Many individuals across the U.S. don’t read or learn about the social ills of racism, sexism, and colonialism until they reach a college classroom.
Author Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez has spent her career writing to break down barriers and reach out to those who may not have access to academia.
Her books, “For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts” and “Tías and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women who Raised Us,” center on the cultural challenges many Brown girls face.
Mojica Rodríguez said learning about these topics during her master’s program was transformative.
“It changed the way I viewed everything — questions and weird feelings that I’d always had about things,” she said. “It gave me names for things. And I remember being angry the whole time because I was like, ‘Why didn’t anybody talk to me about this sooner?’”
Mojica Rodríguez’s writing also dives into the cultural confines and judgemental hierarchies many of the women in communities of color fall into.
She said she hopes writing about it inspires a broader understanding.
“There’s these things that have been told about women in my family, but actually, it’s so much more complicated than that,” she said. “I think we (should) view the women in our families with a lot more grace, as people living in particular contexts with particular sets of oppression. They’re just trying to figure out stuff.”
“Tías and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women who Raised Us,” is out on paperback Sept. 9.
