About this chat
We’ll discuss two selections from The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care, edited by Zena Sharman: “Queer in Common Country” by Kara Sievewright and “Healing Exchanges” by Ariel Estrella. We are thrilled to be joined by Zena Sharman, editor of The Remedy, as well as public speaker, LGBTQ+ health advocate, and director of strategy at the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, and Ariel Estrella, a queer Latine scholar at Cornell University pursing a doctoral English degree with a focus on queer of color lyricism. This chat was curated by Maggie Hulbert and Grace Oliver.
Excerpts from Queer in Common Country by Kara Sievewright
Healing Exchanges by Ariel Estrella
“My healing is not my own. It can’t be, not as a queer Latinx survivor of violence. It can’t be, not when it was trauma that first introduced my body to how much my health and survival rely on others’ presence in my life. I burned the word “interdependence” under my skin when my lethargic depression fed my relative Emmanuel’s violent depression in a toxic loop of aching familiarity. I realized collectivity at the sight of a staircase where I pressed my feet against a banister to prevent me from being tossed down the steps. I drew out my intersectionality witnessing family members jumped by their fathers for seeming too much like a maricón..” Continue Reading