Love Your Body: Featuring Claudia Acosta

Claudia Acosta (New York, NY) reminds us what it means "to show up" again and again and again. We are honored to feature her as a guest reader this Saturday (September 13, 2 - 4PM) at our New York Book Release Party of The Panza Monologues at La Casa Azul Bookstore.

Claudia Acosta as 
Siempre Norteada in Virginia's 
play Go Away!

Claudia Acosta is a bilingual actor, producer, writer, and teaching artist. A straight hustler, the girl has performed Off-Broadway in shows such as Dance for a Dollar (INTAR), Don Cristobal Billy Club Man (HERE Arts Center), and Pandora's (Theater Row) as well as in theaters throughout the Southwest. Most recently she was in The Architecture of Becoming produced by The Women's Project, where she played many characters including originating the role of Siempre Norteada created by Virginia Grise. But, there ain't nothing norteada about Claudia - she knows where she's goin. 

Hailing from the state of Texas, her first play Girlie Stories is now published in Taboo Theater: Sex and Violence on Stage (University Readers), an anthology currently being taught at the University of Central Florida. She created and produced the first-ever Rose Marine Latino Film Festival in Fort Worth, Texas and produced a short documentary with Academy Award Winning Director, Nigel Noble. In New York, Claudia has served as a teaching artist in after-school programs, public schools, colleges, universities, safe houses, homeless shelters, and the prison at Riker's Island with The Public Theater, Shadow Box Theater, White Bird Productions, Creative Arts Team of CUNY, Lincoln Center, and Arts Connection. 

For our blog and in anticipation of our NYC reading this coming weekend, we asked her, "If your panza could speak what would it say?" 

And she said...

"Somos nosotras las hijas de Coyolxauhqui, full moon faces. Y yo con una panza to match. Big, round, beautiful full moon panza to match my Olmeca head." 

– from "International Panza," The Panza Monologues

I am a first generation Mexican-American. A Texican, a long lost norteña Chihuahuense that found her way up northeast from the west coast town of Corona, California to a rocky mountain childhood back in El Paso/Juarez forging a creative way past teenage years in Dallas-Fort Worth to find a place to stay and work as a theater artist in New York, New York. A thirty-four-year-old Latina-Teatrista always floating somewhere between her heart and her head trying to make sense out of everything along the way without being a dick about it.

Claudia Acosta's Summer Reading

I come from a long line of Chihuahua hard-asses with convictions, or as this excerpt from a poem I wrote about my mother’s breast cancer would more clearly answer:

I come from a long line
of guerilleros
My Mother the bravest one
and for my Mother,
it was her Mother
and with
Grandmother stood my Grandfather
and with my Sisters, my Brother
with them, me.

All there along my Father's side.

Our blood in my veins,
helped my Mother up
and untied her gown
and guided her arm through
the strap of her bra

I saw my birth in her breasts:
my origin, my nourishment,
my comfort...myself.

Her body is my own.

This the beginning,
soon a space will remain
to give more land
for love to create
greater change
in my blood's time.

***

Whitney Houston sang words I will never forget:

"I believe the children are our future / Teach them well and let them lead the way / Show them all the beauty they possess inside / Give them a sense of pride to make it easier / Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be."

I believe in love, in people, in creativity, in prayer, in community, in justice, and happiness. 

I also believe that humans are capable of great, great beauty, stupidity, and horror. 

I believe the imagination is a survival skill.  

I believe I may have drowned at sea in a former life or was a mermaid because of my relationship with the ocean having been raised in the desert and plains of Texas.

That being said, I believe in everything and nothing. 

Okay, maybe I believe that stars aligned for my coming into this world to leave something behind that could be useful for humanity.

I used to believe Jesus died for my sins, but I no longer believe in original sin.  I no longer believe in a God that made me so I can pay him back for all my imperfections.

I believe in the natural force that surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together. 

I believe in the force.

Yes, I believe in the force.

"So it was written on the bodies of Chicana heavyweights all across Aztlan. Live your life without shame."

– from "Historia," The Panza Monologues

i first heard music in the panza...
child in womb

My breasts. I am very happy with them. They are fun and give me much pleasure. Sometimes they concern me, but overall I am very honored to have these breasts attached to my body because it balances me out.  I have a very big ass. It garners a lot of attention, stirring up mixed emotions in men and women.  It is a burden sometimes to have an ass that both compels and alienates. My breasts I can see.  I can hold them.  I was told once that Aries don’t believe in anything they don’t see - so I wonder - because I am an Aries - is that why my ass haunts me?  I can’t see it, but I can feel it.  My ass dictates a lot in my world, but I can take comfort in my breasts. They make me feel like I am Appollonia, the first breasts I saw on TV. While my sisters watched Purple Rain, I hid behind the couch and peeked. I was five, that movie was off-limits.  Seeing Appollonia undress and reveal her beautiful breasts awed me.  I wanted a pair like that on me. Thankfully the boob fairy I prayed to made it happen.  I have big breasts that I can hold so I would never feel alone in this cruel world.  

"Someone's panza story is a sacred story, and to share it with someone else is to tell them about the condition of your life."

– from "Prologue," The Panza Monologues

I was a skinny kid until I was nine, when I  had surgery from an accident that involved losing the tip of my middle finger on my left hand.  I learned two things: how to temporarily write with my right hand and how to eat my feelings. Shortly after that, I remember hearing “PANZONA,” “Que Pansoncita." My little round tummy over skinny knock-kneed legs. I would get these stomach pains when I was little. I went to the hospital twice because my parents thought I had appendicitis, but after x-rays and tests nothing was found.  A phantom pain that startled me, that overtook me, and made me cry out.  Didn’t know it was anxiety.  My panza was trying to make me listen, but I didn’t know what "listen to your gut" meant. It wasn't until I reached adulthood that I realized my stomach was my second brain.  Everything my mind goes through, my stomach does too. I wish I had known that. I wish I had learned that having a strong tummy gives you power to move. I wish I knew how to listen to my panza then. LISTEN TO THE PANZA.

"Our panza has a heart that in extension suffers - suffers from out not taking care of it." 

– from "Hunger for Justice," The Panza Monologues

So, what does my panza say to me now? 

How dare you eat French fries two days in a row and what makes you think you could eat a falafel too?

Thanks for laying off the dairy.

You are worried. I don’t know what you are worried about, but girl you are worried. Can’t you see I’m justa handful away from showing you what you could do with that dress?

That plank position. Get it.

Your back hurts.

Work these abs, girl.

Why don’t you love me, the way I am?

I loved the green smoothies, but I hated the green smoothies.

Why are you scared?

Why are you scared?

That echoes in the deep chamber of my panza when the world I play in gets quiet. I have this fear, this block.  A whole spot at the top of my belly that fires anxiety that makes me tremble like a volcano spewing ash and lava. It burns. It trembles.

This center of my being gets so stuck.  

This center I use to connect to others.

This center that carries me in a classroom or on stage.

This center that can hold life.

This center that tells me to write when it needs to speak.

This center of my being feels trapped forcing me to remember to breathe.

I breathe.

I feel the tightness of my fear stretching and sighing.

I watch my belly expand and release.

Breathe it says.

Breathe.

"Keep your third eye open, mugrosa, cuz sometimes you gots to give ojo to protect yourself."

– from "Panza Brujería," The Panza Monologues

May my panza have power to push me forward.

May my panza grow strong to keep me balanced.

May my panza be healthy to sustain me everyday. 

May my panza be at peace so I can hear the voices of my ancestors reminding me how beautiful and how chingona I really am.

Thank you Vicki and Irma.

Today and everyday my panza makes me a chingona.

So it is written.

The Panza in Perryville Women’s Prison: Part two of a two part series on The Panza Monologues in Arizona

Note: This is the second post of a two part series on Virginia Grise's trip to Arizona this past spring where she had the opportunity to present on The Panza Monologues, work with ASU's Humanities Behind the Wall program, and interact with women, students, and community members of all kinds. Read part one of the series HERE.

Goodyear, Arizona

Reflections from Virginia:
In 1998, I worked with a local arts organization in Austin, Texas to implement a series of writing workshops both at the high school where I taught and in the juvenile detention center. In this program, I met a twelve-year-old who was functionally illiterate. One of the poets and my mentor, Raul Salinas, asked me to work with him one-on-one. For two weeks, I would listen as he told me the story he wanted to tell, transcribed the words he dictated to me each day. Every night, the young man returned to his cell, paper tucked in the waistband of his pants. With the help of his cellmate, he would memorize the words on the page before returning to class the next day. At the end of the program, he performed his story with the rest of the students. The night before the reading he asked me “What about you Miss? What story are you gonna to tell tomorrow?” Without thinking I responded, "I'm not a writer." Raul calmly walked up behind me and under his breath said, "You better go home and write yourself a poem, sister." And I did. My very first public performance was in the juvenile correction system in Austin, Texas. 

I return to that memory often. It is an important moment in my genealogy. I revisit it whenever I feel a little lost - uncertain about my work and myself. When I can't figure it out alone, sometimes Raul appears to me in dreams, calmly redirecting me, "Don't be late to the discipline committee meeting, sister." And somehow I know exactly what he means. I was an activist turned artist and now I'm an artist trying to find my way back to the activism that shaped my early years of political development. As an artist, prisons (both literal and metaphorical) are a recurring trope in my work. I can't write about prisons without an analysis of the state, without imagining freedom and without fighting for liberation. 

Since 1998, I have taught numerous poetry classes in the juvenile correction system not only in Austin but in San Antonio and Los Angeles and have also taught women who are incarcerated in California but I find Humanities Behind the Walls run out of Arizona State University to be a particularly exciting model for inside/out programs.    

What is Humanities Behind the Walls?
 “Humanities Behind the Walls draws on a genealogy of situated and subjugated knowledges that have emerged from behind prison walls to provide an opportunity for faculty and students to critically engage the humanistic and humanizing potential inherent in acts of reading and discussing literature, poetry, and drama with people incarcerated at Perryville Women’s Prison, and with formerly incarcerated people at Arizona State University.”

The Panza in Perryville
Perryville Women's Prison (1 of 13 prisons in AZ) is off of I-10 in the small town of Goodyear, about 20 miles west of Phoenix. We drove there just as the sun was setting and you can not help but be seduced by the beauty of the landscape - forgetting for a moment that the desert can be a hostile place. Goodyear after all is in Maricopa County, home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.     

As we drive down the long road leading to Perryville, my body begins to tighten. The road gives way to steel gates and barbed wire, four units that make up The Perryville Complex, housing over 2,000 people behind bars. I've never been to Perryville and yet this is a familiar drive. The drive to the prison parking lot reminds me of similar drives I've taken to visit family and loved ones in state prisons and county jails across the Southwest - tucked away, off an exit that seems to lead to nowhere.  

The experience however is quite different. When you are visiting friends and family there is a way that many guards treat you as somehow guilty of a crime by association. It makes me paranoid, mentally going through the checklist of everything I can and can not do (no open toed shoes, sleeveless shirts, no paper, no keys) because I do not want my visitation denied. This time I am able to walk into the prison with a handful of books.  I brought signed copies of both The Panza Monologues and blu with me for the prison library as well as a copy of Truth and Dare: A Comic Book Curriculum for The End and The Beginning of the World. 

We walk in with ease after our IDs are checked by the guards but my body is still tight as I mentally go through the list (that I don't need this time) but I can't help it (no open toed shoes, sleeveless shirts, no paper, no keys), body tight, barely breathing. I don't think I actually begin to breath until we are introduced to two women on the inside (incarcerated at Perryville) that have been helping to facilitate the program. They invite us into a room and go over the agenda for the day.

Humanities Behind the Walls offered four different classes in Perryville, including a class on mothering and the concept of family, current issues, critical analysis, and theatre and performance.  The Panza Monologues was used in the theatre and performance class and I was invited to the final class of the spring semester where the women from all the classes presented their work to each other. One group of women even wrote their own Panza Monologue, read in three voices...  

I am trying to get rid of my panza and I couldn’t give a reason as to why

God created my panza beautiful and gave it to my mother and my father.

I’ve never had a flat panza, it’s always had a little hump.

I have it stuck in my head that I need to maintain a small weight. And yes, my arms are skinny and my legs appear skinny and I’m sure, to a lot of people, my panza seems non-existent.

In turn the doctor cut the umbilical cord separating mine and my mother’s panzas.

I like to think I have grown out of being ashamed of my panza not being flat! But what woman ever does?

But I don’t see it that way myself.

The feeling of loss.

Hell! The comparison started so young and so long ago. I suspect no matter how old or how wise I get – it will always be in the back of my mind.

In my image of myself, I see it as protruding out over my pants or shorts. I see my panza as growing instead of shrinking.

My panza grew and the world abused my panza with their greed and lust and want for more – not treasuring the panza.

Wait a minute – look at that bitch’s panza. We’re the same age and her shit is still flat…looking like a black Barbie.

Yes, I know I may not see things quite the way others do --- but how to get past it?

So I did not learn the power of the panza until I learned to treasure the creation of the panza.

Stop this shit “keybee” – stop complaining about it and do something about it. Hell no!! Naw – I paid for this panza. Why get rid of it?

After all, big is in this year!

***

After the women presented their work, I read excerpts from The Panza Monologues and blu.  My reading was open to not only the women in the classes but to the entire yard. As I performed, I was reminded of what it means to share our stories with each other, the power of storytelling and its potential danger. Some of the stories I read about queer desire and love could have been seen as “contraband” for example. I closed with a reading fom blu and asked the women - what do you dream?   

I believe in prison abolition and in the on-going work of Humanities Behind the Walls to create spaces of freedom in the most unlikely places.   


***

If you are interested in hosting a Panza Monologues book reading or workshop in your community contact us at panzapower@gmail.com

 

Love Your Body Featuring Florinda Bryant

Chicana Heavyweights & Their Allies, a Panza Pictorial of Panza Positive Women


Florinda Bryant is an interdisciplinary artist, director, and educator, last seen in the Rude Mechanicals' - an Austin-based theater company - performance of Fixing King John. 

She recently performed excerpts of her ritual performance piece "From the porch" at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis as part of their Equilibrium Series co-curated by Bao Phi and The Panza Monologues' own Virginia Grise. Florinda's performance work often engages audiences in explorations around questions of identity, community, and the body. 

Florinda Bryant
Austin, Texas

I am the laugh you were trying to swallow, all big and loud, at the moment you were tryin to be quiet. Yeah that's me.
I come from a long line of praying, shit talkers, divine sinners, survivors.
I believe we are magic, each of us, with the power to change ourselves thus the world.

What do you love most about your body and why?

I love my heart! I haven't always been kind to her, treated her so bad til she was swollen and hard. She still didn't give up on me, still there for me. My ride or die literally. She has had so many reasons to quit and she doesn't, she keeps going, beating and loving. 

One piece of panza positive advice you wish someone would have given you growing up...

When I was younger I wish someone would have talked to me more about the beauty within. How the beauty within can change how you move through the world and THAT is what makes your outside beautiful. Don't just tell me to be confident, explain why.

What Panza Positive advice do you have to share?

Women are like fruit, there are many different kinds. No need to compare yourself to someone else. It's not that you aren't an amazing apple but maybe the woman next to you is an amazing orange. If someone is not appreciating your fruit, let that person go find another fruit to suit their taste. Take care of you and an apple lover will come along. 

What is your favorite quote from The Panza Monologues book?

"...and from that day on, I knew the panza was the most important part of the body, because people lived inside the panza, including me," from "Inside the Panza."

Read more about Florinda Bryant.

Her performance work is published in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic.

Buy your copy of The Panza Monologues book.

Florinda Bryant & Virginia Grise

read at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, MN.

Panza Positive Pictorial: Featuring Vaneza Calderon

Con un mensaje para ti...

Chicana Heavyweights and their Allies, a Panza Pictorial of Panza Positive Women

We have launched many critiques at mainstream media outlets for their lack of Panza Positivity. This month we are celebrating Love your Body Month by asking four women to create their own Panza Positive Pictorial by taking photographs of themselves that embrace their panzas cuz (as we say in Panza Girl Manifesto), you gots to love the panza, you gots to love yourself!

A bad ass guitarron playing mariachi, Vaneza Calderon has some panza positive consejos to share with you!

SUNDAY

Round and snug, so nice to hug! Happinez is: hugging con ganas! Squeeze! Give it your all! Just like life.

MONDAY

Cachetes, not machetes! Be confident of your unique beauty, imperfections and all!

TUESDAY

Community can be vast. Be confident that only YOU shine in your own way! Own it.

WEDNESDAY

Panzitas come in all shapes and sizes. Embrace every single one of them!

THURSDAY

¡Arriba! Up, up! Create your own path of happiness and confidence!

FRIDAY

Create! Do what you want to do,¡Y ya! Don't ever let anyone define beauty for you. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!

SATURDAY

Spanish translation of Bob Marley's Three Little Birds.

 

About Neza: These days, Neza can be found collaborating with various mariachis and bands in Los Angeles, Califas. When she is not playing an instrument, she is making their strings at Guadalupe Custom Strings. It is a musician-run business that helps fellow musicians have the best strings possible, located in Boyle Heights. New music and handmade specialty air accessories to come, this spring! To learn more about Vaneza Calderon see her first feature on our BLOG.

Follow her: https://m.facebook.com/neza.cal
BUY your copy of The Panza Monologues book.

Photo credits: A. Grey, G. Morales, G. Tenorio, E. Juarez, P. Mendez
Video credit: G. Morales

Love Your Body: Featuring Neza Calderon

Chicana Heavyweights & Their Allies, a Panza Pictorial of Panza Positive Women

This February we turn our focus to the body - Love Your Body month. We will feature a Panza Pictorial highlighting some women we consider Panza Positive Role Models. This week we turn the spotlight on musician Vaneza Calderon. We chose Neza because there is something pretty bad ass about a Chicana that plays the guitarrón, don't you think?

Neza reading The Panza Monologues, 
Second Edition in Los Angeles

Vaneza Calderón began her musical journey at the age of 11 in her hometown of La Puente, California. Since joining the professional mariachi circuit at the age of 19, Vaneza has played in celebrated venues throughout the United States. She has participated in prestigious theatre performances as well as playing the mariachi bass, the guitarrón, in an eclectic mix of worldly genres. When she is not playing music, she is making strings.  As a team member of Guadalupe Custom Strings, she is one of the only women string makers in the US who produces and plays her own strings.

***


Vaneza Calderon
Los Angeles, CA

I am Vaneza Calderon. One Z, no Ss. A product of Aqua Net, dirt roads and Juan Gabriel records. Put me in a room with everyone, include their mom, and I guarantee we’ll all get along. I believe that life is too short to not see the positive in the darkest of days. I envision a bountiful future for those who believe in goodness. Music is my fuel. Being a folk musician nurtures my soul’s desire to carry the musical roots of my heritage. The simple action of bringing a sweet musical memory into someone’s life is the reason I feel blessed to call myself mariachi. I’m a chick, and I play the guitarrón. Big, loud, bass guitar. The vibrations of each note on my panza make me feel one with the music. I feel my music, literally. 

I come from a long line of women who don’t conform to fit expectations. I’ve had great role models who have taught me that gender plays no role in your destiny. If you want something, work hard and you’ll get it.

I believe that dreams do come true and that love really exists. 

What do you love most about your body and why?

I love the fact that my body does not fit a mold.

What is one piece of Panza Positive advice you wish someone would have given you when you were growing up? 

I wish that someone would have told me that we are not all created physically equal. It's okay to be who you are. People don’t always look like the people in your community. The world is huge. What may be beautiful to one person could be the complete opposite for another. You create your own beauty; don’t let others decide what is beautiful for you. Shine the beauty that feels right from inside. When you do that, you’ll please yourself. Which is the most important thing.

What Panza Positive advice do you have to share? 
Panza Power is special. Don't use it a lo pendejo. 

What is your favorite quote from The Panza Monologues book?

“You see, well ya I guess you see, I am a big woman.  That’s why I spell Panza with a “z” not a “s” cuz it takes up more space.  I’m a big woman goddammit.”

When I read this, my life made sense. My name has been spelled with a single Z since I was born. My sister named me and chose a Z instead so that I’d be different. Different than the Cabbage Patch Kid named Vanessa. A big woman, goddammit, indeed, that is what I am. It is me, this is me. Take it or leave it!

POWER TO THE PANZA!
BUY your copy of The Panza Monologues book.