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.

Love Your Body: Featuring C.C. Carter

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

When I speak of the erotic, then I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.” – Audre Lorde

The Panza Monologues at Women & Children First Bookstore in Chicago, IL.
Spotted by Ama Birch.

Virginia reflects on C.C. Carter:

When I speak of the erotic, I think of C.C. Carter. I first met C.C. at ALLGO where she performed from her book Body Language. I followed her, on the edge of my seat, around every curve, as she traced the Herstory of Her Hips. C.C. is a performer, educator, and community activist that works her "fierceness fully." She is the erotic, sensuality embodied, from the intimacy of her poetry to the ways in which she actively creates radical public spaces for the bulldagers, the dykes, for queer women of color. I always knew I could call on C.C. if I was in Chicago. For years, she organized a women's centered community space for poets weekly in the Southside of Chicago. She invited me once to perform from The Panza Monologues to a packed and raucous crowd at Lee's Unleaded Blues Joint. A cross-cultural conversation about the body over drinks flowing. I thought I need to translate - "This is the PANZA," I said, caressing my stomach. "These are chichis," I said grabbing my breasts. "And the chocha..." Before I could finish someone yelled from the crowd, "We all know what chocha means." Cuz there are some things that just don't need to be translated!

***

C.C. Carter

Chicago, IL

I am fiercely curvy and brave.


I come from a long line of beautiful hottentot built women.


I believe that the body is a temple to be worshipped no matter the size, the shape, the color.

What do you love most about your body and why? My ass-et. I love how her hands slip in along the waist and push out as they trace down my hips and thighs or along the front of my panza.

One piece of panza positive advice you wish someone would have given you when you were growing up…That the best feeling in the world is when your partner or your child lies on your panza and starts to rub it because of it's comfort and its familiarity of home (womb).

What do you call your panza?
F.U.P.A. - A Fat Upper Pussy Area


About C.C. Carter

C.C. Carter earned her M.A. in Creative Writing from Queens College in New York. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Spellman College in Atlanta. In addition to her book Body Language (Kings Crossing Publishing), C.C. is also the author of a chapbook entitled, Letters to My Love. Check out C.C. performing Herstory of my Hips on an Olivia Cruise.

BUY C.C.'s book Body Language
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