two words together maybe have me thinking about the entire sentence very differently and continually analyzing it.
Um,
The thing about Judaism, though, is that like any other religion, there's a spectrum, right?
There's fundamentalism, and then there's more open reform, reconstructionist, that none of us interpret it the same.
And that's kind of the thing that I have struggled with the most during this time, because the people with the loudest voice right now, particularly in the state of Israel, are very right-wing fundamentalists.
And they interpret Judaism and they interpret the Torah in a way that most of the people I know do not or would not.
Can I ask, you know, I always love the Midrash tradition within Judaism.
It's something that I use in my classes for women's studies, you know, for students.
I think it's helpful for them to say, you can take this passage and you can speak into more life into it, you know, that maybe wasn't there in the original.
within like fundamentalist Israeli belief systems, is Midrash honored in those spaces or?
By men.
Interesting.
Tell me more.
I'm like, what is this?
I'm like, I've never heard.
What is Midrash?
So it's very, okay.
So Judaism in general is very educational.
And like when I was really going to synagogue, I would go, there's various services that you could attend to, right?
And the one that I was going to,
would encourage us going to view a passage and then speak to it, right?
Like we're also- Like testimony.
Yeah.
Not really testimonial, like analysis, really.
Oh, analysis.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like feminist midrash traditions is what I'm more familiar with just through my study, but they would speak to like passages in the Torah and the Old Testament that like have like speak to like a woman was there and this is her name and her story is that she was, you know,
a victim of certain things.
And then they would write a whole story about her life, you know, that predates that, that gives context to this patriarchal telling of her story.
I don't know if that is true midrash tradition, but.
Yeah.
I mean, it basically, it is like extrapolating, right?
Like really expanding the text.
I don't know much about,
orthodox tradition.
But what I do know is that they don't allow women to do that.
They don't allow women to learn and study Torah in that way.
I've been to one orthodox service and had to sit on the opposite side.
And it was, the mood was very different because it was very like, oh, we got to get out of here because we have to make sure that
The Shabbat meal is ready for like lunch when I come out.
So it's not as engaging.
Definitely in the reform, I think, and even conservative, because when I was more religious, I was conservative.
That's definitely encouraged.
That's something that I did with Rabbi Siedlerfeller at UCLA was really look at a lot of texts, not just from the Torah, but really many outside religions.
of the Torah, like contemporary texts to the Torah, but to do that kind of extrapolation and that storytelling and also analyzing it of being like, what is the bigger story here?
What story can I pull from it that is going to separate it, but still kind of link to it.
And that just kind of depends on where you fall on the spectrum because it happens at synagogues mostly.
I think I love it.
I think there's just resonance within Catholicism and within... I'm like, yeah, that tracks that women are not allowed to do those things, right?
That tracks.
In certain spaces or not questioned in certain spaces.
And then in other spaces, there being like that freedom.
You know, I think, Renee, when you talk about your teachers, I just think, oh, they were so...
Yeah, I'm similar to you, like in Catholicism, I mean, Catholicism, I think most people would say, you know, it's a very conservative religion.
And I feel so grateful because I went to 12 years of Catholic school.
And in high school, particularly, I had most of my religion teachers were like, yeah, you need to ask questions, you know, and they were coming from the perspective of like, it actually deepens your faith when you are allowed to ask questions.
Yeah.
And so I took that and ran with it.
Right.
Like and my even the priests who, you know, were my religion teachers were very much involved in on the ground social justice efforts.
And so I just always had this very I think that like on the ground understanding of like the way Catholicism lives and breathes or is meant to live and breathe versus like.
This is what the Bible says and we have to like live by this.
And I think it's, I was lucky, you know, in the time and place that I was, because I don't know if those spaces are still like that, you know, but, you know, the teachers that I had, you know, would be considered liberal, like very liberal Catholics.
Right.
And so, yeah, I was I felt I very much feel like my practice of faith is so grounded in a Jesus centered idea of Catholicism, because, again, like he was all about, you know, the dear neighbor.
Like these were like things that my Catholic school said, like the dear neighbor and like caring for others and understand and like, you know, looking at systems.
All Jewish values.
I'm like, yeah, so it's so interesting.
And I think another thing that I feel our conversations have been so, really our conversations have been so validating for me because I'm like, what is this?
I think when everything kind of first happened, especially online, you know, especially on social media, and you were seeing these like dichotomous, very binary conversations,
rhetoric, right?
Like it's either this or nothing or this or nothing.
And I was like, whoa, like I just felt very like, well, this doesn't really feel good.
And this doesn't feel good.
And like, am I, you know, I almost felt like, am I abandoning my values?
Because, you know, there was just a lot of like internal like questioning and stuff.
And I think that's something that we've been
trying to like validate for each other like yeah this is a there's a lot of binary thinking yeah you know happening um so I don't know if you want to like speak to that or yeah what yeah I mean as a Jew by choice and as a person of color to be in it um my my friend Eric Green at this party yesterday was like we are as Jews of color um yes and like we represent that like
It's not either, it's not either or like we, we are both and we don't need to separate our identities in any way, in any space that we are.
And that's kind of what felt like was happening in the early days, the early days, right after October 7th, the early days of this, it just feels like it's been going on for too long.
That it was, well, you got to pick one, like either you're,
fully Jewish and by fully Jewish, we mean all of a sudden everyone was like halachically.
So like, that's Jewish law.
Like that's how we're defining Jews.
So I saw people coming out and going, well, you're not a real Jew because you're talking number one against Israel, but number two, your mom's not Jewish.
So get out of the conversation.
Or you didn't convert Orthodox.
So you're not part of the conversation.
So it became this really strange conversation.
for me, positioned to be and to be like, wait a minute, what?
A lot of you I've just spent like holidays with.
I've just done Jewish things with.
And now all of a sudden we're like segregating ourselves in this way of you either stand with Israel and also your mom has to be Jewish or you don't belong.
And that felt, I mean, I think I got
I think when I first started really talking about it, it was shock in a way of seeing some people revert to this kind of separatist thinking and then really stick in that binary of we can't hold two truths.
And so again, like being a person of color, being married, my husband is African-American.
He's a patrilineal Jew, meaning that his father's Jewish, his mother's not.
And so it just really felt like all of these comments were negating our Jewish existence.
It was silencing our voice or not even considering that we had a voice.
In general, the Jewish narrative for me is very Ashkenormative, like people assume Jewishness is Ashkenazi and
really Ashkenazi is like the smallest percent of the global Jewish population, but it holds ground because of atrocities that happened because of the Holocaust.
But it really felt like that trauma and that pain
force people to go to their like most basic definition of Jewishness.
So many other experiences, which then makes it even harder to include outside or outside opinion.
Like non-Jewish.
Non-Jewish.
Yeah.
It makes it extra, extra difficult.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's been really hard to be, the binary just got, like the line was sharpened.
It was made so, so thick that I still struggle with it.
It's still really difficult to find how to speak to people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you, I mean, do you feel comfortable like giving examples of some of this binary idea or thought that you're witnessing?
I mean, cause I, I know I feel as somebody who's not Jewish, but has, is somebody who, I mean, we're both, you know, Christine and I are both like activists.
We're in activist circles all the time and,
And I felt like, and I think this is very scary to say, but I feel like even there, there can tend to be binary thinking as well.
And that's been really hard for me to feel like on the other side, I was also expected to kind of make this choice.
And meanwhile, I,
you know, I had Jewish people in my life who, you know, and it was, and so it was, it felt very disorienting, you know, again, like you said, in those early days where I was like, what, you know, 100% already existing as a Jew of color in activist spaces.
It's awkward.
There is a lot of latent antisemitism that people don't really want to talk about.
And part of that difficulty right now has been going, hey, again, both and these things can be true and be someone who's an activist and not consider yourself an anti-Semite and that you're not like signing up with the KKK.
But also because Jewishness is such a mystery to so many folks of color, there are things that you might have bought into that make you
anti-Semitic adjacent, which is basically anti-Semitic.
And that's been hard to talk about and hard to discuss, particularly in planning around
supporting Palestine and being the only Jew in the room, it gets very complicated when people, like an experience that I've had recently with somebody, I said something about, hey, we have to kind of consider everything, right?
Like people did die.
There are things happening to Jews.
I'm a Jew and I'm frightened, you know, like there's things that are scary about being in the world.
And I secretly got called a Zionist.
I was like, that's a gigantic leap that kind of ignores my own personal truth and lumps it in with a larger movement.
And honestly, that felt very anti-Semitic because it felt like,
as a Jew, I can't be anything else except a Zionist.
Yeah.
You know, I'm just thinking about your, this visual activism that you, you know, spoke at the beginning and it's clear.
And when I was looking at your Instagram, I thought you're just like a beautiful visual artist.
And also I think it's clear that just you being who you are within both Jewish spaces and BIPOC spaces is also like a visual activism too.
Like, and just want to recognize like all the energy.
Yeah.
Because I hear you navigating these spaces and wanting to be honored for your sacred self, like who you are, your full self.
And we very much resonate with being in spaces that don't want part of us to exist.
You know?
Yeah.
We always say we're too academic for some spaces and not academic enough for academia.
And so, I mean, and not, that's not at the same level, but it's just that feeling of like, we kind of live in the borderlands.
Yeah.
Right.
Of so many things.
And, and I, and I think even as women's studies professors, we're always like at the end of the day, what feminism is about is breaking with all binaries, right?
Like the gender binary, right?
Like,
all binaries right all things that have us choosing one or the other and allowing so much you know gray area but um yeah I think that is that's a it's a really tough thing I imagine for you to feel that and I think that is yeah that's that's that was you know when I after like
you know, how, how many months are we in now?
Like three months almost like into this.
And at the very beginning, my intuition was like, wait, I don't know.
Like this doesn't feel right.
And I think over the course of our conversations, I was like, Oh, my intuition was right.
Yeah.
It's not binary.
It's not, you know, either or.
And, and I think it's, and something I remember you saying to in our DMs, like everyone's in their trauma response, right?
Like everybody's just.
This has triggered everybody on the most like fundamental scale, like whatever your like deepest, biggest trauma is that has been ripped open.
because everyone is having to contend with ideas of identity and who am I and what am I?
And we're already kind of in a shitty place coming into it, honestly, like existential, existential.
And then, so to really put people in this like binary environment,
paradigm and having to have people choose I think everyone's just kind of like I don't I don't know I don't know who I am and oh maybe I do know who I am and so this one little part of me that has meant so much to me because I've seen a lot of Jews who aren't religious who don't normally like go out in the world like
being like, I'm a Jew, I'm a Jew as their primary identity, all of a sudden be like, wait a minute, this is now awakening something in me because I remember my grandma and I remember being at synagogue when I was little.
And so now this little kernel of connection that I have in my normal life has like popped into this like,
ginormous thing and now i have to hold on to that because it feels threatening not to and that's never gonna allow for any sort of conversation because if you multiply that by all of these people where everyone is just holding on to that one kernel and be like i'm not gonna let go you can't force me then you can't have conversations yeah in both spaces that's sort of what it's felt like um
in some Jewish spaces, no one really wants to talk about it.
I think some of us are just kind of like, okay, things are happening and it's scary, but I'm not gonna go there.
And in non-Jewish spaces, it's been difficult because people are rightfully so very, very, very focused on Palestine and freedom, but maybe blinded by what that means for other folks
um and not just jews but you know there's no i've been having a lot of conversations around collective liberation and like really talking about like what does this mean across the board like how do we hold both because there are a lot of places and a lot of people who have suffered as a result of um colonialism that
we need to kind of address collectively if we're going to be serious about freeing Palestine.
I'm like, tell us more about that.
I just, I just don't think, and this is, this, this is one of those things I'm like nervous to talk about, but like, I don't, I, I personally do not think that
People who choose to participate in the settler colonialism of the United States on a day to day basis are going to be able to fully help and sustain a free Palestine.
I don't think that it can.
I don't think it works.
Um, and I don't want to be like bad news bears, but like, I don't, yeah.
I mean, I don't even, is that very controversial to say?
I mean, cause what I hear you saying is that there's this, um, there's this like, oh, that something bad and crazy is happening over there.
We're all good over here because the United States is, you know, whatever.
Um,
And rather than saying, like, what's happening over there is actually what's happening here.
And if we're going to address it there, we have to address it here and vice versa.
Yeah.
And it has to be like kind of two two trains on the same track.
But I'm telling people of like.
keep a hundred percent.
This train to free Palestine has to keep moving forward.
We all have to be on there, but some of us also have to be on the train over here going, Hey, the United turtle Island.
Yeah.
Free turtle Island.
The United States is directly responsible for what is happening in Palestine without what happens in the United States to have permission to do what happens in Palestine and
we and that's and that's not even considering like other imperialist us things, but like, really being like, what
What are we going to do?
Because what happens when we free Palestine?
Is the United States no longer going to be a settler colonial state?
Are we not going to fund wars elsewhere?
How are we going to deal with refugees?
Is the United States going to help deal with refugees?
Because the United States doesn't like refugees.
How is that going to happen?
And maybe it's too soon.
My husband was like, no one's ready to talk about this.
I was like, I am.
I'm ready.
Yeah.
I mean, I've been of the- Oh, we're right.
The systemic issues, the system, we are, you have other people if you're ready.
I've been saying this from the beginning.
I think that, I mean, I think a lot of people have been saying this at the beginning that everybody has their roles.
Like we've been looking at the work of Deepa Veyar who, she has a book, Social Change Ecosystem.
And, you know, she like names all these different roles that people take in the ecosystem of like social justice, right?
And, you know, and that there's the front liners and the disruptors, right?
Like we often think of somebody like Leslie, right?
Of Latinx parenting.
Like she's really out there putting, literally putting her life on the line in so many ways.
And I'm like, you go girl, right?
Like.
You know, I'm in here like, you know, more power to you.
And that's not me.
That's not necessarily my role.
And, you know, so my role is something else.
And I think that we have to look at it as a multi-pronged
approach right revolution is not going to happen just with the front liners because one that's not sustainable 100 right and two like um that's not the only method right to like change things right we need to have like all these other and i think you and i have talked about that too right like this is where we come in right and we can i just told my dad because
He sent me the thing about the protesters on the 110.
Oh yeah.
Cause I've been helping organize some things.
And I think he was concerned cause like we both are under, I mean, we're, we're naturalized citizens.
So it just feels very conditional.
And anytime that I start, he starts seeing me get really crazy on Instagram.
He's like,
are you being careful?
And he messaged me and I was like, dad, you have to understand like my role in the, in the revolution is not the frontline.
Like it's going to be behind the scenes.
It's going to be education.
I don't know that it appeased him.
Cause he was like, they'll still find you.
My mom has always been the same since the very beginning when I was like, oh, I'm going to go get a master's in, you know, Chicano, Chicana studies, you know, and my
you know, my dad who grew up in downtown LA was like, you know, his idea was like, we got out of the hood so that you didn't have, you know, and here I was like going and doing all these things in East LA, right.
Like doing like a lot of activist work.
Um, and, and my mom, you know, she, I think right now knowing how social media works, she's, she is very concerned, you know, for like, what does that look like for you?
Um, but I've always been like, I, if,
To not do something is to deny a part of who I am.
And so I have to step up in the way.
And so she is a little like, I know this is what you have to do.
And I know you're an educator.
And I know that that's going to be the way.
And again, and still scared.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think it's needed.
And that's kind of where I found myself to be like, how do I...
Cause here's how I see it too.
If my family is still a shock to people, if it's still like what there's black Jews and Mexican Jews, then there's still enough constructs that freedom can't happen.
And so if I'm, and, and, and I'm glad Christina that like, it makes me feel good that you mentioned that like the showing up part, I think for my family, that's a really big thing.
My husband does a lot of work in Jewish communities talking about
Jewish racism and like has done it for years.
He shows up to synagogues to talk about inclusion and why you should make your Brown congregants feel more welcome.
So we're already in that world.
And so I am trying to find like, how do we connect that to this?
And I, that's what I kind of landed on.
I was like, if this construct is,
is still so solid that I can't just exist as a Jewish person.
Like I have to go to a Jews of color Hanukkah in order to feel welcome.
I can't just go to like a Hanukkah party and feel seen, then we can't obtain freedom.
It's not even possible.
And that's where I have been able to like draw, like connect the dots in so many ways, you know, because for me, my understanding of colonialism, colonization has always been more than just like land, right?
Like the taking of land, but it's ideological, right?
This idea like,
you know, in the context of being Mexican, right, like, you know, Europeans not just coming in and taking the land and like killing off half the people, but then convincing, right, the indigenous people that this is their what they're being saved or whatever it is.
And so then, you know, and even looking at so I grew up in Rivera,
Christina grew up in Whittier.
Like we grew up in what, especially at the time we're considered like Mexican suburbs, right?
So there's this like upward mobility kind of thing and upward mobility comes assimilation, like all these different things.
And so as if those things are going to mean freedom, right?
As if those things are going to mean all kinds of things.
And which we know that it isn't, right?
We know that at the end-
Alive.
Yeah.
And so to me, it's like the fact that they, you know, and of course, I always acknowledge that I'm, you know, green eyes, right?
Like I'm a white passing, right?
Latina.
But most of my family isn't.
And so, you know, at the end of the day, they're still going to be reduced to the color of their skin, right?
And so, but that they've internalized this notion of colonialism that they see the United States as a nation state as like their salvation, right?
That's colonialism, right?
And the belief in these constructs.
right like it's this weird thing like I've witnessed you know is the belief in these constructs to the point where I've had family say and I have family in El Paso right in Texas who literally you can drive down the street and you know Juarez is over there and El Paso is there and they'll say los del otro lado and I'm like homie it's like right there those are your neighbors right like as a way to like yeah
Yeah, you can literally- Runs right next to it.
Yeah, and they want to somehow separate themselves, right?
Like we're Americans, right?
So simultaneously hold this like construct of Mexicans, but then separate themselves from it and say, oh, I'm not Mexican, I'm human, or I'm American, right?
And I'm like-
It's too close.
So you're denying the reality of your lived experience, number one, and then trying to separate yourself from it whilst upholding all of it to begin with, right?
This idea of assimilation.
And so we end up in this cycle of... It's such a like... It's something that I've struggled with a lot because...
I was born a Mexican national and then gave up my citizenship for survival essentially here because life wouldn't have been as easy.
My mom keeps telling me that I can go get my dual citizenship back.
But it's just like, ah, bureaucracy.
Totally.
I don't want to go.
I don't want to have to like go.
I hate going to the DMV.
It's a lot of paperwork.
My brother and I looked into it.
It's a lot of paperwork.
But it's always strange because like we talk about it here with our kids.
It's identity is the thing we're always talking about.
But I'm like, I don't what defines me as Mexican now, like my heritage is.
Like, what is it?
I don't even have cultural Catholicism to define my heritage now.
Like, can I still call myself Mexican?
Because that was my nationality.
And I still, I have incredible ties to it.
Like, I go back and I feel different.
It feels different.
like home in a way that I can't explain.
But that's also, I think speaks to the Mexican national mythology, right?
And then the, you know, the really at the end of the day, we're talking about nation states and the project.
of nation states right whether it be the united states israel or mexico right these are all nation states that had to at some point create mythologies right or create some unifying identity when we that can be very difficult to say okay if we don't have mexico as a nation state then what are we
Yeah.
Are we indigenous?
Are we European?
Especially we don't, even if like what, you know, I, in my family, like it's always very vague around indigeneity, like what specific, you know, indigeneity do we have?
And also if we, if, I mean, we have to have European in us or us, I wouldn't look this way, but like what European, like, we don't know, is it Spain?
Is it France?
Is it
you know who knows and it's and so it gets ancestry.com to help you figure that out and so it kind of becomes well what does it mean to be Mexican in Mexico what does it mean to be Mexican in the United States and how do those things and it's which again points to I think again the problem of nation states right and that problem of these like unifying myths yeah
Yeah.
And it's those myths, too.
Like when you talk about Israel, because another component to like my crazy identity is I could be an Israeli citizen.
I could have made that choice.
And it's very simple for me tomorrow to go, hey, actually, yeah, I am a Zionist.
But here's the thing, me and our children would get Israeli passports that said Jew, but my husband wouldn't because he's not matrilineally Jewish.
And it was encouraged, like after I converted, they're like, you should make Aliyah, which is like, go move to Israel, live in Israel for a little bit, like get connected really to the land, like go to the land of your people.
But it was also explained to me that it would be difficult because I'm brown.
And it wouldn't be a great entry.
And I have friends who are Black who have moved, some who have had better experiences than others, but it is a very racist society, despite how much they want to claim that they live with their Arab neighbors in peace and that they love Ethiopian Jews.
It's not fully true.
It's very much like the United States where it's this myth and this idea of like, it's a melting pot, right?
But it's, it's not, but wow.
It's because of the national myth that I have this ability as a former Mexican national to go, Hey, but I could go live in Israel tomorrow if I wanted.
I mean, I'm sure it wouldn't,
bureaucracy, but like, you know, it's still more possible for me than for my Palestinian friend to be able to move there.
I'm just learning so much.
It's hard.
It's, I mean, again, that's, at the very beginning of this, I even had to admit to my students, I'm like, I feel so ignorant because I just know nothing about the history of the region.
I think partly because it always feels so complicated, right?
It feels so contested.
It feels so, and so even just in this short time, like,
By no means have I really dug deep into the history, but even just a small little dive into it, it just rings so familiar, right?
And that's what I think people are missing.
They hold Israel as a very distinct, separate nation state, but I'm like, it's the same program.
It's the exact same program.
And that's the colonial part of it, right?
That it's the same...
program.
It's the same program.
And it doesn't make Jews any less to admit it because, I mean, but it's the same thing that happened here during BLM where you had a lot of white people being like, what?
Thomas Jefferson had slaves?
And we're like, yes, yes.
Thomas Jefferson wanted to ship all black people to Africa afterwards.
Like he, and people just were like,
Because we buy into that myth.
We buy into that.
Forefathers, right?
The American forefathers.
Freedom, liberty, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I think that, you know, it's interesting.
The other thing that we talked about the other day, you were like sending me like, did you see what happened with like ethnic studies?
And ethnic studies has always been such a contentious site, particularly, I mean, from the very beginning, there's a documentary called Precious Knowledge when one of the first high school ethnic studies programs in like the early, no, when was it like?
2008 or so.
And then it got outlawed because of the conservative takeover of the school board, blah, blah, blah.
And since then, right, there's been this, you know, trying to expand ethnic studies, you know, particularly in California, like into high schools and into colleges.
And so college now it's a requirement and a lot of high school colleges
school districts are making it a requirement.
And then it gets into the nitty gritty of like, okay, what's the curriculum going to look like?
And once the curriculum is presented, people get real shaky about that.
And I think, and we're seeing the pushback on a larger scale against like, you know, in Florida, there's this pushback against like African-American or AP African-American studies and, you know, a lot of like queer books and the banning of books and all of these things.
And, you know, under the guise of like,
you know I've heard people say things like well we don't want white kids to feel uncomfortable yeah we don't want them to feel bad and so I'm like this speaks to our larger general difficulty in holding
multiple truths right withholding the uncomfortableness of facing our history like the reality of our history and that it is so ugly and the only way we're ever going to change it is if we really look at it and it's
And it's hard.
And that's something I've really tried to have grace for in this moment is to think about like the moments in my life when I had to one face the reality of American history and be like, wait a minute, my people, you know, I'm not descendant of these American forefathers.
Right.
And in fact,
I have a much more complicated ancestral history.
And then also part of that is also looking at Catholicism and the Catholic churches as an institution, its involvement in colonization.
So two times that I've had to really be faced with these hard truths and be like, what does this mean to practice Catholicism when this is the history of Catholicism?
What does it mean to be an American citizen when this is the history of America?
Mind you, you know, I did these things in my 20s when there was not a lot at stake per se, right?
I wasn't under any kind of immediate threat.
And I had years to unpack this and to kind of reject things when I wanted to and to not reject things and
You know, there was a lot of and it took a really long time for me to come to a place where like, oh, my practice of Catholicism is rooted in this.
Right.
That's not rooted in the institution of the Catholic Church.
And, you know, I have no investment in any kind of patriotism whatsoever, but that doesn't mean I want to move.
you know, I want to go anywhere else.
I think that, you know, I still want to live on this land, but you know, these are, you know, anyway, so there's, I was able to do that, but that requires a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of commitment that I think that, like you said, that like rupture that,
wound is being blown open right now and um and generally we know that when those things like in blm i said i always tell my students this is why we're seeing a pushback right now because 2020 opened up the wound and people are like nope i don't want to deal with it i don't want to go to therapy i don't want to deal with that shit let's just push back and and call it
call that racism, right?
Call that, you know, anti-American, whatever it is, like weaponize all this terminology so that we don't have to really deal with the reality of our history.
And it's hard.
I mean, that's all I can ever say.
It's like, it's hard, but you know, I think those of us who have done that work on some level can be the ones to say, I know it's hard and I know we can do it.
Yeah.
for sure can i i just want to share you know like i think that our bodies our family stories are you know our visual act like leads to our visual activism activism it is like our gift right we can't we have to embody like the mestizaje like the mixture like because that's who we are you know um
So some of the, I think it's my body that saved me in part, you know, as well as like my family history from a culture that would want me to be binary because I'm not, you know, like I am a mixture of things.
And so I think those are the gifts that we bring to our community.
Yes, they were like tons of hard work, but it's almost like turning to the people who like embody that mixture that I think will be like,
you know, our future, you know?
Yeah.
I think this idea of like, I hear you saying our bodies, you know, I've always said I am quite literally the product of sexual violence, right?
Clearly some European ancestor, right?
Like clearly there's
a lot of you know i'm i am literally the product of colonization and what does that mean to like sit with that like right that if it were not for colonization i would exist but still be against colonization right like that's a lot but but quite literally our bodies our existence point to the necessity to like sift through that hard history because we have to you know
if we want to get to somewhere different, we have to like sift through that and then imagine something else, you know, that's not going to keep coming back into these like cycles of violence.
And that mixture is important.
I mean, we were actually just talking about this recently.
My husband's very optimistic that like in two generations, the mixtures are going to be so wild that like checking off a box is going to be impossible.
People are going to be checking out like 20 boxes and then it's going to throw them into chaos.
I'm not that optimistic but I do think that there is like I feel a responsibility with our children to be like hey you are these things like that's it period like you are a mixture of all of these things and you don't need to be either or you can live in your fullness and like hope that that passes it forward and so that they do show up in places um
You know, my daughter is much more, has more melanin than I do.
I've completely lost it.
I was nicknamed Prieta when I was a kid.
And then I'm like, I don't know where it went.
It's all gone.
Interesting.
I worked at USC for 10 years and that did it.
but she shows up with her like giant star of David and people, sometimes I'm like, I bet they think you're a Christian Zionist, but you know, like she walks into spaces looking very indigenous.
Yeah.
I meant to confess that, that that is the world that I grew up in.
That is part of it, you know?
So I've been saved by that from that world because of, you know, my body anyways.
Yes.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
But you know, I'm like, she has no, she, she doesn't think about it at all.
She was like, this is who I am.
Like, why would I not be?
And it's like the biggest freaking one.
I'm like, like, this is what you're choosing.
Yeah.
Aesthetics aside, like she's very proud of this star and like her, it's just, it's just who she is.
And I think the more that we have,
folks embodying all of that, the easier it might make it for other folks.
I do think though that like, we forget that Israel as a nation state is so young.
And I keep thinking like, imagine if we had come when like all of the settlers, like a hundred years, not even a hundred years in, what is it?
75?
I can't do math.
Yeah.
75 years in, in like the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
And we're like, Hey,
What you're doing is wrong.
You all are wrong and you need to leave.
They would have been like, but I'm fleeing religious persecution and I'm here to make a better life for myself.
Their minds would be blown.
And that's exactly what we're doing right now is telling a lot of people who have invested their identity and their
like reason to live comfortably.
Cause it's, it's, it's wrapped up in all that safety, right?
Like you're just, you're telling a whole group of people that the one place that was promised to them as safe is wrong and actually not safe.
And people just, it's too early people.
It's too early for anyone to process in 75 years, all of that.
Yeah.
And that but that keeps us then like in that binary.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's people are not ready for that conversation again, because I think there's an urgent sense of unsafety.
Right.
Like, you know, there there is a rise in anti-Semitism.
Right.
So people are.
in a fight or flight mode, and they're not going to be able to come to a conversation, you know, like that with any kind of open mindedness when they're just trying to, you know, stay safe, you know, wherever they're at.
So I have so much grace for that.
And I say, that's why those of us who are maybe are not, you know, under that kind of pressure can have those conversations and
And those of us that have had the luxury of learning about colonial systems and how it all impacts everything, that we could be the ones like, hey, I know it's early.
I know this is hard, but here are some examples.
Let's learn from these other places, you know?
Yeah.
to ease people in to that conversation in a way.
Because we have knowledge.
We have understanding.
We know what these systems are.
It's just getting it.
Yeah.
I think the difficulty there is, again, like we've said before, if we acknowledge it in one place, we have to really acknowledge it in all places.
And then that has us...
feeling unsafe everywhere you know what i mean like again you're like oh shit because it's like one of those things like once you see it you can't unsee it yeah and so once you're like oh shit yeah like maybe the project of nation states in general is really effed up then it has you opening and that's a lot to you know now we got to unpack all of it all of it you know and um
But again, it doesn't mean that we shy away from it.
It just means to recognize.
For me, it's meant to like just really lead with a lot of grace.
Yeah.
And a lot of empathy and open mindedness and to see that as part of my activism.
Right.
Like, yeah.
Again, when I see Leslie out there and she's like holding it down and I'm like, oh, but that's not like that's not my brand of activism.
and that's okay it's not just to say that that's it's to say like I'm gonna you do that I'm gonna be over here so that we're kind of coming at this from all ways you know yeah I know we need to wrap up but my last question are you know really is like how how do we talk to our children you know about how do you talk to you know your children about this and I honestly I think it actually is a whole other episode
So because of the work that we do, we are very open with our kids about, we like to joke that like the Silversteins always talk about race.
It's kind of a ongoing conversation.
We work from home and a lot of my husband's work is,
revolves around race and identity.
He's a writer and a performer.
So a lot of his pieces he'll perform at home or he'll try it at home.
And then obviously the kids are like around, sometimes he has a little bit of like discretion, obviously, like they can't hear everything, but we're very open in what they do here because we think that they need to start having that conversation early about constructs, about race, about knowing how to listen to folks.
about knowing that they can't make assumptions about how other people are going to act.
And we've honestly had to have conversations with them
because of experiences that they've had.
One of my daughter's friends who's Jewish, he's very conservative and they came over, they're like neighborhood friends.
And he came over with his older sister and his older sister was asking us all these questions.
And she saw my mother-in-law who's black and was like, wait a minute, how is that your grandma?
And
So my daughter was like, well, that's my dad's mom.
And this 12-year-old girl was like, oh, so your dad's not really Jewish.
And I had to be like, well, you know, in our household, this is how we identify it.
But then Lila, of course, after was like, what was that?
Like, what is that?
And so we've had to have these conversations and we've been very open with them because I think if you –
Obviously there's things children can't handle, right?
But if you really get down to their level, hear what they're saying, ask questions about how they identify, there's really concrete ways to talk about it.
And we're very open.
Like Lila is much darker than her brothers.
And we acknowledge that she's going to live a different reality and
Our oldest can kind of pass.
People usually think he's Middle Eastern.
And so he can navigate into spaces that she can't.
And so we're open.
Our youngest has blonde hair, basically.
Um, go figure.
Genetics are so fascinating.
So wild.
We, it was another topic, like how mixed our children are, you know, and how that plays a part in this conversation too, as we lead into the future, you know, with them.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, I'm, I mean, we're open and we mostly, I ask them questions like, have you heard anything that you're hearing?
Um, our oldest takes Arabic.
And so I'm like, how's that going?
And let them lead.
Yeah, we generally just don't shy away from it or don't feel like we have to protect them because they live in the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's, I similarly, my oldest is darker than both me and my, I mean, you know, more melanin, right.
Than me and my husband, but like my color hair.
So it's kind of this, like, I always say in the summer, he just turns one color, like his hair and his skin are in one color.
And then my little one is super white passing, right?
Like this little like skater kid.
Right.
um and so yeah we you know similarly we kind of have to have conversations and and it's it's you know we've I've tried to kind of and I'll lead with questions and also like do you have any questions right like trying to be like what is it you know and most of the time you know my kids are very like um they don't care about anything right like they're just so focused on like let's play or you know their toys but it's still like having like consistent I always say like really short and sweet
consistently is what is helpful, you know?
Cause I also am like, I don't want to get too academic with them either.
Right.
And be like, let me bust out this PowerPoint on like scientific racism.
Right.
Like I'm not going to go there, but also I should stop doing that.
You have a 12 year old.
So I think maybe a 12 year old might, you know, have more capacity for that, but definitely my eight year old.
Yeah.
but you know what i will thank my mexican heritage for opening up conversations because thank you mexican colorism i've had to tell my children like my mom calls my eldest and then the little one and i'm like do not i suffered from that like don't create the separation don't make it seem like they are different
or one is better, you know?
And she says it lovingly, but I'm like, we are continuing to perpetuate these ideas.
Yeah.
I've had to do it with my mom in the summer.
She's like, oh, I'm getting too dark.
Yes.
And I'm like, oh, mom, please don't say that.
And she's like, okay, I'm getting burnt.
Okay, fine.
But you know what I mean?
It's like when she says too dark, I'm like... And I try to do it because I don't know if she says it around the kids when I'm not there because she watches my kids a lot.
So I say it so that my kids can hear me say that so that they know that I'm interrupting that and then...
you know hopefully either that gives them the ability to interrupt that when they see it or to at least know cognitively yeah that's not you know we're not down with that but yeah anyway yeah we can go on and on but we do want to wrap up and thank you so much thank you for inviting me yeah and tell um our listeners where they can find you you all you know yeah yeah
Yeah, I'm on Instagram at the Sinsilver.
So my project that I'm working on, I have an Instagram, it's birth underscore in the frame.
And it's really looking at, again, the visual culture of birth photography, particularly around black and brown birthing bodies and how they have been portrayed visually historically and how birth photography might empower people
visual archive going forward to change maternal health outcomes.
But I've been so caught up in Israel Palestine that that Instagram is being pushed aside.
Sometimes we gotta like, this is so beautiful.
I see Hawk here.
Like this is so lovely.
Yeah.
Debbie Allen.
So fun.
Wasn't Debbie Ellen your midwife, Christina?
No, Rashaw.
But I don't know if Rashaw's in LA anymore.
I think she's, but yeah, the Black midwife was my midwife.
Yeah, it's been great.
I love it.
I'm going to get back to it.
I'm supposed to write a paper for the spring.
We'll see where we are.
Here we are.
But yeah, that's really where I'm at.
I do a lot of work at Sovereign LA, which is an intersectional healing justice center.
I don't know when this is going to air, but we have those monthly community and conversations.
The one for this month is on healing justice and how to intervene and
on generational trauma to help activism continue.
So we usually pick a book and have somebody from the community come talk to us about their work in relation to the book that we've read, kind of use it as like an intro or an entry point.
into the conversation.
And so, yeah, that's basically what I do.
Love it, love it.
Thank you so much for being here.
This feels, it just feels so wonderful.
Thank you.
Yeah, I really appreciate the invite.
This was great.
Yeah.
This is definitely, again, we were, we've always been like, how are we going to, you know, we have a platform and how are we going to use our platform in this moment, you know, but that also in a way that feels like organic to, you know, our work.
And so I think it's, it was creative, you know, centering.
Thank you.
