Season 2, Episode 2, PART 1: “I'm Bulletproof, and I Don't Give a F_ck": Queer Women of Color Scholar, Dr. Karma Chávez Talks, Mentorship, Tokenism, and Intersectionally Queering Our Workspaces.

When I first saw her publication list and the lengths to which she went to tell marginalized people's stories globally, I realized that Dr. Karma Chávez is a force to be reckoned with! I was so pleased when she said YES to The Intersection: Diverse Folx Converse. I knew it would be such an important resource for other QWoC and PoC in academia as well as the workplace.

With QWoC swagger, Karma spoke the first part of her podcast title “I'm Bulletproof, and I Don't Give a F_ck" when I asked her, "How are you writing about these topics?" Karma is a leading voice and liberatory voice in migration studies focusing many times on the story that hasn't been told of Black migrants, queer migrants, and trans migrants.

The podcast will be delivered this month as a PART 1, and a PART 2. Always released 1st and 3rd Friday of each month:

PART 1 premieres Friday, November 5, 2021 at 4PM PST and includes the following topics covered:

--Tokenism & Adrian Piper's "Cornered" (1988)

--QWoC Swagger & Desire of Speech

PART 2 premieres Friday November 11, 2021 at 4PM PST and includes the following topics covered:

--Alienating Logics–The Border of Aids: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance

--QWoC and PoC Mentorship

Podcast episode summaries:

PART 1: We begin this story from a personal angle to talk about identity and what it was like for both of us to navigate academic and professional work spaces as lighter-skinned queer women of color. We talk about tokenism and the institutions of anti-Black white supremacy, and the particular form of racism we have endured and the ones we have been spared from. We also feature Adrian Piper's art installation "Cornered" (1988) that addresses miscegenation and racism beyond otherness. And brings white viewers into accountability of the possibility of their own Blackness. We end this episode talking about our own desire of speech as bi-racial and mixed-race queer women of color, and discuss QWoC swagger a bit.

Part 2: In the second installment of this podcast, Karma and I discuss QWoC and PoC mentorship and her new book just released earlier this year: The Border of Aids: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance. In this podcast, we discuss some of what we have been through as lighter-skinned QWoC and what others like us, and different from us have experienced. We also talk about migration in the US and how more marginalized migrants, such as Black, queer, and trans migrants have been unfairly treated in the US. Her most recent book, The Border of Aids: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance (published by University of Washington Press) tells the story of how disease becomes an opportunity for the nation state or the tells the story of how disease becomes an opportunity for the nation state or US violation of human rights. Such as using prisons or concentration camps or internment camps or hospitals or deportation or bans that we're seeing right now with Haitians and COVID-19 bans.

Dr. Karma Chávez is University of Texas-Austin, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Department of Mexican American & Latino Studies.