a MeXicana

a mujer sin país.

a countryless woman,

born in Mexico, raised en Nueva York, 

grown in the empire. 

my tongue is sliced in Spanglish.   

mestizaje is the wound, 

mexicanidad an aching scar, 

and unforgetting our ointment.

ni de aqui, ni de alla.

a shadow here, a ghost there,

an alien everywhere, and a citizen of nowhere.

no, I am a ray of light, piercing through everything. 

I belong to no state and no nation,

to no boss and no ivory tower,

to no church and no man, 

to no gender roles and no papers. 

I belong to myself and my mother.

a la madre tierra and my community, 

the dispossessed, deported, disappeared.

a nuestro dolor y a nuestro canto,

to our love and our labor and to our liberation. 

I belong to history.

I belong in the present 

and to the future!

Artist Statement: 

I came to Xicana feminist politics through Ana Castillo’s collection of political essays on Chicana women’s history and activism. I was a 19 year-old undocumented Mexican woman of indigenous and mestizo roots. It was like holding a mirror to myself, and what it’s like to grow up a poor, brown woman who did not fit into traditional Mexican culture or US white supremacist norms. I was drawn to the anti-capitalist perspective of Xicana politics which was influenced by the Marxist, Chicanx, and Black Feminist thought.

Today, Mexicans are grappling with racist (and historical) violence, in the form of hate crimes, discrimination, and police and migrant enforcement targeting our communities across the US. Thousands of young, radicalizing, feminist Mexican and Mexican American women have embraced the Xicana identity and are challenging racism and sexism within and against our communities — while also trying to build solidarity with Black, indigenous and other oppressed communities. I wrote this to remind myself that political identities can connect us to our history and to inspire a better future, and that to be a Xicana is to be a political and critical feminist chingona.