MARIA MELCHIORRE
Staff Writer
Lambda Award-winning author Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha — who identifies as a queer, disabled femme of color — served as the third annual Women’s Herstory Month keynote speaker on the evening of April 6.
Lakshmi is a winner of a Lambda Literary Award for her poetry collection “Love Cake.” The Lambda Literary Awards identify and celebrate the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books of the year and affirm that queer stories are part of the literature of the world. Lakshmi is currently up for another Lambda this year for Best Lesbian Memoir for her book “Dirty River.” Last year’s Herstory Month keynote speaker, Alexis Deveaux, was also a Lambda nominee at the time of her talk at Fredonia and ended up going on to win the award later in the year.
“It may become a trend,” said Dr. Jeffry Iovannone, coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. “Alexis Deveaux went on to win, and we believe Ms. Lakshmi will be doing the same.”
Lakshmi took the stage to discuss the performance art project she was involved in, “Sins Invalid,” which is a performance project on disability and sexuality that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists.
In the talk, Lakshmi preached the notion of prefigurative politics.
“[Prefigurative politics means] creating the world we want right here and now, without going out on the streets in protest. You know what is lacking in your communities and what you need to do,” she said, suggesting sliding scale pricing and zine creation, among many other grassroots efforts.
“I want to really, really stress that this is all stuff that people can do. This is not stuff that you necessarily need classes for. We had an idea, we started off tentatively, and then we just really owned it,” said Lakshmi of her performance art projects. “If culture is the collective personality of the people, then art is our collective dreams. We cannot control what happens in the streets, but we can control what happens on the stage.”
She then invited the audience members to place themselves in a position where, just for a couple of hours, they may use art to create the world that they want. That is what her performance art practice does, and that is why she continues to travel across the continent in a van of disabled performers, sometimes having to cancel or postpone shows due to their disabilities. She and her fellow performers continue and persevere for the sake of creating and promoting their best world.
“Ending the year with such a diverse guest like Leah Lakshmi really encompassed everything Women’s Student Union has been trying to accomplish this year: focusing on intersectional feminism,” said Shannon Bentley, a junior art history major. “She was a queer, disabled woman of color, and she had so many stories and experiences to share. It was so intriguing to listen to her.
“I loved what she said about how anyone can be an artist. It doesn’t take money or education. It takes drive and ambition and a community of people that support you along the way and a network of like-minded people who will validate you,” continued Bentley. “That’s what Women’s Student Union is to me — a great group of people who believe in the power of positive change and work hard to see it happen for all our ‘siblings.’”