For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts

by Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez

  If you learn anything from me, learn to desahogarte. By owning my voice, by allowing myself to desahogarme, I have found myself. I was taught that complicity and silence will save me, and doing the opposite of what I was taught is peak Brown girl self-preservation. Desahógate alone, desahógate with friends, desahógate with family, desahógate to release and to gain your footing.

  As Black and Brown women, we do a lot of emotional labor for our families, friends, partners, communities. And learning to step back and actively take care of yourself, in a society that does not value your life, is the decolonial practice I want you to walk away with. Your ability to thrive is based on building a community that can carry burdens alongside you.

  Desahógate to find them, because they are somewhere desahogandose solitxs, and we need to be doing that together to actually make it. Because, Brown girl, we need each other.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to take a moment and prop up my husband. He is not only my biggest cheerleader but also my best friend. We have laughed, cried, and even panicked together about the enormous task of writing a book. Thank you for your patience, decorating my office, ensuring my writings were properly backed up, and always telling me I can do anything. I lived for thirty years with no one believing in me, and then I met you and not only did you believe in me, but you invested in me.

  I do not want to pretend that writing a book is easy, or that getting a book deal is an option available to everyone—because it is not. These industries gatekeep and, for me, becoming an author required having a partner who was financially stable enough to allow me to dream. I dedicate this book to my husband because I know that racism, classism, sexism, and xenophobia would have blocked me from a writing career. He leveraged his overwhelming privilege in society to prop me up, to grant me the space to write this book. I am not unaware of the fact that it took the help of a white man to get me here, and I am still grappling with that. But I intend to do the same for those coming after me; I will use every privilege I possess to prop others up, and hopefully we can create a critical mass of people who will change entire systems.

  My devotion to my craft took two people: me and my wonderful life partner. Thank you for believing in my dreams and always pushing me toward what I thought was impossible. Thank you for your kindness and your unrelenting watchfulness. For sneakily showing up to business meetings at my request and to no one else’s knowledge. I laugh when I think about you hiding behind plants and menus. I can see your face smiling at me from across restaurants, your eyes always believing in me and your actions always backing that up. You have shown up for me in ways that I did not think were possible. You have seen this entire process intimately; you know how much I cried and how much I have struggled with what it means to write my trauma down for others to learn. I can never thank you enough, and I cannot wait to see where life keeps taking us. <3 gracias, amor.

  Also, there are a lot of people whose shoulders I stand on. I want to thank my mentors in graduate school, Rev. Dr. Cristian De La Rosa, a professor at Boston University’s School of Theology. Thank you for opening doors and utilizing institutional power to create spaces that felt safe for me and other Latinxs. I also want to thank Rev. Dr. Daisy Machado, the director of Hispanic Summer Program and a professor at Union Theological in NYC. She gave me a job working on the social media pages for HSP back in 2013, which gave me tools that helped me at the inception of Latina Rebels. She has also held me real close in her arms and shown me warmth more than anyone in academia has dared to show. I want to thank Rev. Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas. Without you, I would have dropped out of Vanderbilt Divinity School. Thank you for taking up space and for your unapologetic brilliance. I learned more from being around you than I did any other professor in that entire institution.

  I want to thank two of my readers: Zahira Kelly-Cabrera, who is known as @bad_dominicana on Twitter, and Cassandra, who is the founder of AnFemWaves (formerly known as Xicanisma). Zahira and Cassandra have a sharpness that no one within academia possesses, and I mean that with all the admiration in the world. Their critical-thinking skills combined made me rewrite entire chapters, and I cannot thank them enough for their contributions to my book. When it comes to doing critical race theory, I have found nonacademic BIWOC to be better versed and more knowledgeable about it all. I stumbled into Zahira’s tweets in 2013, and she opened a new reality for me through them. Similarly, in 2014 when Xicanisma was born, I saw someone who stood her ground and did it brilliantly, in Cassandra. These two women are foundational to why and how I do the work I do today.

  I also want to thank Kristian Contreras, a PhD student at Syracuse University and overall badass who took the time to share all her resources with me (over one hundred books virtually) and read some of my chapters with care and intention. I needed your eyes, but I am always surprised to see your heart in full display. Thank you for your love and your words. I want to thank assistant professor Dr. Maria Chaves Daza at SUNY Oneonta. It was she who first introduced me to La Malinche and that entire field of study. I messaged her when I began writing this book, and she happily gave me her bibliography. I am ready for another Noche Buena together, girl!

  My two main readers were former peers of mine at divinity school, Rev. Alba Onofrio and Rev. Dr. Lis Valle. You two read the entire book alongside me, helped me find areas of weakness, and pushed me to say what I needed to say rather than what I wanted to say. You honed my voice and lovingly pushed me to sharpen it.

  I also want to thank my agents, Aemilia Phillips and David Patterson. It took me two years to finally finish my book proposals, and more help than I can fully explain within a few short sentences. But thank you for believing in me and seeing the vision of this book. Additionally, my editor, Emi Ikkanda, is God-sent. She understood what I was trying to say and encouraged me all along the way. When I made mistakes in my writings in the past, I was treated like an imbecile. So when selecting an editor who I wanted to work with, I asked very bluntly if any editor was accustomed to working with an author who learned English as a second language. Emi gently replied with her own family history with learning English as a second language, and ultimately that is why I picked Emi as my editor. With her, I have felt valued for the skills I do have and not devalued for my writing errors, which are simply a product of my migration. I wrote a whole book in my second language, and it was celebrated by my editor throughout.

  Last but not least, I want to thank mi mami, Blanca Azucena Mojica Rodríguez. To the strongest and most beautiful mami a girl could have ever hoped for, gracias. Mi único anhelo es que tu estes orgullosa de mí, lo demás nunca ha importado. Te quiero mucho y por siempre.

  I am nothing without the strong, witty, and beyond radiant Black women and Latinas who have taught me how to love myself better, and how to love others. This book is mine, but it took a group of us to get it out into the world, and for that I am eternally grateful.

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  Courtesy of the author

  Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez is a writer and activist working to shift the national conversation on race. She is the founder of Latina Rebels, which boasts over 350,000 followers across social media platforms, and she has appeared on NPR, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Huffington Post Latino Voices, Telemundo, and Univision. She was invited to the Obama White House in 2016 and has spoken at over one hundred universities in the past four years, including Princeton, Dartmouth, and Wesleyan. She earned her master of divinity from Vanderbilt University and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

  PRAISE FOR FOR BROWN GIRLS WITH SHARP EDGES AND TENDER HEARTS

  “Searing and revolutionary, this book blazes a trail towards liberation.”

  —Diane Guerrero, author of In the Country We Love

  “This is the Brown girl manifesto I’ve been waiting for my whole life.”

  —Erika L. Sánchez, auth
or of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

  “Mojica Rodríguez perfectly balances the art of memoir with a biting critical eye, offering an understanding of Latina womanhood bursting with intellect, but grounded in real-life experience. With her carefully chosen words, she invites readers into a deeper relationship with themselves, their communities, and the world at large.”

  —Melissa A. Fabello, PhD, author of Appetite

  “Prisca has crafted a fierce and vibrant book that brings to life the secret fears and profound hopes of so many brown girls, across so many communities of color. She is a brilliant storyteller with a stunning voice. This is a book for Brown girls to hold close.”

  —Sonalee Rashatwar, LCSW MEd, co-owner, Radical Therapy Center

  “I wish I had found this book as a sixteen-year-old, then as a twenty-six-year-old, and again now. Prisca writes with the familiar voice of an older prima that wants to teach you everything she’s learned. This book is beyond a love letter. It is a reckoning and an affirmation that there is power beyond the fear of our fearlessness. This book has fed me what I did not know I hungered for.”

  —Yesika Salgado, author of Corazón

  “In this book, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez shares truths with precision and unapologetic vulnerability. Her book is a deep and profound gift for her readers and a necessary and treasured read for generations to come.”

  —Johanna Toruño, Salvadoran multimedia artist and founder, The Unapologetic Street Series

  “Prisca is a Latinx voice who calls for accountability, healing, and growth in her book. Her writing will connect with our communities, who are seeing themselves represented for the first time.”

  —Curly Velasquez, queer actor and writer

  “I will never forget when Prisca sent me the kindest of messages about how the outlet I founded inspired her to set her own course. She has the unique talent to speak to her generation with fearless truth, and her book is foundational to understanding what it means to be a Brown girl today.”

  —Julio Ricardo Varela, award-winning journalist and founder, Latino Rebels

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