In the last couple of years Priscilla has been taking a lot of photos. She posts them on social media sites as #ChicanaBirder.  The above photo contributed to the playwright and director Virginia Grise’s project on Instagram to welcome spring equinox 2021. For the equinox, Priscilla made a short film too, Celebracíon de Primavera.  About the yellow bloom she writes, “A book tells me that some people call this flower ‘Spanish Gold.’ So much violent history for such a little flower to carry. How did this flower, whose leaves angle into tiny barbs, regard those who would dismiss her beauty for the sake of a shiny bit of metal? She carries the greater treasure . . . that the rain falls and the grass grows and the wind blows and the bees buzz and the flowers bloom. The land is my people, and my people are the land. Can we find more ways to celebrate every day how the land-our-peoples bring us the joy that power and possessions never will?”

Priscilla is one of a handful of Chicanx scholars who have been making the case all along for the relationship between Chicanx communities and environmental studies, and the necessity for decolonial relations to the land and alternative land use practices. Raised in a family that for years worked in the fields as migrant laborers, she and they know a lot about growing food. For Priscilla’s scholarly bio with writing, leadership, and current activities, see here.

When José and I arrive at Priscilla’s house in Denton, it is Friday about 2pm and she is waiting for us in the street.  She is greeting us and taking a photo of one of three juvenile Mississippi kites perching on a tree limb across the street.

Priscilla is a “soft landing” for us, as a first official interview. It has been a huge push to get out the door from home, get ready to travel, arrange for our younger son to look after our house.  We have not done this kind of a long venture, ever. Too many other responsibilities – but even our young adult kids agree, it’s time for us to go!  We have traveled north from the coastal plains of Galveston Bay in the Gulf of Mexico through Houston and further north.  At about Conroe, we see the beginning of Southern pines associated with the Big Thicket.

We arrive in pretty decent shape, psychologically and physically, and part of our wellbeing is Priscilla and what she means to us.  José was her PhD director at Rice, I have worked with her over the years and learned from her.  For a decade or more, José and Priscilla have conducted an annual “Taller” or writing workshop for developing Chicanx scholarship. Taller has nurtured younger scholars’ work and invited whatever debriefing was needed to get through the rocky road of university life for Chicanx faculty and graduate students.  Running Taller has given both José and Priscilla a lot of practice crossing the personal and scholarly with the political.  What we will do here together for Living West as Feminists has that core Chicanx foundation. All that saturated relationality and trust holds us.

“Relationality” means María, Priscilla’s mother, is a force in our project. She and Priscilla live together these days, and María is full of joy to see us.  She takes instant comfort that this white woman carrying in her stuff to spend the night, who comes with the much beloved José, speaks passable Spanish and cares about talking to her. I have met María, but this visit is not in a lecture hall or restaurant but in her place, her home, with the colors and photos of their lives surrounding.  What food they have made!  What hospitality. Peach and tomato gazpacho, María chopping vegetables all morning.  A Southwest succotash appetizer of lima beans, corn, squash, red peppers, cilantro, cumin.  This feminist care ethic, informed by everything that Priscilla believes and that her mother teaches her, connects our talk of tomatoes and today’s rainstorms to the land and to the ways we are with one another.

 

The Where of Here: Clear Creek Natural Heritage Area
(Interview excerpts)

Krista:  Now that we are “here,” and the camera is turned on, let’s back up and tell folks about the conversations we’ve been having since we arrived at Clear Creek. And, we will record for posterity that Priscilla has already let us know that if there’s some bird photo that she must take, she will. [laughter]

Priscilla:  This is one of my favorite places in the whole world – it’s called Clear Creek Natural Heritage Area. I’ve been coming here at least 15 years, walking dogs. It’s developed over time into a trail system. It runs along the Clear Creek of the Trinity River. I’ve always liked to hike here. But one of the things that I’ve been doing in the past two years is a lot of birding. So when we were pausing at the beginning of our filming, we heard a cardinal and we have a pretty loud summer tanager close to us. And an indigo bunting that hopefully will fly close for us to see at some point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The past pandemic year and a half, this place has become even more important to me, which I thought wasn’t possible. I could come here and be safe because I was outside and people were masking while hiking, being really respectful. And I was learning so much about the birds and the plants and trees and the grasses.  I’ve done a great deal of travelling during my entire academic career, even as a graduate student. But the pandemic really made us slow down.  I’m from North Texas, I was born in Dallas, I went to college here in Denton. And now I’ve been teaching here at the University of North Texas for 10 years.  But I’ve gotten to know this place, this spot on Earth, this land, so much better in the past year and a half.  I feel much more of a relationship with this place, and this Heritage Area has played a big role in that.

Krista Comer:   We are talking in the “Pocket Prairie,” and we are looking at some of the flowers that are here and one of them …

Priscilla Ybarra. The lemon bee balm.  Yeah, all kinds of wild flowers here during the seasons.  This is a prairie we’re sitting in right now.

Then there’s the post oak forest; there’s a wetland; and a creek. Lots of different bioregions in this one place. There’s a big garden [pointing]. Schoolchildren come here and get a lot of environmental education.

Krista Comer.  And you bring the kayak?

Priscilla Ybarra.  I have kayaked through here, but there’s not really a good access point.

Krista Comer.  An interesting question for people’s relationship to place is where they feel safe, where they feel they belong, what things or places or lands they feel they belong to.  Sometimes the way people think about that question is they know where they’re not supposed to be, or they feel unsafe, or unwelcome or somehow, out of place.

Priscilla Ybarra.  This spot is a “Heritage Area,” and these are the lands of the Wichita and the Caddo affiliated tribes, Comanche also would come through. The city of Denton is named after John B. Denton, a big perpetrator of genocide against the Wichita and Caddo people. I do bring attention to that history through speaking engagements, to my students, especially these days over Zoom. That attention has been growing in the past two years or so.

I’ve had the rare privilege as an academic to live in a particular place for most of my life. I was born in Dallas, in the Trinity River watershed. I was raised close to the Brazos. I’ve had the privilege of being close to my family.  Still, it’s hard to talk about “a sense of place.”

It’s like a deeply rooted familiarity with the feeling of the air, what it’s like when it rains, what the air feels like when there’s tornadoes, how hot it gets, and it’s getting hotter and hotter. In winter, there’s always going to be at least one ice storm.  I know those kinds of things in my bones in a way that, when I’ve lived other places, I didn’t.  I feel a comfort level with the oak trees. An oak tree is a tree to me, you know, like that’s what a tree is. I know there’s tons of different trees.

Krista Comer. Right, right. There are a few other trees. [laughter]

Priscilla Ybarra.  Yeah, but an Oak tree is the tree, you know. My uber tree. Oh, that’s a yellow billed cuckoo. You hear “cuckuckuck…”  I’m trying to answer your question . . .  but I’m not really answering your question. It’s a growing question for me, too. Your question was broader, like, what does it mean to feel like you belong. . .

Krista Comer. And you’re telling me.

Priscilla Ybarra. It’s that my sense of belonging is of the air and the sounds and the rain and the weather, and, you know, the weather patterns and the smell of the soil and the shape of the water, you know, its creeks and rivers and reservoirs. All of that stuff is what makes me feel at home. And I haven’t even had to think about it that much. Because I’ve basically always lived at home.  You know, even Houston, it’s not this, it’s a very different bioregion.

Krista Comer.  I hear you saying, about issues of belonging, that you’re not the only “belonging being” who matters, that the creatures matter, and that that’s something that we’re listening for, right now, as we talk.

Priscilla Ybarra. Yeah, this is the dynamic that I’ve been thinking about a lot. It’s always been really important to me, but until recently I have not given myself permission to think of myself as someone who does that. Who factors in the “other beings” . . . I have a developed idea of belonging (and not belonging) as a queer Chicana, as an academic, in the social sense. But I’m thinking these days about place and the degree to which I’ve not given myself permission to be a naturalist, a natural historian. I’ve always been cultivating that, but I hadn’t crossed over into it the way that I’ve let myself over the past two years.

Krista Comer. And does being a natural historian belong to someone else? That set of knowledges?

Priscilla Ybarra. It has belonged to someone else!  But I decided that it belongs to everyone, that we all access that knowledge to one degree or another. I really hate the idea that “natural history” has been categorized so narrowly.

Krista Comer.  Do you want to put a couple of guardrails on what you’re talking about? Names or traditions or organizations or…?

Priscilla Ybarra.  I don’t even really “identify” as a birder. I put that on my Instagram, #Chicanabirder.

Krista Comer.  So the natural history and the Chicana haven’t automatically lined up?

Priscilla Ybarra. No, and, interestingly, I found two other Chicana birders and we’re the only ones who – I know, this sounds so Millennial! – we’re the only ones in all of the Instagram universe who have used that hashtag for our posts. One of them is in Seattle, and the other one is in Southern California.  We found each other and had whole conversations through Instagram messaging. That is so rare. I don’t identify as a birder or a natural historian or scientist or even an “environmentalist.” Because those categories are too constrained. They suggest a kind of authoritativeness and “mastery” and though I have the ability to do all kinds of things, “master them,” I do not identify with that hierarchical sense of what it means to be a scientist or natural historian.

 

 On the West, Feminism, and Care Ethics

Leaving for later a full discussion of Priscilla’s interview, it seemed productive for the project as it is developing on the road to highlight thinking that others might engage.

• On “West” – For Priscilla, “region” means Texas and its relationship to Mexico, a north/south spatial sense of “here” as Greater Mexico. Environmentally the evolution of humans’ relationship to dwelling in this country is about the history of US imperialism, the takeover of half of Mexican lands, and the way that those formerly Mexican lands become “West” and anchor the imaginary of American environmentalism. Environmental conversations do not see “West” as Greater Mexico. “The West” becomes the imaginary for environmental thought and policy and activism/monkey wrenching.  A white imaginary.  Texas and “the West” as regions have to do, in Priscilla’s work and life, with Spanish and Anglo-American colonizations on these lands and the urgency of sovereignty for Native lands.

 

• On “Feminism.” The term for Priscilla means autonomy, non-possessiveness, a distributed power, not hierarchical power. She found it first in her family and mother. She built out the idea of a place for herself and her family story and relationship to place via the writings of Chicana feminists from northern New Mexico, from the 1960s and 70s. They write about a rejection of possession and control over land and women’s bodies, fundamentally. Enriqueta Vasquez and Betita Martinez for instance. Though interested in the land grant movement, and its importance for the history of Mexican American Environmental Action, it was ways Chicana feminists conceived land and their conviction no one should own it – that influences Priscilla. Along with the idea of “land back” she finds in the Chicana feminist archive evidence of “land banks”– communal land collectives by which Mexican Americans can enact solidarity with Native sovereignties. It’s a post-capitalist way of thinking about land and place that is fundamentally environmental.

 

• Care as Feminist Ethic. These days, a care ethic, more than a professional drive for getting-ahead, is what matters. Priscilla’s family role has changed, and taking care of her 84-year-old mother as she gets older is a value. Without the feminist understanding of care as a priority, as a strength, “care-work” might seem the classic form of women’s exploited labor. But care is a position of strength. It’s not just human to human, but also care of  this place and the local communities.

 

When the Tomatoes Come in: An Invitation

We are in high spirits after our interview, laughing, talking, looking at bird photos. José and Priscilla drink a bottle of champagne.

The next morning Priscilla’s mother María sits down across from me for breakfast. She is talking about tomatoes. She is talking about growing things in the soil, about hard things in her past, and I trade this hard talk with some of my own, about alcoholism in my family. She hears me with gravity and worries aloud about young people who drink too much and don’t know the earth. Priscilla has outdone herself with a porridge of quinoa, slivered almonds, agave syrup, bits of apple, blueberries, and pepitas. As if that wasn’t enough, she is making us lunch to take on the road! Tuna salad with a yogurt and lemon dressing, cucumbers, parsley, almonds, apples, salt and pepper.

Pupusas, María is asking me whether I like them?  And yes, of course I do, but I don’t often have them, I say. Suddenly she is up, finding the masa in the garage refrigerator, getting out cheese, padding the little bowl shape in the cup of her palm, showing it to me.  And then the whole smell of corn, frying, making everything feel rooted and secure.  María brings me a pupusa first, then José, then Priscilla.  She tells me she will pray for me, for our journey, and we must come back when the tomatoes come in.

I think about Priscilla’s feminism, her call to shift from privatization and possession, towards a sense of community and dwelling together. Looking through that lens at just about anything, she says, is fundamentally transformational. That kind of an analytic, she believes, can help negotiate any number of challenges, and reinvent any number of relationships.  And, she reflects, her mother has known these things for a really long time.

For more about Priscilla and María watching Chicanx theatre together, see her piece in HowlRound Commons.