PMA Ph.D. Student Isabel Padilla Carlo has written a chapter for the forthcoming anthology Porque Estamos Aquí: Puerto Rican Feminisms Against Empire. Her chapter is titled “Léeme la cuerpa: Queer Laziness and the Body Politics of El perreo combativo” and includes a series of interviews with Karla Claudio-Betancourt and DJ Perra Mística. Porque Estamos Aquí is edited by Pabón-Colón Jessica Nydia and will be published in November by the Feminist Press at CUNY.
“I began crafting this chapter during my time at the Michigan Humanities Emerging Research Scholars Program (MICHHERS) in 2022, with the invaluable support of Paulina Alberto and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes,” said Padilla Carlo. “What brought me to this anthology was Jessica Pabón’s call for essays on Puerto Rican feminisms following the Puerto Rican Studies Association conference, Moriviví: Activating Puerto Rican Futures. Motivated by a desire to move beyond textual analysis for my contribution to the anthology and engage more directly with activist praxis, I initiated a series of interviews with artivists involved in the movement. I reached out to Karla Claudio-Betancourt, whose video documenting the protest went viral, and DJ Perra Mística, one of the headliners of Léeme los labios, an event organized by el Grupo de Trabajo de Género. In conducting these interviews, I chose to foreground the voices of the artivists themselves; an approach which offered a multifaceted view of el perreo combativo as an event, the shared commitments of its participants as well as divergent perspectives on its political potential and future directions.”
Porque Estamos Aquí is “a future classic collection of Puerto Rican feminist writing that spans time, terrain, and phases, invokes voices across generations and fields, and bridges island and diaspora.” Pre-order the anthology here.
Read more about Isabel Padilla Carlo.
