One of the great joys of being an artist and writer is working on commissions, enlivening in paint, canvas, and word the stories of revolutionary holy women who have emboldened and inspired the one commissioning the Holy Woman Icon. Gloria Anzaldúa was on my list of holy women for a while when Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza finally gave me the nudge to paint her by commissioning an icon. Anzaldúa gave Robyn—and so many others—the framework, the bridgework, for dismantling the binaries of difference, for finding the beauty that resides at the borderlands of race, gender, and sexuality. As a scholar-activist, Robyn speaks of Anzaldúa as a patron saint, saying:
“Anzaldúa has always been for me the bridge between theory and action, and her work, both in writing and teaching, compels me to live into my vocation as a public theologian, which at root is bridging across lines of radical difference. Without Anzaldúa and without her bridging frame, I am unable to do the work that I now do. This icon offers me a visual reminder of the ways in which I’m called to be a bridge in curating communities of radical difference.”
Queer borderlands. Chicana borderlands. Feminist borderlands. Gloria Anzaldúa (September 26, 1942 – May 15, 2004) was an American scholar who focused on the intersections among queer theory, feminist theory, and Chicana cultural theory. Born in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, Anzaldúa also bridged the borders of personal and academic writing, weaving together theory with lived experience, English with Spanish, and inviting readers into a new world—Mundo Zurdo—that transcended these seeming binaries. Continue reading “Bridging Beyond Binaries: Painting Gloria Anzaldúa by Angela Yarber”
I don’t know if I could be a deep-sea welder. I don’t know what the risks of lethal electrocution, broken limbs, or the bends would be. I suspect it can be a dangerous occupation, like operating heavy equipment on good old dry land or fishing for crab or even collecting garbage from the neighbors’ driveways. So too is this the case with window washing, paving, disposing of medical waste, brick making, driving a giant tanker truck, and more. There are aspects of the world I know I take for granted, but the moment I stop to consider what those aspects might be, I am humbled and reminded of the privilege it is to philosophize and ponder the functions of religion in the shaping and making of society.
I was asked recently to present my work on shame and guilt for a documentary about the experience of being in a caregiving relationship. Initially, I felt concerned. My conceptualization of the idea of caregiving circulated around 1) aspects of parenthood and 2) the inevitable life situation of witnessing a parent’s death. I have no experience with either of these. I expressed my concern to the producer and one of the cameramen as we discussed the protocol for the shoot. They suggested I try to tell stories. This perplexed me a little further. Then, in order to offer me a context, they posed questions about times I might have cared for people in the past. Their inquiry uncovered a large range of possible, personal caregiving experiences upon which I could draw. For me, these include experiences involving my in-laws, my aunt’s dying of cancer when I was a child, and, most currently, my tending to a friend who had a massive stroke at the brain stem at the age of 40. 
On a trip to Ireland several years ago, I was fortunate to have been able to see the Sheela-na-gigs in the National Museum of Dublin. Two of these Sheelas including the one removed from the Seir Kieran Church of County Offaly, pictured below, are currently on display. They stand at the doorway of a room dedicated to items from the medieval period and easily missed. As there was little interest in them and they are not in cases, I was able to silently commune without interruption.
