Episode 7: I Carry My Ancestors in My Bones

In Episode 7 of Piña Soul, we are joined by Dr. Hortencia Jiménez, professor, sociologist, author, podcaster, and activist for a conversation about healing, identity, ancestral wisdom, and self-discovery.

In Part 1, we discuss her new poetry collection, I Carry My Ancestors in My Bones: A Love Letter to Every Version of Me. Dr. Jiménez shares reflections on migration, belonging, queerness, and the importance of reconnecting with the parts of ourselves that have been silenced or forgotten.

This heartfelt conversation explores how poetry can serve as a pathway to healing and invites us to embrace every version of ourselves with compassion, courage, and love. 🌻💛

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Pinya Soul Podcast with Dr. Jessica Hernandez.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Welcome to the Pinya Soul Podcast, a podcast by Earth Daughters, where we uplift stories of healing, identity, culture, environmental justice, and community. In today's episode, we are joined by Dr. Hortensia Jimenez, a professor, sociologist, author, podcaster, and activist. In part one of our conversation, we discuss her new poetry collection entitled I Carry My Ancestors in My Bones and explore ancestral wisdom, migration, identity, and the power of embracing every version of ourselves. Let's dive into it.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

So hello everyone. Thank you. Today we have the honor of interviewing Dr. Hortensia Jimenez. We're very excited to have you on today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

And thank you so much for inviting me. It's truly an honor to be in this space. Uh, and I'm looking forward to the interview. Yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Yeah, muchas gracias. And we are really excited about your recent book that's come that came out already, which is I Carry My Ancestors. And that's a really beautiful cover. You described it as a journey from silence and shame towards reclamation and belonging. So, what did the writing process of these poems teach you about healing and returning to yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

That's right. Muchísimas gracias. Gracias por la opportunidad to share my experiences as a queer indigenous immigrant woman as a professor, which you know that's what this poetry book does. The title is I carry my ancestors and my bones, a love letter to every version of myself. So it is for any woman, especially La Latinas out there who have had um childhood experiences that unfortunately are traumatic, aces, adverse childhood experiences that shape who we become as teenagers and also as adult women. So this poetry book is this, you know, from niña to young, joven to the powerhouse woman that we are, you know. I end on a high note, but no fue fácil. And then that's what I talk about. This is one of the most vulnerable writings I've ever done in my life. And let's talk about like the academia. It is so true. We're not here to sugarcoat or to downplay the violent place that academia is that I'm sure you've experienced, and many women of color. And I unfortunately experienced that really at the PhD level, right? Pursuing my doctoral degree at UT Austin in Texas, many racial microaggressions. And especially when I became pregnant, I decided that's the part of the violence that we have to compare to mentalize our identities. I think that's violent because we don't come from that. We interweave as we as we weave our trenchas. For me, it's like, how can I compare to mentalize my identities? And you know, I never called myself like a rebel, never even called myself a chingona or someone who was disrupting. But then I look back, I always disrupted like systems of oppression since I was small. I just didn't have the language. So I wanted to be, I wanted to pursue my PhD and I wanted to have children. But academia says you can't get married, you really can't have a partner. Your marriage is to the institution, really. You really can't have a life other than research, you know. Fuck that. The desire to be a mother, it wasn't a social conditioning that you have to, it was a desire. And this is not for everyone. We're all not meant to have children or have that desire. I did. And I said, you know, I want to have my children. And I had my three children. I had my three children from the moment of my comprehensive exams to the day I defended seven months pregnant with my third child. Just this brown, pregnant body defending her dissertation. I couldn't hide my pregnancy. I did with the first two. I tried as much, and it wasn't that I was ashamed. The institution and the microaggressions, like, you're pregnant. Are you sure you're gonna finish? You're pregnant again? You know, and I hear you have, you know. So academia stripped me from those that identity of our essence of who we are. And it took, it took away my voice. I had to learn how to write academically, the academic jargon that I myself are like. It's been a healing journey to reclaim my voice, to divest from the elitism from academia. I am an academic, we're academics, we can talk, we can use theory, abstraction, but no so yo. Like at the core of my spirit, my spirit says you need to talk, like you would talk to your family, to your community. You are an academic, it doesn't make you less smart. And so that was a process of healing. And I started write writing all my pain because I've been through a lot of uh life transitions. And my therapist is the one who said, you know, why don't you write poetry? I'm like, but I'm not a poet, I'm a scholar, I'm a sociologist. Like I am a storyteller. Then I have to go back to our roots, right? And that's how I began, just writing, writing, and then eventually I'm like, oh, we can say this is really good. And that's how it all started, you know, from that journey. And writing poetry has been so healing because I'm being unfiltered, raw, vulnerable, authentic. Everything that academia says we should not be. Here I am being, I'm a social, I'm a professor, I'm a scholar, I've done you publish books. But now my essence, yes, for the community, you know. So this has been part of my healing journey, reclaiming my voice, but also reclaiming that niña voice that it was stripped from her of remaining calladita, so it was also the healing, the learning. That's how I say you know, I have a poem about trenchas. It's like we're I'm weaving this, and I refuse. I refuse to be compartmentalized. I'm not here for that no more.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Thank you for sharing that because I think that in academia, right, we are taught to write a certain way. So I wanted to hear more about like what that process was for you to start writing poetry, especially given that you know, oftentimes academia looks down on different ways of writing, especially if it's cannot be peer reviewed. How did you come to poetry writing? And how is that more aligned sometimes with, as you mentioned, with your identity as opposed to these peer reviewed publications, especially for our students who are struggling to find, yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, no, absolutely. And this is for our students at the undergraduate, master's, you know, doctoral level. That we're, I mean, I'm here to say, yeah, in order for us to survive academia, we have to play the game. We have to go through the rites of passage, you know, that's how I call it. You know, we should not suffer the way we suffer and struggle, but that's academia, it's another conversation. So uh we did we do it because we need to survive, we need to graduate, right? And some require you to do public research depending on where you go, right? What institutions I went to a research school, so it was about publications, preparing you to be at a research one institution. Yo dije, uh-uh, I'm going to the community, but I'll do all this. Entonces I did what I needed to do to survive, and it was hard. And I came back to the community college y dije, I am at the community college and I'm also a scholar, so I kept publishing, you know, which was a lot harder, lack of financial resources. But then you get to a point, well, I think it has to do with tenure too. So very transparent, you know, becoming tenured, I think, gave me that flexibility because I'm there for life until I retired. So there's a level of privilege and power that I hold. And I said, you know what? I'm venturing from academia. Like I want my knowledge to be accessible to the community. And it was Instagram. But it's not Instagram set that foundation because I was already creating content for the community, bringing in sociology in a way that it's very hopefully digestible. And this is not to say our community is not smart, it's just more accessible than academic, right? And it was through my Instagram writing, my reflections, and then my journaling about my life through therapy. And every time I open the book and read a poem, I still cry.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that, right? Because I think that oftentimes students feel like they need to find a place, and it's important for them to find a place, especially in academia, as you mentioned. It's not aligned with our values. And another question that I have, especially during these times, right, is that you center migration, identity, and belonging. And that is something that our youth are also struggling with, especially given everything that's happening in the politics, especially in the country that we are on, which is the United States. So, how has your own lived experience shaped the questions that you have asked and how you have addressed your work, especially in this time frame, right? Where immigration is heavily criminalized, and even there's the fear-mongering that's existing within our communities.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Just even how you're asking it wants to make me cry. Because this poetry book is like an unveiling of my soul, of my corazon, of my pain. And yes, the topics that you just discussed have always been relevant to our community, especially our immigrant, undocumented communities. I grew up undocumented, and then I was able to legalize my status because I worked in the fields. So I write the first poem is about abandonment. You know, I came to this country without my family. Who I am, Doctora Hernandez, today, is a reflection of my sacrifice of Tola La Vida. My dad passed away when I was gonna turn 18, so it's just my mother and my sisters. In Mexico, my drive, determination, my passion for what I do comes from that lived experience as an immigrant, as someone who has been separated by her family, who was in a mixed status family. So yes, I have those and I wanted to center them. And it's scary, right? When we when we talk about our personal experiences, but creator and my ancestors guided me from the moment of the vision of my everything, you know, and they gave me this strength when I had moments of self-doubt. Should I should I put this poem out there? Like, tengo miedo, how is it gonna be received? People are gonna know this. And my ancestors is my niña abuelita, but maternal paternal, she's like, you like she's with me, she gives me the strength. So I have a couple poems here, and I'll be more than happy to read. Um, you know, and if you want later.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yeah, thank you so much for showing that, and thank you for also expressing your emotions, right? Because I've oftentimes, as people who are in the status of being a professor, we're told to, in a way, leave our emotions to ourselves. And sometimes I think that students should also see the human side of us, especially given that these are hard topics. You just mentioned something that stood out to me, right? Being the only person in your family displaced, and I think that that resonates with my parents' uh history because my father and my mom are the only ones from our family, and I would say lineage in that sense, displaced. So, how was it navigating, especially being in a foreign country? Because I often think of how even the immigration narrative is often normalized as like, oh, we have so many family members here, we have these big requirements, right? And some of us are the only ones in our families who are displaced from our ancestral lands.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, absolutely. So I was raised with my paternal grandmother and aunt, they raised me here. I did have family, like I had my abuelita, mi tía, mi tío, my cousins, like from my dad's side of the family, and not from my mom's side of the family. And while they loved me so much, and I I feel like I'm honored to have my my mom in Mexico and I love her, but like to have my grandmother and aunt as a second, like two other mothers, and my uncle as a father figure, like I count those blessings, but also recognize the the hardship of being separated by these borders and being displaced. And my family's already displaced from the Sierra to Guadalajara, and we will, I don't think, ever go to the Sierra anymore because fortunately it's dangerous in Los Carteles. So for me, I couldn't articulate any of this growing up. I always asked what my inner knee, you know, when I was a girl, why we said manas. I couldn't understand. Took me my adult version. It took me when I took my first sociology course as an undergraduate to understand systems, to understand migration, to understand anti-immigrant rhetoric, to understand basically our society. And I fell in love with sociology. That's why I have an undergraduate, master's, and PhD. I was like, I found I found with my sociology. Like I was always a sociologist since I was a little girl, right? So sociology gave me the language to understand my lived experience, and that is powerful. I vowed that I was going to do this for my students and create awareness and consciousness and healing. So we can bring healing to the classroom. We can decolonize our emotions and bring emotions to the class, unapologetically center it. That's my pedagogy. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

And yes, I can imagine, right? Like how what the feeling was that you wanted to be with your parents, and oftentimes the dynamics or situations in our lives prevent us from being there. And um, you just mentioned that you bring that healing to your students. What have you noticed, especially during these times that you students gravitate towards, especially we're trying to heal as a community, even within our communities, we have our disputes and we also have our you know our healing within our communities, but oftentimes it's like healing that we have to do outside of our communities, which is you know, because of society standards and the government oppressing our people.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yes. You know, when I earlier when I said I try to I interweave my multiple intersecting identities, which is a framework, I bring this framework to the class and in the community. Um, not only am I an immigrant in this country, I live in the community, I volunteer, I do a lot in the community, and I feel like I'm a bridge in the community to the college uh classroom and vice versa. And so um I I tell my students, I am not my way of teaching, my pedagogy is different from what you might be used to. And if you're and I say this, you may be might be ready for me or you may not, that is okay. I'm just like up front. I tell them what we center, what topics we center, because it's sociology. And I also say, as a woman of color, as I, you know, mexicana of indigenous ancestry, I'm bringing in that to the class. So I I let them know I educate them on that so that way they can make a decision. And for me, one of the first things is to be authentic, you know, and that you know that's not easy for women of color because of all the violence that we experience. So we have the user discernment and what kind of students we have, right? So we kind of gauge. But I do my best to be me, raw, the person that I am, professional in the classroom. Because if we show up with our vulnerability as human beings, and then you know, as academics at the same time, we're allowing our students, we're giving them unconditional permission to create safe spaces and to feel safe in the class, right? How can we expect our students to to share about their life if I'm see yaki no must listening and not contributing, right? So I always bring my lived experience, like standpoint theory, right? Or live experience, and I bridge it to the academic always. And you know what? I think that's a superpower that we have that we're able to say, look, this is what happened to me. Now let's connect it to this concept, or let's use cultural wealth and connect it to our community, to your life, you know. That's why I love teaching. So as it's como le hago. And also I tell them in this class we decolonize emotions. I want you to, yes, think, but I want you to feel. And I also want you to like the somatic practice when you're reading. Are you being triggered by the material? How do you feel? Are you enraged? Are you angry? Are you sad? Like, don't judge it and give yourself unconditional permission to be curious. And I will guide you in class. I think that's beautiful. So that's how I do it, and many more strategies of that.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. Like, those are amazing, right? Those are like the professors that we wish we probably had as we were navigating the educational system, especially as women of color, indigenous women, especially in the fields, right, that are not diverse because sociology is very similar. It to not diverse. Yeah.