UMBC isn’t the only one with a big anniversary milestone this year (#UMBC50 #UMBCproud)!  The Women’s Center is also in the spirit of celebration because this year we turn 25 years old! That’s right – the Women’s Center is half as young as UMBC itself! 

The Women’s Center opened in 1991. The same year Anita Hill’s testimony allowed so many other women to be brave in sharing their stories of sexual harassment. Thelma and Louise took to the big screen. The internet was also opened up to commercial use for the first time ever (which of course would become a hugely important space for feminist activism in years to come). Great social change for women, LGBTQ folks, and other underrepresented populations has happened over the past 25 years across the globe, in our nation, and on our very own campus. The Women’s Center is proud to be a part of the social change in advancing gender equity and social justice. We still have a long way to go and the work is never done, but in this special year, we’ll take a pause to look back on our achievements.

Over the next year, we’ll be celebrating both UMBC and the Women’s Center’s special milestones. As a lead up to UMBC’s 50th Anniversary Weekend events, the Women’s Center will be hosting a 25th Birthday Party on September 13th from 4-6pm. Please join us!

We’ll  be active on social media to help tell the story and importance of the Women’s Center over the past 25 years. We’ll also be working on two special blog feature to include a Then vs. Now series and Where Are They Now? series following former Women’s Center staff. Be sure to follow us on all of our social media platforms and join in on the fun by using #UMBCWC25 to share your own memories, stories, and photos of your time being a part of the Women’s Center at UMBC community.

What pictures do you have of your time in the Women’s Center? Post them on social media using #UMBCWC25 #UMBC50

 A short reflection by Shira Devorah, Women’s Center student staff.

I bought my own copy of Dirty River (even though the Women’s Center has a copy you can loan now thanks to the UMBC’s LGBTQ Faculty & Staff Association recent donation), and I’m really glad that I did. I got to underline the poetry and the words that really resonated with me. I carefully applied sticky notes to the parts I loved, the difficult areas I wanted to come back to, the short mix of music I have to check out.

Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home

Dirty River, A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, is a memoir, but it is also so much more. It is a story of escape, of survival, of scraping by and fighting to exist. This book is more poetry than prose. It is incredibly difficult, dealing with (trigger warning!) incest, abuse and intimate partner violence. It is also difficult because there is so so much. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha feels everything so much. She discovers herself and pulls you in through all the twists and turns. 

This book explores her complicated and celebrated  identity as a queer disabled femme Sri Lankan woman of color. Each facet of herself is carefully explored, every insecurity, every  moment of triumph bursts onto the page. She will not apologize for existing, for running away, for her commitment to activism and celebrating the voices and authorship of queer people of color. She introduces us to the many complex people who hurt her, abused her, raped her and to the people who cared for her and called her family, who stuck in her life. She withers away on one page and blossoms on the next.

Her narrative is fluid, skipping from one point in time to the next. Each chapter is something a little different, a new window to peek through. You have to work through this book – you have to earn Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s story. This book is daunting and incredibly rewarding. I ask you to stick with it, because reading this book makes you feel full inside. It took me longer to read Dirty River than I had anticipated. Though there are only 232 pages, they are filled to the brim with poetry and difficulties and survival.  It is overwhelming, and it is beautiful.

Need more Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in your life? Good news, she has a bunch of poetry books and  spoken word on Youtube! Even better news? She’s slated to be the keynote speaker for the 4th annual Critical Social Justice: Home coming to UMBC this October!

Her performance of Sins Invalid from 2009. Part 1  Part 2 Part 3 

This is an amazing interview she did last year on the Laura Flanders Show

Leah also has books of poetry available! Love Cake, Consensual Genocide, and Bodymap

Pick up our new copy of Dirty River, A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home at the Women’s Center’s lending library. And, save the date for October 25th to see her in person at UMBC at Critical Social Justice 2016! 

This short blurb is part of our Summer Reading Challenge. Check it out and happy reading!

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Home with our “What You Need to Know” series, starting with this primer on our keynote speaker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Her lecture, titled “Body/ Land/ Home: Disability Justice, Healing Justice and Femme of Color Brilliance,” will be held on Tuesday, October 25th at 6PM in the University Center Ballroom (event details here). 

Based out of Toronto and Oakland, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer, disabled femme of color poet, performer, healer, and activist of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. Much of Leah’s work focuses on people and conversations that are often underrepresented, including disability justice, queer and trans people of color, and abuse survivors. In addition to her award-winning books of poetry, including Bodymap, Love Cake, and Consensual Genocide, she has alsowritten a memoir titled Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home. 

“Stories create the world. Seeing stories that look like your own, that you’ve never read written down before, or that are stories you’ve never thought of before that change your whole idea of what is possible, are a big revolutionary deal.” †

art by Shira Devorah

Leah is also a co-founder and former director of Mangos With Chili, the longest-running performance art tour featuring queer and trans individuals in North America. She performs pieces with the disability justice collective Sins Invalid and is a co-director of the Toronto disability justice collective Performance/ Disability/Art.

…“[I]t was so inculcated in me that disability is this shameful story. And you know, if there’s not queer people of color space, queer people of color won’t perform. If there’s not disability space that centers queer and trans people of color, sex workers, poor people, all of the above, elders, young people, we won’t know that there’s similar stories.” †

 For more on Leah, check out:

• Her blog, Brownstargirl
• This video of her performance in Sins Invalid
• Her interview with Bitch Magazine on disability, representation, and survivorhood

Critical Social Justice: Home will be held on October 24th through 28th, 2016. Follow the CSJ blog, Facebook, and Twitter for updates on scheduled events and other news. For more information about the Critical Social Justice initiative, or if you’re organizing a related event that week that might be included on the CSJ calendar, please email mosaic@umbc.edu or womens.center@umbc.edu.