This post is part of a Nat. Brut series in which feminist writers, artists, and activists discuss people, publications, or organizations who are working toward inclusivity. Today, Mónica Teresa Ortiz, Poetry Editor of Raspa Magazine, shares her choices.
Tina Vásquez, Los Angeles
If you check out Tina Vásquez on Instagram, you would never know Vásquez is a serious journalist. Her photos make me salivate. The majority of uploads consist of mouth watering dishes that Vásquez concocts with various items purchased at the 99 Cents Store or grows in her garden. Using her creativity, she plates food and captions photos like nobody’s business. But if you want more feminism than food porn, check Vásquez out on Twitter (@TheTinaVasquez) and you will discover one of the sharpest wits in the Feminist and cultural game.
A Los Angeles based freelance writer, Vásquez is not afraid to take on anybody in the name of justice. A former VONA fellow, Vásquez co-authors the graphic series “Liberty for All” with fellow queer artist Julio Salgado. A contributor to several Feminist blogs, including Everyday Feminism and Bitch Magazine, Vásquez penned an article in February 2014 called “It’s Time to End the Long History of Feminism Failing Transgender Women” in which Vásquez used her formidable journalistic skill to throw major shade onto Feminists who dismiss the experiences of Trans Women.
“…Vásquez is not afraid to take on anybody in the name of justice.”
I became familiar with Vásquez when she served as my editor for a few pieces I wrote that were published on Mia McKenzie’s blog Black Girl Dangerous. Ever since then, I have had a serious writer’s crush on Vásquez. Her next project focuses on the importance of Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement’s co-founder Jennicet Gutiérrez speaking out at an LGTBQ White House event just prior to the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage It also examines how ICE is issuing new guidelines for “handling” trans detainees, as well as discussing abuses and mistreatment of undocumented trans people — and Trans women especially — face in detention facilities.
The Tina Vásquez is somebody ya’ll need to check out.
Darkmatter, New York City
The Transcending Gender Project
Darkmatter should not be a secret. Like at all. To no one. But they were to me, until last year, when a friend introduced me their work. As a poet, as a Queer, as a human being who has the privilege to read, I have consistently fallen in love multiples times with words that spill from Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian. A Trans South Asian performance art duo based out of New York City, they met at Stanford and decided to tour together and perform. What do I like most about them — besides their engagement between politics and poetry? Their honesty about the process and commitment towards liberation: “We are always learning and growing on how to do our work more responsibly and ethically. Sometimes we look back at things we used to write and believe and think AWKWARD. But we recognize that liberation is a process, and we commit ourselves to learning more and trying harder!” We all can learn more and try harder too. To book a performance, email them: info@darkmatterpoetry.com.
Juliana Huxtable, New York City
A hot August night. Bottomless mimosas. Downtown on Dirty Sixth. Three super talented DJ’s from all around Texas mixing sets like we ain’t seen before in the so-called liberal bastion of the Lone Star State (p.s. Austin is the most economically segregated city in the country). Is all that the formula for how I ended up eating a cheeseburger and fries at Whataburger at 3 am?
Seriously though, downtown Austin, Texas club the Vulcan Gas Company brought together local Queer Black Art collective House of Shakur DJ’s Qiana Kitt (Philadelphia/Austin) and Adzua Gette (Dallas) to open up the dance floor for another Texan, New York based DJ poet artist model does it all, the incomparable Juliana Huxtable.
“[She is] a true artist at the intersection between art and politics.”
Born in Bryan-College Station, Huxtable is an alum of Bard College, and changed her surname because, as she said, “Huxtable is the surname that was gifted to me by my house (non-biological queer family). My imagination has a wounded attachment to the fantasies of a Black American aristocracy — the collective energy of post-civil rights era Black youth who had been gifted a sense of entitlement to ascend into the American middle and upper-middle class….I am a product of the contemporary economic reality and am witnessing the financial and aspirational foundations for those fantasies rapidly decline and decay. There’s an audacity in claiming the name, and it has animated in my work and self a sense of regality. Much of what I fear as someone who is transitioning is being disenfranchised of what most people take for granted — desirability, respectability, employability, safety, etc. My name is my armor and it’s an agency to create myself in the image I see fit. It’s an insistence on the validity of my claim to those previously listed rights, and its a vessel that liberates my creative energies from the burden of a misgendered past.”
Huxtable, a member of House of Ladosha, co-founded weekly party #ShockValueNYC, and was featured as a statue in the New Museum’s Triennial in 2015. Profiled in a Vice article entitled “Artist Juliana Huxtable’s Bold Artistic Vision,” she is not just a downtown “It” girl, not just a 3-D scanned plastic cast goddess by Frank Benson, not just a DJ weaving her poetry into her sets, but a true artist at the intersection between art and politics, all the while challenging binaries and beliefs about what art really is and what it can be. And also, mixing the best dance party I’ve ever been to (and unicorns dance more often than I do).
Mónica Teresa Ortiz was born and raised in Texas. Her work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Sinister Wisdom, Huizache, Pilgrimage Magazine, Paso del Rio Grande del Norte, Borderlands, As/US, The Texas Observer, Autostraddle, and Black Girl Dangerous. A two-time Andres Montoya Letras Latinxs Poetry prize finalist, Ortiz is the Poetry Editor for Raspa Magazine, a Queer Latinx literary art journal. Follow her on Instagram (elgallosalvaje) or on Twitter (@citlallifalling).
Nat. Brut is a biannual journal of art and literature that aims to advance equality and inclusivity in all creative fields. To learn more about us, or to order a copy of our latest issue, visit us online!
