Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (Literary Essay)

            Women, especially women of color, have been discriminated against throughout the course of history. They have been, for generations, raised to be submissive and women have been considered as property of  the male breadwinner. Because of this, many women, preeminently women of color, have struggled with identity and finding themselves in an ever-shifting world. Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (edited by Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman) is a collection of writings by young women of color and they write about their experiences that deal with identity and family history, racism, classism, sexism and many other concepts. This book clearly displays how identity is much more complicated when you live in a society, in which you are not a part of the dominant culture. (Just like how gender/sexual/romantic identity is much more complicated to fathom when you live in a heteronormative society.) The women in this book also write about the many different factors that have molded them to be the person they currently are; the factors are different with every woman and not one is exactly the same. 

            The mothers/families of these women are an important factor to their identity. In the book, there is actually a whole section, "Our Mothers, Refugees from a World on Fire," devoted to mothers and how they have helped their daughters to be who they are. One of the writers, Adriana López, writes about her liberated mother (who is in the United States) and her aunt (who was still in Colombia when her mother was in the U.S.). She states, "My family's history has undeniably affected the person I have become. I know that Esthercita's [her aunt] wild streak and my grandmother's brave trip from the South to the North severed the patriarchal cord that strangled the women in my families for centuries. Today, in wartorn Colombia, where prostitution runs rampant, the number of young women bearing arms is increasing, and more and more women are being forced to head families and businesses because their men are getting killed off." Then she goes on to talk about her Tía Esthercita running a brothel to support herself, and her mother dealing with her own mother's death and getting a job and taking care of her own daughter, which was very challenging when she was all by herself. But that's the whole point—these women are all strong and independent and they have inspired their daughters and molded them, in a way, to be who they are today. Adriana ends her essay with saying, "There is one photo I own of Tía and my still quite sexy mother, who is approaching fifty, that fuels me—I am lucky to have them both as my feminine guides. Through them I have learned to be a liberated woman by emulating both their North and South American ways.... I thank them for showing me a new kind of feminism, one that includes plenty of pleasure." Another writer, Cecilia Ballí writes about her mother and all her hardships and progress in life. Her mother was a very ambitious person and although she didn't really get to have the dream job she had always wanted, she raised her daughters to be just as ambitious as she was and she taught them to never depend on a man. She helped them with their own dreams and lives, and she inspired them. "What people who think my sisters and I are too independent don't understand is that almost everything in our family is a group project, that one person's accomplishment belongs to everyone else. Our mother didn't get to be a chemist after all—didn't even get to middle school—but she has three college degrees hanging on her wall with a few more graduate degrees coming. And they are all hers as much as they are ours.... It is not just that her experiences help us put our own challenges into perspective, it is that they reside deep inside of us. It is that a little ounce of her is with us always, making us the women we want to be."

            In conclusion, there are many, many factors that have molded women of color to be the person they are today.  One major factor that most of them share is their mothers and families. The affect their families have on them is not always positive, but it has taught them more things about society and the world around them.