Author: Brett Fujioka
On Tuesday, Mar. 4, author Daisy Hernandez led a discussion in Johnson 200 on race, gender, sexuality and how it affects women of color in America. Hernandez has reported and written from a variety of news outlets, ranging from the New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and the Progressive Media Project to Bitch Magazine, Curve, Criticas, In These Times and the National Catholic Reporter. She was also the co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Today’s Feminism, a collection of essays featuring 28 women writing about what feminism looks like to them. The collection focused on the 1970s feminist movement as being partial to white women without having any concerns for women of color.
Hernandez received her B.A. in English from William Patterson College in 1997 and proceeded to earn her Masters in Journalism and Latin American Studies from New York University.
Hernandez said she grew up in a Colombian household in New Jersey. She said growing up in a primarily Spanish-speaking family was difficult because she had to translate English for her mother and father. She discussed her work as a journalist and a reader of Cosmopolitan before becoming a feminist writer.
She briefly went over her introduction to Ms. Magazine, where she was initially shocked “about how up front it was about abortion and pregnancy,” she said.
“I enjoyed telling stories,” Hernandez said, saying that was one of the central reasons she began writing.
One key issue that she brought up was what she coined as the “Oprah or Obama delusion,” the idea that because there are two powerful African American leaders, “race and gender are no longer an issue,” she said. Hernandez said it was “an illusion by white people,” in that Caucasians will cite Oprah and Obama’s levels of celebrity to justify the notion that people are no longer subjugated while ignoring other inequities.
During her presentation, Hernandez briefly related some of the issues concerning illegal immigrants with that of the film Children of Men. She referred to a scene in which several illegal immigrants are, as she said, “caged and there are series of shouts” and pleas for help. Even though she mentioned this comparison briefly in her talk, she elaborated on it further in an article on Racewire, an online blog under the title “On the News Tonight: Children of Men.”
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