Sesmas Yadira

Hey! My name is Yadira Sesmas and I am a 3^rd year Sociology major from the San Fernando Valley. I hope in getting a double major here at UCLA as well after I explore the vast classes this school has to offer. I have a strong interest in community building and activist work as I am involved with organizations that fight to end stigma towards womyn and I also have a strong interest in art. I enjoy drawing, occasional painting and draw most of my inspiration from many visual artists as well as great deal of musicians so I am extremely excited to take this course. I also consider myself as a Chicana which has been a new found identity of mine here at college. Femenista y artista. I hope to find inspiration from the people and the topics in this class as well. Because of such interests an ultimate career goal is to do social work and work in community organizing,especially abroad, while also being able to do activist work through a artistic lens.Maybe a bad ass artivist that paints up my beloved Pacoima but also travel around the world liberating people from oppressive situations....and get paid for it .haha.

In the essay “Out of the House, the Halo and the Whores Mask” by Gaspar de Alba explores  various topics but with a strong focus on validating and understanding how gender intersects with class and race specially for a brown Chicana like me. This goes about while explaining and exploring feminist topics and how Chicana feminists have their own experience as womyn which is very different from a white feminist experience which may not have been recognized by previous womyn movements. Chicana artists in particular are constantly needing to challenge the artists community and needing to reclaim their space for recognition amongst a mostly white centered space. This brought up a lot of questions for me as I am aware that arts are not taken very seriously specially in the Latino community for a variety of reasons which include male dominance as well. This reading brought me to thinking about the importance of intersectionality not only within our womyn but also within the artist community. How can young Chicana artists gain respect and recognition in a community that may not be as understanding of our different and unique experiences? Does it begin with us? Whom plays the role in giving visibility to our brown womyn in this space and is our existence as Chicana artists enough to do this?