Evidences

I became acquainted with Mia Mingus today, a fellow Frida Kahlo admirer. Frida Kahlo's birthday was yesterday, July 6th. While acknowledging Kahlo's birthday via my Facebook friend and fellow librarian, Isabel Espinal, I learned who Mingus is, and boy am I glad.

Mia Mingus is a "a queer disabled woman of color korean american transracial and transnational adoptee working, creating and loving towards wholeness and connection, love and liberation" (Leaving Evidence blogsite, 2010). She speaks frequently on the college lecture circuit about "disability justice, race, reproductive justice, gender, queer liberation, transformative justice, transracial and transnational adoption, multiple oppressed identities and multi-issue politics" ("About," Leaving Evidence blogsite, 2010). Mia inspires me because I easily relate to her passion to give voice to her multi-layered identities that all have meaning and all signify upon one another.  Like Mia, for me, and many people in my cultural community, it is a daily articulation to negotiate your various identity constructs based on gender, color, culture, history, sexuality, education, economics, etc. As a woman of color, especially as an African American woman of color in academe, daily living for me is political. I believe that the gift that Frida Kahlo gives women of color, via her art and her life story, is an articulation of politicized daily living as an opportunity to know oneself intimately, and to enjoy the space of being charged to be courageous in staking claim to who you are in this reality. This is what makes me love Frida Kahlo and all that she is, and by extension, or better yet, by correlation, this is what makes it easy for me to love Mia Mingus, too.

So I'd like to re-post Mia Mingus' philosophy statement that provides the framework for her blog. She says:

We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here; that we existed; that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were; who we thought we were; who we never should have been. Evidence for each other that there are other ways to live--past survival; past isolation. 
(Leaving Evidence blogsite, 2010).

I think it's obvious as to why I am posting Mia's quote on my Street Literature blog. For this is exactly what Street Lit does - it leaves evidence that a people are here, they exist, survive, love, ache, seek wholeness via fractured and wounded living ... Street Lit leaves the page open to expose "who we are, were, who we thought we were; who we never should have been." And believe it or not, Street Lit also evidences "that there are other ways to live--past survival; past isolation" (Leaving Evidence blogsite, 2010).

I'm just sayin'.

P.S. Thank you Mia for all that you are and all the work that you do. I see you.