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FREQ: A Feminist Frequency Newsletter
Welcome to Freq

 

Another year is winding down, but Feminist Frequency has got some special things to make sure your holidays are bright! While reaching for one last sugar cookie, why not catch up with what's been happening on Feminist Frequency Radio or The FREQ Show? We've got the pop cultural analysis you crave, wrapped up in our trademark snark. But before you settle down into the couch to binge our trademark shows, check out our interview with interdisciplinary Latina performance studies scholar, Dr. Jessica Pabón-Colón. Her recent book Graffiti Grrlz: Performing Feminism in the Hip Hop Diaspora (NYU Press, 2018), is a pioneering intervention in the field of graffiti studies, urban cultures, and global feminism. If you like reading conversations like this one, and appreciate the work that Feminist Frequency does to share the scholarship of critically and culturally-engaged thinkers like Dr. Pabón-Colón, please consider giving to make sure we can keep bringing them to you,

 

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Photo : SUNY New Paltz
Interview by Ebony Aster
Interview has been edited for clarity and length


Feminist Frequency: How did Graffiti Grrlz come to life?  Where were you were personally and professionally when you thought "this is it, this is what I'm doing now?"

Jessica Pabón-Colon: So, the interesting thing is I grew up in Boston. I grew up in Dorchester, so I grew up around graffiti all the time. All of my boy/friends did it and I kind of hated it because it was like, oh, we're going out again, kind of like that thing. And like, yes, I will be the lookout... Once I went into college, I didn't think about it until my senior year when I took a class on feminist perspectives on our history. I was a sculpture major and I didn't even realize until I took that class that I didn't know any women who did art -- like I wasn't learning them in all of my classes. And it was in that class that I actually had my first Latina professor and she was the one who was like, you know, you should think about a masters program and I was like, oh, what's that?

I was the first in my family to have a college education. It was literally the first time I had thought of higher ed beyond the bachelors. So that feminist perspectives on art history class set me up for when I was in my master's program. I took a class called Lesbian Art in America at the University of Arizona. And again, I was experiencing this moment of like, why do I have to take a class called "Lesbian Art" to learn about lesbian artists?  I went into my master's program thinking I was going to work on intimate partner violence and do that kind of work, which I did do; but that class switched my whole world because I was like, there's a parallel here between women's erasure in these various stages of the art world, and I wonder, is it the same in subcultural art forms?

So for that class I was like, oh, it'll be easy. I'll find some lesbian graffiti writers and they'll talk. I'll do this paper. And you know, needless to say, it was not easy to find any! I was asking them to come out as women -- a lot of graffiti writers, you know, purposefully utilize that anonymous tag name to enter the scene without that gender bias that immediately happens. And then I was asking them to come out as queer or lesbian, which is not happening, still today. I have women that I write about in my book that told me that they were, most of them are bi -- some of them lesbian or pan or, you know, somehow otherwise identified -- but were like, please don't put that in the book; that's not a part of the story I necessarily want spoken. And I totally understand why considering the context of the subculture. So, I came to it and I knew it was something that had to be done kind of out of rage. I was so angry that I had gotten that far in my education of the art world -- but also in my street education in Dorchester, not knowing about women who did these things. And so I wanted to... it was kinda like a recovery project. I know they exist, they have to exist, I need to find them. 

But then that felt like, in order to find them, I actually have to consider the frame. And in order to understand the frame I need to think through things like masculinity and aesthetics. What is considered "great," in terms of being a graffiti writer? What makes you worthy of being in the documentaries and the books?


Photo credit: Jessica Pabón-Colón

FemFreq: Can you talk a little bit about all-girl crews and graffiti feminism? You say that they reject notions of "girl power." What do you mean when you say that?

JPC: Yeah. I think I call it  "power puff girl power," which was just kinda like a throwaway phrase; but that  really kind of encapsulates what I'm talking about. I think about, how big of a deal it was when Barbie got her first car or Barbie's mansion, right? So [it was] this notion of financial success and normative whitened standards of beauty as a thing that allows girls to have power,

Most of [the all-girl graffiti crews] didn't identify as feminists but still performed actions that I associated as feminist, and had the effects of building community and empowering other women and those kinds of things. I had to figure out what was there. It wasn't just that they thought, you know, all feminists are hairy, man-hating lesbians -- some of them do, or did have that association, but that wasn't it. It was too easy of an answer. So I had to just think through what feminism signifies for them, and that is where this empty capitalistic power through financial means and normative femininity -- that's the stuff that they're outright rejecting.

So this thing happens where -- and I think actually it happens probably in any field; it's not just graffiti -- where if you're the token or The One, you throw better than all the other girls. Or you rap better than all the other girls, or you paint better or different, right? And some people use that to their advantage. They buy into this, you know, I'm special, I'm special because I'm a girl and look how powerful I am.  It's all of those messages around individualism, capitalism, being a proper worker bee, being a proper girl, all that stuff is wrapped up in "girl power."  And brought to you by Dove and Verizon and AT&T and ...they're just not here for that. And, you know, it makes sense in terms of graffiti's anti-capitalist ethic in terms of private property, for example. The "I own that building, actually " kind of thing. So I just had to understand that.

I mean the majority of the girls in my book are not from the United States. There's a kind of white, liberal, global northern feminism that they associated with that word, that I understand in terms of neoliberalism. And so the lesson is about how you perform feminism against that kind of consumable feminism. Like, through what I buy -- if I buy a pink Yoplait yogurt, I'm a feminist. They're not here for any of that. 
 

Where are the Pussy Hats for Puerto Rico?
FemFreq: Do you find any tension between this notion of capitalist versions of success as written into the popular understanding of hip hop, with these girls' understanding of what they're doing? There's that sense that graffiti as an art form is very much in opposition to notions of private property, for instance. But the popular understanding of hip hop is that it's a genre that celebrates material success, which is not at all true or necessary. But do you find that there's any tension within the culture between those two things?

JPC: Graffiti, historically speaking, is imagined as part of hip hop, but the way that the field of graffiti studies has formed, it's more like sociology, criminology and less with hip hop, right? So first I had to understand, okay, what's this about? And I understand that it's the only thing that's not really related to sound. You can physically do graffiti without music, whereas like break dancing, rapping -- even spoken word has a music element. But I say, this is not a reason to disassociate graffiti from hip hop. The aesthetic relationship between those two, like graffiti and all the other elements -- is it's there and cutting it off makes no sense. 

Brittany Cooper came here to SUNY- New Paltz and gave a lecture about interdisciplinarity and the importance of a liberal arts education. And in the Q&A,  somebody was talking about Beyonce and feminism. She was like, why everybody get mad when  women of color make their paper? All graffiti writers do not abide by the same rules in terms of capitalism. I am always like, girl, learn your aesthetics, however you're going to learn them, pay your dues, do that, and then make your money. Use graffiti aesthetics to make money. Design sets, design logos and fonts. Make money. There are books about that, about how graffiti writers do that. Claw Money is an epic example of this. I feel similarly about hip hop. I know for rappers there's the underground and mainstream. Same thing for graffiti. There are writers who are like, no that goes against my ethical thing. I only paint in Philly, I only do it this way. The majority of the people who think that way, again, are in the global north. I think that's an interesting dynamic, right? You have the privilege of this kind of authenticity where you don't need to use your art to make money. But I think even when you are using your art form to make money, you're still, there's still an intervention there. That's the kind of gross thing about capitalism. You can take the evils of capitalism and do good things with it. So yeah, I think that there's definitely a tension there, but I think it's all about sort of the ethical way that you go about it. 

FemFreq: What are you reading, watching, engaging with theoretically that's exciting you? What are you most fired up about right now? Also, tell us a bit about the initiative you started, Feminists for Puerto Rico.

JPC: I'm in this really weird space where ain't nobody told me how to have a book out and work on another one at the same time. So I'm trying to figure that out because honestly, I have been working on Graffiti Grrlz since 2002. So now everybody's reading it, but I'm ready to be done!  But I love you baby book. I love you. You're doing all the good things.

My second book project is about identity formation when you're a Puerto Rican who was never really exposed to the island, that doesn't speak Spanish, that you know, doesn't "look Puerto Rican", whatever.  It's a book about my experience, but through the lens of trying to understand passing and trying to understand language and the politics of colonization and decolonization and assimilation, all this stuff. I'm reading literally anything I can get my hands on that will teach me more about my people.

I don't know anything about them. I know what I know because I grew up around my Puerto Rican family. My mom came over during the Great Migration with my grandmother, so I'm technically first generation born in the continental US. I'm trying to read things about settler colonialism. I'm finding myself in a lot of indigenous studies right now. A lot of indigenous feminist studies, trying to understand the relationship between settler colonialism and identity formation. And that's when I was like oh, that's the connection. Settler colonialism is about taking something that is not yours. Taking land and staying. So the work of taking space as a girl in a male-dominated subculture in the context of a settler colonial state --that is something that didn't make it into [Graffiti Grrlz]. I wasn't thinking about graffiti as a project of decolonization. 

The Feminists for Puerto Rico Initiative is really a fundraiser. I'm selling tshirts, putting information out there. I created this thing where I invite people to create a tweet blurb about a Puerto Rican feminist or a feminist who works on behalf of Puerto Rico's decolonization. It's collective. I don't do it all myself. I'm taking that work on tour, to conferences, including the National Women's Studies Conference in November, where we'll have a workshop where we're going to try to decolonize our minds; build community as diasporicans, but also potentially collect money for a land trust, to actually own property in Puerto Rico. I know that if I get a group of Puerto Ricans who live here, who are in academia and they're committed to decolonization, then the most radical thing we can do is buy land and just hold it for Puerto Ricans. So that another condo or Marriott or, God forbid, a Trump Tower isn't built on the island. 
 

What's New

Worried that you've missed some of the amazing stuff that we've been up to since the last time you checked in? Never fear! Each month, we send out a handy guide to the things we've written, recorded, or shared that month. The next edition of our ICYMI newsletter will hit your inbox next week, so keep an eye out! Want a teaser? Inside, you'll find great stuff like our recent two-part FREQ Show primer on media literacy! 

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