Saturday, March 1.
Los Monologos de la Vagina. The Vagina Monlogues. Starring…none other than: Jennifer De Leon! Not exactly, but…The Proyecto Linguistico (PLQ, the language school) is located next door to a cultural center. A couple of the students organized this big öbra de teatro¨(play) and so I was recruited to be a part of one of the skits. I pulled a classic Jenn move and turned around and recruited my host mom, convincing her that is a wonderfully feminist and fun activity. For those of you who have not seen or have not heard of the Vagina Monologues, it is a play..a series of short skits and in most cases monologues that deal with various parts of well, the vagina. Menstruation, sex, rape, domestic violence, sexual climax, female power, sex vs. love, and one skit involving a young girl asking—if my vagina were a fruit, what would it be? If my vagina could talk, what would it say? You get the idea.
Anyway, this kicked ass because it was in SPANISH and many of the performers were local Guatemalan women and this was the first time that ANYthing like this was performed in the cultural center, or the town of Quetzaltenango. The line was out the door, onto the street, around the corner…I have to say, the tickets sold out faster than the vagina cookies on sale for 3 quetzales each. ALL the proceeds went to support the ONLY women´s shelter in Xela. Pretty cool!
We rehearsed many times, were told to wear black and red the night of the event, and right before the big performance we all huddled together and each one of us finished the sentence, ¨Me llamo _____ y yo aaaamo mi vagina! Dedico esta presentacion a ______ porque ______.¨Talk about an icebreaker! It was incredible. Many of you know how I feel about the taboo of talking or NOT talking about sexuality, etc. in Latino culture, and if you don´t, check out an ancient issue of Ms. Magazine where I published an article, ¨The White Ceiling.¨
This experience is by far, by FAR, a bright patch on my life quilt. I´ll remember it for the rest of my life.
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