Faculty Mentor: Annie Isabel Fukushima (Ethnic Studies, University of Utah)

RECONOCIMIENTOS

Dedico esto para mi familia, realmente no sé dónde estuviera sin todes ustedes. Los amo y los quiero lo mejor que pueda, y ojalá lo pueden sentir. Ojalá en estos sistemas violentas en cuáles vivimos, puedo intentar ser un lugar seguro para ustedes. Con todo mi corazón, los quiero.

Para mis amiges, a los que se sienten como almas gemelas y los cuales es un milagro poder pasar tiempo juntos; gracias por estar aquí conmigo. Aunque lo sepan o no, han añadido sus piezas de ser a mi mente y cavado un lugar en mi corazón. Los quiero y espero que lo pueden sentir.

A mis conexiones académicas y mis mentoras de este proyecto. He aprendido y desaprendido mucho durante estos últimos cuatro años. No puedo explicar cuanto agradezco todo el apoyo, cariño, y conexión que he tenido el privilegio de sentir. Un privilegio en cuál a veces no siento que lo merezco, pero siempre lo mantendré querido.

Para los que no he mencionado, por favor entiendan que no lo hago para olvidar o ignorar sus presencia e impacto en mi vida. No pudiera imaginar este proyecto sin toda la gente cuales he podido querer, les aprecio más que pudiera demostrar.

A la comunidad palestina, siento la mayor tristeza y dolor por la brutalidad, violencia, y el genocidio, que han tenido que resistir por generaciones. Pero, igual siento admiración por los esfuerzos en todas las luchas que han tenido que confrontar cotidianamente. Me han enseñado el más alto nivel de no rendirse, aunque el mundo, día tras día, los ignora y los dejan para muertos. ¡Pero, siguen con la resistencia!

En mi vida está la lucha cotidiana para que mis identidades serán reconocidas y para, no nomas sobrevivir, pero para prosperar con ellas. Difícil cuando siento que todo lo que conoce mi gente es la violencia. Pero si no fuera por mi proyecto, el sistema de apoyo de mis mentoras, amiges, y familia, no hubiera sentido toda la motivación y esperanza que sentí. Aprendiendo y analizando como me siento y como existo en espacios seguros, aprendí que la gente alrededor de mi estaban cometido para la lucha. Así que, en una manera este proyecto es para todes elles como para mí.

Para los que siguen luchando, gracias. Ojalá este proyecto se siente como una letra de amor, para la resistencia y sus esfuerzos. Es un camino duro, brutal, y largo, pero seguimos luchando.

Luchando, y luchando, y luchando. Pero igual amamos, nos cuidamos, y permanecemos conectados. La multiplicidad de nuestras vidas, de nuestra sobrevivencia, y como prosperamos, necesita ser reconocido y apreciado. De lo más profundo de mi corazón, ¡gracias!

Finalmente, dedico este proyecto para mí. A la niña que fui y para la adulta en el que me estoy convirtiendo, con este proyecto prometo a mí mismo de luchar para poder prosperar en esta vida.

Para nosotres.

Brittney Serenna Mellin Gutiérrez (ella/elle)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I dedicate this to my family, I truly would not know where I would be if it were not for all of you. I love you as best as I can, and I hope that it is felt. I hope that within the violent systems we live in, I can attempt to be a safe space for you. With all I have in my heart, I love you.

To my friends, to those that feel like soulmates and to those where seeing each other is a miracle, thank you for being there. Whether you know it or not, you have added your pieces of being to my mind and have dug your way into my heart. I love you and hope you can feel it.

To my academic connections, and most importantly my mentors, I have learned and unlearned the most in these past four years. I cannot explain how much I appreciate all the support, care, and connection I have had the privilege of feeling. A privilege, I sometimes feel I do not deserve but will always hold dear.

To those left unmentioned, please do understand I do not do so to forget or ignore your presence and impact in my life. I could not imagine this project without all the people I have been able to love; I am thankful for all of you more than I could ever hope to show.

To the Palestinian community, I feel the greatest sorrow and pain for the brutality, violence, and genocide, that you have had to endure across generations. Yet, I admire the fight, the struggle, and the battle you all push through every day. You all have taught me the highest level of not giving up, even as the world turns away from you and constantly leaves you for dead. And yet, you survive!

In my life there is the daily fight for my identities to be acknowledged and not only to survive, but to thrive in them. Difficult, when it feels that all my people ever encounter is violence. If it were not for the work of my project, the support system of my mentors, friends, and family, I do not think I would have felt the hope and motivation I did. By learning and analyzing my feelings and existence within safe spaces, I learned that those around me were committed to the fight. So, in that way, this project is not only for me but for them.

To those continuing the fight, thank you. I hope in a way this feels like a love letter, to the fight and for all our efforts. It is a hard, brutal, long road ahead, and yet, we fight. We fight, we fight, and we fight. But we love, we care, and we remain connected. The multiplicity of our lives, of our survival, and how we thrive, must be acknowledged and cherished. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

And lastly, I dedicate this to myself. To the child I was and to the adult I continue to become.

With this project, I make the promise to myself to continue to fight to be able to thrive in this life.

Here’s to us.

Brittney Serenna Mellin Gutiérrez (she/they/ella)

ABSTRACT

I use the autoethnography method, to contextualize my experiences as a Queer Chicane seeking safe spaces within (living) colonial systems. The intersectionality of being Queer Chicana within (living) colonial systems violently limit the ability of my community to engage in the creation and maintenance of safe spaces. The creation and maintenance acts as an acknowledgment that safe spaces do not exist as a singular event within colonial systems but that as individuals and as a community we can aim to create these safe spaces, to maintain them in a continuous process of always seeking safety. This thesis tackles where I feel safety, with whom, and how I navigate these safe spaces as a resistance to (living) colonial systems.

INTRODUCTION

This research project answers: How do Queer Chicanes navigate safe spaces and non-safe spaces? How can this navigation be represented when we focus on friendship and memory? And how might one create safe spaces as a form of resistance? To answer these questions, memory became the focus of my research because it was through revisiting events retrospectively that I identified my safe spaces. Through the analysis of revisiting memory, of safe spaces as a form of resistance, and of how friendships are creating and maintaining safe spaces, this personal navigation of safe spaces demonstrates how we connect the ways we resist (living) colonial systems to our friendships and through revisiting memories.

The research centers my experiences of navigating safe spaces as a Queer Chicane and non- safe spaces within (living) colonial systems through the method of reflecting on key memories within friendship as a reflection of safe spaces, and the emotions within them. In this research, the memories are shared through excerpts and through an analytical reflective process, which contextualize my experiences as a Queer Chicane who navigates multiple spaces by crossing (in)between them as my queerness and chicanidad are intertwined with each other affecting the ways they are developed (Anzaldúa, 1987; Galarte, 2021). My autoethnography reflects the use of memory and friendship to cross (in)between non-safe spaces to safe spaces. Friendships within this project are centered as a method to resist oppressive structures and connect by feeling safe with each other whilst navigating (living) colonial systems (Basarudin and Bhattacharya, 2016). Spaces are used to signify the connections developed with other people through emotions, a safe space is fostered by intentional communication practices and committed care, as the feelings and identities become integral to reclaim solidarity and resistance with each other (Bernal et al., 2012). (Living) colonial systems relate to the dynamics formed through colonization, and continuing through colonial constructs/structures, of gender, race, queerness, socio-economic class, and other intersecting identities (Taylor-García, 2012). These dynamics impact our everyday relations and how we move across spaces, including but not limited to the cultural, social, educational, and material (Taylor-García, 2012).

The context behind answering these questions is multiple; it existed within the reality that the 2024 legislation session in my home state (Utah) had passed an anti-DEI bill (HB 261), which banned and penalized any efforts, wording, and organization structures that supported DEI progress across public universities, colleges, K-12 schools, and government offices. Within the same session, HB 257, an anti-trans bathroom bill passed; HB 257 bans transgender Utahns from using the bathrooms and locker rooms that correlate with their gender identity within government buildings (Tanner, 2024).

These bills led to closures of centers and organizations, all of which were physical safe spaces on- campus at the University of Utah. I also reflect on conversations from a living room in San Francisco, California for the Fall 2024 Queer Advocacy Alternative Break through the Bennion Center at The University of Utah. I had decided to be part of the Fall 2024 Queer Advocacy Alternative Break, where I would use my fall break to go to San Francisco for close to a week with a group of students and a couple of faculty/staff. The alternative break would focus on community engagement and experiential learning based on Queer Advocacy. Yet, this alternative break was having to shift into censoring the ways advocacy materials were taught and the types of conversations faculty/staff had because of the restrictions placed by the legislation bills mentioned above. With these physical references of safe spaces stolen from already oppressed communities and advocacy programs being restricted/censored, I asked, “Where are our (my) safe spaces?” and “Without the physical space, how do we still feel safe?”

BEING QUEER CHICANE

Brittney Mellin’s Nametag (she/they/ella pronouns)

December 2024

I only recently felt my skin tighten when I uttered the words “she/her/ella,” it felt as if all eyes stared down my soul unkindly. As if at a moment’s notice, anyone, maybe everyone, would have called me out on my “lie,” the one that had made my skin crawl with the unknown. I still did not acknowledge why uttering such words made me break a sweat. I knew why but the words were not on my tongue, yet. I thought the eyes kept staring heartlessly, my heartbeat had kept rising, and rising, and rising, and still there had been more staring.

Until the silence was louder than my heartbeat and cleared up my confusion. No one was staring me down.

No one paid attention to my words as if I were spitting out lies.

It seemed that those in the room did not even know or see the discomfort laid on my soul when those words came out of my mouth, contorting who I was.

It was not until I went back home after that last class of the semester and looked at the pronouns listed in my school profile. They stared back brightly, as if they were trying to blind me. I hadn’t felt ready, but I felt tired. And that day I decided I was tired of feeling tired. I decided to be true to myself, and I went for it.

“She/They/Ella”

Inés Hernández-Ávila, Manifesto de Memoria: (Re)Living the Movement without Blinking

si no conformo

Eso es

No estoy conforme

Así que cómo me puedo conformar?

. . .

y doy gracias que mi lengua es mía y es libre

y grita y llora y canta

y demanda y reclama

por la justicia verdadera y la justiciera paz

While the path of being Queer Chicane is rocky and difficult, it can also be full of love and joy. The difficulty of coming into my queerness meant “finding community in the practice of navigating these identities in supportive spaces” (Orozco, 7) and finding these supportive spaces meant finding where I felt safe. Within the journey of my queer chicanidad, I am developing and expanding my identities across and (in)between spaces, which include but is not limited to, cultures, languages, nationalisms, borders, and histories (Cotera et al., 2018). Being Queer Chicane for me, has meant the bridging of all my identities to result in a whole entity that impacts my development and existence. My identities show up as being queer through my sexual orientation and gender identity, by identifying as pansexual and genderqueer with my use of she/they/ella pronouns. As well as, being the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, being born and raised in the United States, growing up within a cultural space that integrated the lives that came before me and the current experiences I faced in the US. Being Queer Chicane, means that my queerness is situated within my chicanidad, and vice versa, I cannot be who I am without my queerness or my chicanidad, I cannot (and dare not) to separate these identities, for that would leave my soul distorted and fragmented.

As of right now, my experience of being Queer Chicane has meant that only a couple of my family members know of my queerness as I have confided in them to do their best to understand and care for these identities. Being Queer Chicane has meant that the friendship group I speak of within this research, is my first and only group in which my Queer Chicanidad is not made an oddity or exception that is treaded around. My queerness has typically been treated as if it is too abstract and incomprehensible, yet, coupled with my chicanidad it has meant combatting perceived notions of my sexuality as a person of color. My experience has meant I am in the process of learning how to communicate to my mother of my queerness in Spanish so that I can do so when I am ready. Yet, most of my queer development has occurred in English-based environments and sometimes I feel lost in how to explain who I am. Being Queer Chicane means I am navigating feelings of shame, guilt, and the fear of “exposure”, alongside, the joy, determination, and pride I feel when I am in safe spaces that care for who I am, in all its entirety.

Even though this journey of being Queer Chicane is difficult, it protects me, loves me, and cares for me against colonial violence, which “can lead to our death, socially and physically” (Fukushima, 146). When I resist colonial violence, I resist against the death sought by (living) colonial systems. I would be left soul-less by this death. Through my resistance I have sought and found community at The University of Utah, with friends, in family, and in Salt Lake City, Utah. As I find these communities, I must ask myself again, and again, am I safe here? Am I safe there? With whom do I feel safe? Is this space safe enough?

As Inés Hernández-Ávila writes, “mi lengua es mía…y demanda, y reclama, por justiciera verdadera” (365) – my voice is mine and it demands and calls out for true justice (my translation) – my voice resists the silencing commands of oppression and it cries out, it fights back, it screams, and furthermore, it cares, loves, and seeks out my community. Being Queer Chicane, has meant that my sexuality and gender identity are “woven into [my] Chicanidad” (Cotera et al., 26). I cannot isolate any part of who I am and that reality means finding a space, one safe enough that pushes me to develop, explore, and care for my soul. To be Queer Chicane, is to a nepantlera, a soul and body caught (in)between spaces, and that lives a journey of navigating these spaces, from within and across. A nepantlera lives this journey by thriving in the ambiguity of all the spaces they inhabit (Gutierrez- Perez, 2018).

Yet, to be a nepantlera means “to live in constant danger as [I, we] continuously move and disrupt geographic, psychological, and symbolic borders between the known and unknown” (Gutierrez-Perez, 362). My body and my soul, journey across spaces, I move (in)between safe and non-safe spaces daily. I seek out safety and do so by creating and maintaining safe spaces and finding those who may share a similar journey with me. For being Queer Chicane (a nepantlera) means resisting a dangerous, lifeless, and soulless existence, where (living) colonial systems fight to erase me in death.

LITERATURE REVIEW

NAVIGATING OPPRESSION

This research centers my experience of living with(in) and (in)between Queer Chicane safe spaces, to highlight the creation and maintenance of these spaces within (living) colonial systems. I use the terms creation and maintenance to describe the continuous process of building safe spaces and maintaining their safety. Within these safe spaces, there is the constant struggle and resistance against oppression, to keep the safe space alive. By highlighting the continuous resistance that is the safe space and those maintaining it, is to contextualize how “oppression is intimate” (Verhage, 111) and works within the most intimate of spaces, creating spaces that are unsafe and without love. Oppression acts through every crevice and corner of our lives, it is intertwined into all the spaces we exist in, yet safe spaces resist by actively transforming the fear and violence of oppression into the safety, love, and care that support the creation and maintenance of safe spaces. Oppression through its intimacy seeps into our lives in an ongoing process, it impacts our lives through different forms of oppressive systems such as, queer antagonism, racism, “patriarchy and misogyny [that show] their suffocating reach over and over again in daily life” (Hernández Ávila, 363-364).

Oppression is intimate and we live with it, it breathes next to us, near us, and around us. It breathes life into the systems and institutions that we walk on, we work in, we study in, and we live in. Individual and systemic oppressive acts keep the lungs of this system breathing. In the same way that oppressive systems have existed in the past, continue to live on and oppress, and impact our future paths; memory, friendship, and safe spaces, are as intimate and as fluid across our generations and experiences. “To understand oppression as an intimate experience, or as “intimate terrorism” (Anzaldúa, 2012: 42), helps understand its affective dimension, its suffocating strength and deeply hidden roots, its inhabiting and restructuring of the body” (Verhage, 112), and this affects the way that safe spaces are created and maintained as the intimacy of oppression impacts our spaces and bodies.

Being Queer Chicane means that I am tackling multiple oppressive systems daily and my identity’s development is intertwined with these experiences where Roberto C. Orozco states “[f]or queer Latinx/a/o college students, having multiple minoritized identities entangles their identity development while working to resist systems of oppression including, but not limited to, queer antagonism, racism, sexism, and patriarchy” (Orozco, 2). The intersectionality of my lived oppression is a crucial point of understanding, of why it is important to acknowledge the existence of safe spaces centered around the inseparable identities of Queer Chicane. Of why, being Queer Chicane, navigating safe spaces and lack thereof, means living as my identities are oppressed and my existence represents resistance.

HEALING THROUGH THE FEELING OF SAFETY

Different avenues of resistance are utilized, analyzed, and lived; Annie Isabel Fukushima (2023) conceptualizes resistance through the act of witnessing (colonial) violence against the people around us, specifically violence committed against oppressed people and communities. The resistance of witnessing violence and acknowledging the oppression by its violence, is emphasized as an act that must continue. As Fukushima (2023) says if “trauma breaks our connection to ourselves and community, the work to heal from colonial violence are connections” (147), such connections made with community can and should include safe spaces. These safe spaces support individuals and communities to (re)build connections within and throughout the community through love and care.

Through this constant, daily, experience of oppression, is the coming together of people that form communities, collectives, and coalitions, which are “illuminated between bodies coming together to witness each other in time of pain, difficulty, and even, trauma, breaking the disconnection created by violence” (Fukushima, 145). Through this coming together are the efforts of creating and maintaining safe spaces to resist oppression, and non-safe spaces. This creation and maintenance of safe spaces signifies the intentional efforts to build connections and maintain their resistance as oppression works against those involved and the space itself.

The ways I conceptualize safe spaces in my work are intertwined with the aspect of feeling safe within these spaces, as compared to the emotions felt within the non-safe spaces. Sara Ahmed’s (2004) conceptualization of affective economies develops the ideology of emotions as agents of action and connection; therefore, emotions (of any kind) create an economy of value and action. Affective economies signify the attachment of emotions between the subject, communities, and collectives. Through the concept of affective economies, I use the understanding that emotions exist as powerful tools that (re)produce connections between individuals, communities, and ideologies. All emotions and their capability to act as agents of change in a cyclical economic fashion, pushes forward the importance of emotions, in which I highlight feeling safety as it relates to safe or non-safe spaces. Through my research, I grapple with safety as an emotion that acts as binding and protective agents of the safe space through efforts of love and care, specified within the context of resisting oppression from a Queer Chicane experience and perspective.

MEMORY AS RESISTANCE

The context of photography as it relates to memory within the Chicana movimiento, contextualized within political trauma, relates to the absence of memory and history being captured or the trauma of erasure (Chávez, 2018). Marisela Chávez examines photography used during the Chicana movimiento as a method of capturing memories that represent history and their connection to the present. Within the material, Chávez connects the struggle of finding evidence of historical movements, especially as they relate to Chicanas and the movimiento, to the post-memory concept of Marianne Hirsh, of how memories are (re)lived and (re)captured by people and generations “removed” from the photographed event. Yet, the use of photography transforms sentiments of the histories recorded, their abundance or erasure, and how people “removed” from these events can use memory within photographs to validate and represent alternative “herstories” (Chávez, 326). Chávez’s material intertwines with the focus of memory being a way to navigate safe spaces and how memory solidifies, validates, and “proves” the existence and resistance of safe spaces.

Memory has multiple uses; both as an act of recalling lived experiences and emotions within oppression to the resistance of erasure and silence. Through Ana-Maurine Lara’s (2017) work, memory provides the possibility to “remember murder, and disappearance, and violence, and loss and exile” (4) and is interpreted as powerful tools when these real, yet difficult emotions are responded by us, such as when “colonialities are met with resistance [and] memory [becomes] a site of struggle and resistance” (Fukushima, 138-139). Memory is a space in which lived experiences are documented and utilized to create and maintain a safe space; memory and safe spaces become connected to counteract the impact of oppression.

Ana-Maurine Lara describes their intention behind the use of the brackets of “[Afro] [Latinx] [Queers],” they are meant to highlight the (historical) significance of the inseparable identities of Afro, Latinx, and Queer, within the context of being completely named. The intentionality is made explicit, as Lara examines the dominating systems of oppression and their impacts on our identities, our lived experiences, our histories, and our memories.

Taking inspiration from Lara’s work, I use brackets throughout my research as they relate to (living) colonial systems and crossing (in)between safe, and non-safe, spaces. Colonial systems are very alive, and I intend to emphasis this by using “(living);” colonial systems are not dead but have changed methods and appearances throughout the last six centuries in the Americas. Colonial systems breathe with lungs fueled by individual and systemic acts of hate and ignorance. Similarly, as a Queer Chicane, my whole existence has been about crossing spaces and balancing a space of my own to develop my identities (Anzaldúa, 1987). Yet, I did not want this crossing to seem as if they do not interact between each other, as I cross from non-safe spaces to safe spaces, I am moving (in)between them, as I navigate my resistance within the safe space to counteract the damaging impacts of non-safe spaces. Yet, I cannot dwell permanently within the safe spaces, and I must continue the journey (in)between these spaces.

IDENTITY IN SPACES

Through my work of non-safe spaces, I focus on the act of crossing (in)between these spaces, of the normativity of existing within non-safe spaces, yet, crossing into safety. Gloria Anzaldúa’s reading Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), de/constructs the concept of existing within the borderlands. The breakdown of a borderland existence is examined through the connection of the people that live (in)between these borderland spaces, both physically and symbolically. Anzaldúa analyzes how the borderlands/Frontera becomes a space, caused by the clash of land “borders,” a clash of people, a clash of communities, and a clash of cultures. Then, from these clashes, are “births” of new(er) cultures, communities, and identities, which are impacted by the ‘leftover’ emotions of the clashes that “created” them. Such products of these clashes include Chicanes, being Chicane has meant a life within the borderlands and (in)between spaces, identities, and communities from the beginning.

Contextualizing lived experiences means understanding the identities of the self and how this impacts the development of connection to others. Mariana Ortega (2015) examines the conceptualization of the self as intertwined to identity and lived experience. Ortega emphasizes the positionality of the self as a social location based on identity and its relation to existing within the spaces that form from these identities. Ortega furthers the concept by how the self within this context transforms, splits, and/or conforms. Similarly to the way that Anzaldúa constructs the development of the Chicane identity within the borderlands. These transformations and the development of these identities are dictated by the person of the self, the environment in which the self exists, and the collective/individual of the self. This is where the connection between the self and identity exists, how the understanding of the self within one’s social location leads to understanding the identities that are impacted by the structures of power in which the self is being navigated within and out of.

As Ortega mentions, “the importance of Borderlands/La Frontera lies not only in Anzaldúa’s multi-faceted writing that includes theory, mythology, prose, and poetry, but also in its introduction of a new kind of self, the new mestiza” (Ortega, 245-246). This new mestiza understanding focuses on the existence of the self (in)between spaces, constantly displaced from one space to another, throughout this experience the self continues to develop as it moves and transforms. Yet, this displacement and “state of in-betweenness” (Ortega, 246), leads to many possibilities of the development of the identity that has navigated a complex journey across multiple spaces, that of which it does not conform to. This development of the self (in)between spaces as it transforms, highlights the development of the Queer Chicane identity as it navigates non-safe and safe spaces.

METHODS

This research project employs autoethnography methods, as it enables the researcher’s “ability to transform individuals and bring them into community” (Ellis and Calafell, 2020). I use autoethnography as a representation of my experiences to highlight and validate the process of seeking, creating, maintaining, and navigating safe spaces. The lived experiences I call upon within the project demonstrate the significance of connection and building community as a form of resistance, specifically safe spaces. This connects to the foundation of autoethnography as a social justice focused method as it centers on the aspect of reclaiming silenced voices and highlighting oppressed experiences (Ellis and Calafell, 2020).

Autoethnography in this project is employed through retrospective memory captured through written excerpts, photographs, reflection processes, and a literature review. My autoethnography incorporates memory excerpts and photographs from the Fall 2024 Queer Advocacy Alternative Break in San Francisco, California, from experiences with friends (i.e., in Duck Creek Village, Utah and Snoqualmie, Washington), and the experience of coming into my genderqueer pronouns in Salt Lake City, Utah. I employ reflective processes to determine emotions attached to friends within safe spaces (and non-safe spaces), alongside, a literature review based on emotions (Ahmed, 2004), space (Anzaldúa, 1987; Verhage, 2014; Ortega, 2015), memory (Chávez, 2018; Hernández-Ávila, 2018; Lara, 2017; Fukushima, 2023), and resistance (Orozco, 2024; Fukushima, 2023).

The main consideration was the necessity of anonymity and maintaining humanizing factors within the memories and photos. By incorporating memories, I implemented anonymity by using pseudonyms, which provides privacy for those involved in my memory but prevents dehumanization through appropriate representation (i.e., no use of letters, initials, or numbers). Within the written aspect of the memory was the consideration of not misrepresenting the individuals or misguiding the content of the memory. This was accomplished by not using direct quotes as memory shifts across time and cannot be made accurate. Alongside the written aspect, was the necessary process of maintaining the memory excerpt within the space of the memory and separate from the reflective and analytical process. This was demonstrated by thorough revisions that were constantly reviewed for the removal of any external edits that occurred during the writing process.

With the autoethnography, I had to choose which memories to highlight, document, then analyze. I chose a memory that focuses on the moment when I asked myself about my safe spaces and how I feel safety, and two memories that emphasis the feeling of safe spaces through my friendships. Therefore, I analyzed the first moments of realizing I felt safe with my friends and later, when this connection of safety was deepened. Lastly, I chose a memory to show my feelings as I came into my genderqueer pronouns (she/they/ella), to highlight the experience of making my pronouns known. Yet, by recalling these memories, I must choose what is most significant within these lived experiences and how to relay them through the written excerpts.

Through this project, I had to learn to be as considerate as I could be about my memories and about what I was remembering. As I wrote, it had become harder and harder to prevent my reflective thoughts coming through the memory and establishing themselves between the lines. Yet, with much work, the memories I present show the internal thoughts, tensions, and questions I had, at the moment of the experience. Memory, or the act of remembering, is a powerful and emotional tool, which can be wielded by any person but precise “memory is neither possible nor practical, for something is always forgotten. We forget despite our best efforts, and we also forget because powerful interests often actively suppress memory” (Nguyen, 10). We counteract this suppression by retelling and acknowledging the memories within “the context of political, personal, and social transformation” (Cotera et al., 26), where we must acknowledge that our memories are impacted by the context in which they were experienced and the context in which we are remembering them.

The documentation of lived experiences and memory is important to communities as it is one of many methods to keep the memory alive and to acknowledge the memory, and what it represents for the community. One’s memory can be used to relay experiences of oppression and discrimination, yet, “this form of remembering is painful because it involves remembering not just what colonization was about, but what being dehumanized mean(s) for our own [culture]” (Lara, 4), furthermore, these painful experiences range from daily occurrences to intense events of hate and ignorance. Within the queer Chicane community, the context around memory must be acknowledged as tools of resistance against oppression, both in the ways they validate these experiences of living within colonial systems and the way memory can work to resist against oppressive practices that push to steal, distort, and conceal these experiences.

Through my process of revisiting memories, I am documenting the memory as a representation of my experiences within safe spaces and my questioning of it, as well as, documenting my feelings within these safe spaces. Through this documentation of my memories, I am preventing them from being completely forgotten, stolen, and/or distorted. I am keeping autonomy over my interpretation of my memories, how they impacted me, and what they represent. Within this project, the powerful tool of memory, serves to revisit safe spaces through my personal lived experiences and to resist against the silencing of these lived experiences through its documentation.

I resist by documenting my lived experiences, I resist by documenting them to be acknowledged, and I resist by making sure these experiences are not erased, dismissed, and/or silenced. Through my work of revisiting my memories, I focus on the positive aspects from the experiences of asking myself about safety and identifying my safe spaces by centering on my friendships. By revisiting my memories and analyzing why friendship had become immensely important to understand my safe spaces, I documented these important memories; these memories that of which provide a perspective of how a Queer Chicane (myself) navigates her safe spaces and how they use memory to proceed with this personal navigation of her safe spaces.

RESULTS, ANALYSIS, & DISCUSSION

AND IN SAN FRANCISCO, I ASKED MYSELF, HOW DO I FEEL IN SAFE SPACES?

Brittney Mellin in San Francisco, California

October 2024

After dinner, Mark asked us to sit comfortably in the living room. Again, I decided to sit on the steps that led into the kitchen, meanwhile others took seats on the cream fabric couch or on the floor around the glass coffee table. After a few days of having been in San Francisco, I learned to sit towards the corner to avoid the sunlight from across the room hitting me directly in the eyes. Did it work all the time? No. Did I still try it? Yes. With it being late into the night and the sunset all gone, the sun was no longer a threat to my eyes as I sat on the two steps.

Kate raised their hands, and a conversation ensued. Kate reflected on the day, on how we met with organizations, how the day went, and how we connected to the different possibilities of community coming together. I reflected with Kate on how we connected to the organization of today, connected with each other, and understood that although we feel safer here, it does not always guarantee safety. Kate continued and mentioned that as queer people, we usually rely on each other to build emotional safe spaces, as in the end, we navigate the feeling of non-safety all the time.

Brian raised their hand and discussed how they liked the experience of meeting with community partners in San Francisco and seeing what is implemented in the community. Brian wondered why we do not have the same opportunities in Utah. We all sat with this, the feeling of knowing we will go back to a place that does not feel as safe, and where it is harder to find safe spaces like those we visited in San Francisco. I felt with the end of the break coming up that I would miss the community partners we had connected with, the variety of support systems for the queer and trans communities that are not as established in Utah, and with these thoughts, a bittersweet feeling had washed over me.

Valentino, who sat on the steps near me, spoke about how they felt. They reminded us of our reality – Utah is not San Francisco. We visited places that have years of building and creating community, and they do so with lots of difficulty. Valentino had always been good with redirecting the group away from romanticizing or idolizing San Francisco. I sat with Valentino’s words and attempted to think on what these safe spaces looked and felt like in Utah.

The memory excerpt written above and titled “And in San Francisco, I asked myself, how do I feel in safe spaces?” speaks to the event in my life that acted as a catalyst to my deep thinking of where I navigate safe spaces, with whom, and how safe spaces are being created and maintained. While in San Francisco, the alternative break consisted of meeting with organizations that focused their efforts on LGBTQIA+ communities, especially to provide supportive resources and spaces. With these experiences, I witnessed the fight and struggle of these organizations to provide these resources and make them accessible to the Queer/Trans community. With these experiences and the planned end-of-day reflections, the questions of how I feel in safe spaces, flowed through my mind on those two steps that bordered the kitchen and living room in San Francisco. Later, these questions pushed me to find with whom and where, I went from surviving non-safe spaces to thriving in safe spaces.

Through the work of autoethnography, the importance of memory grew and developed into symbols of my safe spaces, representing where I felt safe, with whom, and what I felt in those spaces. Through memory, came the perspective of friendships being connections of resistance and safety. By connecting safe spaces to friendships, I harnessed the power of memory; of how “memories are signs and products of power, and in turn, they service power” (Nguyen, 15). Memories are powerful, and through the act of remembering, we have an opportunity to revisit and connect back to feeling safe. The act of remembering safety does not leave it in the past, it drives forward and reconnects us back to these spaces, where we can maintain safety. We maintain safety through daily, ongoing acts of resistance, reflection, and connection through emotions. Memories transport us back to past events, to emotions that are developing throughout time, and back to the connections we have to the people within the memory. Yet, it matters what is done with the memory and how its power is harnessed and developed. Our responses to memories matter, “we can remember murder, and disappearance, and violence, and loss and exile and our response to that pain includes love, and dance, and prayer, and song, and poetry” (Lara, 4). Within these responses, I add safety, for even if the focus of my memories is positive, they do not deny the reality of all the memories and times of being and of surviving, within non-safe spaces. For it is the reality of surviving these non-safe spaces that safe spaces are necessary, it is why they are built, developed, labored for, loved for, created, then maintained.

Safe spaces are an intimate act of resistance, intimate within their emotionality and intimate within its connection between those involved, for safe spaces are not a given but an ongoing process to which people commit to. This aspect of intimacy is also reflected within oppression and how oppression lives within every corner, crevice, and detail of our lives. Oppression is an intimate process, in both how it impacts the individual and community, and how the existence of oppression within intimate spaces deepens the difficulty of removing oneself from these non-spaces to cross into safe spaces. Contextualizing how “oppression is intimate” (Verhage, 111), furthers the understanding of how oppression leaves the most intimate of spaces, unsafe and without love which people must actively counteract and resist.

AND IN UTAH, I ASKED MYSELF, AM I FEELING SAFE WITH MY FRIENDS?

Brittney Mellin in Duck Creek Village, Utah

October 2023

I looked out to the trees, all the types that I cannot name, and I felt the wind wrap around me. It was cold and I was shivering, yet I focused on how sad I was that this was the beginning to the end of my first camping trip. One night and two days with my friends, I had been so excited and so nervous. And now I was sad to leave the park. Another wind gust hit me, and I looked up to see two bluejays flying around each other. My friends came back from using the bathroom and came to watch the birds fly at and with each other, next to me. After seeing my friends, a bit of that sadness disappeared and was replaced with anticipation. The type that made me smile for the days we would continue to share, for when our connections would deepen, and we could depend on each other even more. It felt like the friends around me would be permanent in my life if I had anything to say about it.

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us – the poet –

whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.

Audre Lorde, Poetry Is Not a Luxury in Sister Outsider

When I realized I was safe, it was not this switch of a mental lightbulb moment but after I revisited the conversations with friends when we went camping. These conversations consisted of our upbringings and what we wanted from our education; I noticed by my words, my actions, and the way I joked around, that these friends were safe. My mind caught up to my body and the emotions I felt. In this safety, I had an opportunity to experience joy and my queer Chicanidad to its fullest, most expansive, potential.

With this trip, I realized that I was surrounded by friends to whom my queerness was not something to not talk about because they did not understand. One where my queer chicanidad was not “so different” that no one attempted to relate or connect. I was not the odd one out with my identities and that shift, that transformation into feeling safe, was realized with this one-night camping trip experience with my friends.

Safe spaces are incredibly important for the development of an individual, of a community, and the ability to survive and live within non-safe spaces (Orozco, 2024). The creation and maintenance of safe spaces is an intimate, ongoing process between the people involved, and it is difficult as well as emotional (Verhage, 2014). Even with safe spaces being an important part in the process of going from survival in non-safe spaces to thriving in our resistance, “exploring and forming queer and Latinx/a/o identities can be a fraught process that comes with multiple negotiations with self, with others, and the social world around them” (Orozco, 2). These negotiations that occur within the exploration and formation of queer Latinx/a/o identity, also occurs within safe spaces in respect to the people within the space, negotiating with intentionality to support and maintain safety.

The intentionality that I speak of shows up in explicit and implicit ways with my friends as we navigate our safe spaces. The main aspect of this intentionality relies on the communication within the safe space, the acknowledgement that the safe space is being maintained between each other, and how non-safe spaces impacts us differently, for oppression is not a one-size fits all. This communication shows up with our conversations which tackle how we struggle with oppression (from individual to systemic acts) and how we can show care for each other. These conversations connect us to an emotional level of pain and suffering, as well as love and care that can be explored within the safety of our space. These friendships are developed through intentional communication, committed care, and “reciprocal trust” (Basarudin and Bhattacharya, 52). This trust relies on my friends and I, to feel as though we can communicate our struggles and be cared for as we explore our emotions within these struggles, even if the struggles come from within the friend group.

Through our intentional efforts towards safe spaces, we can identify the ways we all feel and experience harm, and the ways that we can come together to support each other through this harm to provide a safe space that fosters joy and resistance. Yet, these harms can manifest and occur from each other so through this friendship and our actions to maintain safety, we work towards reciprocal trust and accountability. This accountability “allow[s] us to better interrogate how power operate[s] through our friendship, name each other’s oppressive actions, and call out absences or erasures in our resistance” (Nguyen et al., 17). If we are going to maintain the safety within our friendship, we must acknowledge the differences amongst our identities and lived experiences as they change the way our dynamics will care and/or harm each other.

This reality that my friends and I experience oppression, harm, safety, and resistance differently, leads to the necessity to collectively create and maintain a safe space that is truly as safe as possible, for all of us involved. Achieving safety is an ongoing process, which requires the intentionality I have spoken of, such as communication and commitment. As well as the ability to hold each other accountable when we are fostering the development and the exploration of our identities within these safe spaces. This exploration and development of our identities, especially as Queer Chicanes, is a difficult and emotional process, yet our safe spaces can be the experiences in which we learn that “we [are] not alone and [find] courage in one another” (Nguyen et al., 16). We understand that our safe spaces are intimate and our emotional connections with others must acknowledge each other’s positionality and how we can collectivize, while holding each other responsible for one’s actions and behaviors.

AND WITH FRIENDS, I ASKED MYSELF, HOW ARE WE MAINTAINING SAFETY?

Brittney Mellin in Snoqualmie, Washington

March 2025

On our last night in Seattle, Washington, we all talked about how stressed we would be with our day driving back to Utah. We did not feel ready to leave Seattle, even if it had been a struggle when I felt that my bones internalized the humid and frigid weather, every single day. We had put “Twin Peaks” on the television, which had been another attempt to finish the series, the horror-like drama that took place in Snoqualmie, Washington. Yet, as we sat on the pull-out bed and extra couch, we all talked about how busy and stressed we would be back in Utah.

Two of us were working on our honors Thesis, and we were anxious over the upcoming deadlines and the worry of not being able to complete it. One of us was conflicted with which majors to declare and did not want to feel as though they were wasting time and money. They felt that time was up, and they had to choose, but what would they do? The last of the group still had another full year of school before graduating and as they got closer to the end there was this unsettled feeling clouding their expectations for their last year. In a natural way, our conversation that night had dived into these struggles, and we all laid them out for the group to see. During these conversations, we brought up how we could help each other, how we could stay in contact but not worry about “having” to meet up, and about how we all believed in each other to push through and succeed. We all had a conversation about how neither of us doubted the other and we all genuinely believed that we would make it past these struggles and be there for each other.

When I think back to this trip with my friends, I am reminded of the emotional rollercoaster I experienced. I think back to how we supported each other in the joys and struggles of this trip, especially when it came to coming back home (to Utah). We were all feeling nervous about leaving Seattle, as it meant that the end of the semester was moving in closer and closer. The end of the semester signaled an immense change in our lives at school and a change in the dynamic of our friendship, as two of us would graduate and no longer be undergraduate students. Gutierrez-Perez states “in higher education, there are not a lot of Chicanas/os because systemic structures of oppression continue to hold my community within its grasp. Yosso and Solózano report that out of 100 Chicana/o students that enter elementary school less than one (.02%) will achieve a doctoral degree” (Gutierrez-Perez, 360). He continues the conversation by examining how his intersectionality of being queer, makes his existence an “anomaly” (360) within academia. These perceptions of his identity and how he navigates academia, parallels to the experiences of my educational journey and those of two out of the three in the friendship group I mention. We navigate non-safe spaces, which includes academia, and must develop our identities in ways that keep us safe from the systemic structures of oppression. I do this through our friendship and its maintenance as a safe space.

This conversation was also about making sure we were there for each other, that we would work hard to be each other’s encouragement to complete our responsibilities and complete them well. We wanted to be there for each other, and we wanted to provide adequate support for each other, since we all handle stress so differently. This conversation helped relieve some of the stress of wanting to make sure I remained a good friend, even as I felt time slipping from my fingers as my graduation date approached. We communicated what each other’s support could be like during this stressful time, and I felt safe with my honesty and theirs. I felt safe to share my worries and where I struggled, and I felt safe to communicate what I could give and what I may need during this time. I felt safe.

CONCLUSION: SAFE SPACES AND THE RESISTANCE TO THRIVE

Compañeros míos yo cumplo mi papel luchando con lo mejor que tengo*

With the best that I’ve got.

Maya Chinchilla, Solidarity Baby in The Cha Cha Files

With a focus on oppression as being intimate, of safe spaces as an ongoing form of resistance, and how memory helps us within the creation and maintenance of safe spaces, the importance of these safe spaces from a Queer Chicane perspective lies within the connection and development between the individuals within the space. “Being in spaces that allow for the exploration of one’s multiple identities while feeling supported to question and form a more authentic reality is important in the development process of queer Latinx/a/o people” (Orozco, 2). A key aspect of safe spaces is the ability to create and hold a space that provides safety that supports the development of people’s identities, in a way that helps them understand who they are, how these individuals choose to navigate their identities, and how they connect to others, especially those within their communities.

The focus of my project was this internal drive of internalizing and representing how existence is resistance; when all your identities are oppressed and one must navigate this oppression, constantly surviving, they are also navigating safety and non-safety. Yet, through this highlight of existence as resistance, I aimed to push forward and understand how safe spaces foster the shift from survival to thriving. With this project, memory and friendships served as methods of accessing my ways of thriving, when all institutions and systems are stacked against me and my joy.

By utilizing memory and friendships as avenues of safe spaces, I presented my personal navigation of crossing (in)between non-safe spaces and safe spaces. I presented how I develop my queer chicanidad, my joy and care, and my resistance, as I aim to thrive and not only survive. I am surviving and resisting oppression my whole life, every day is a battle against the next ignorant individual, the next policy, and the next institution, and this state of survival should be elevated into thriving. Through the research project, I examine friendships and memories as methods I recognize to be used in my own life. At the core of these methods are emotions and the focus of feeling safe.

Memory and friendships help Queer Chicanes navigate safe spaces as a form of resistance.

My identities cannot be broken, split, mended, partially forgotten, or stolen, and do not get oppressed separately. My life as a Queer Chicana/e, means that every corner of my life exists within the intersection of being queer in my sexuality and gender, of being chicane, of being a first- generation US-born citizen in my family, of being femme-presenting, and of being assigned female at birth. My oppression entangles every aspect of existence within my identities; my queerness and my chicanidad have furthered my understanding of oppression, of inseparable identities, and how existence can be resistance, but the resistance does not stop at existence. Through my work, safe spaces are a resistance, the emotions of safety, love, and care, are acts of resistance against everyday oppression. Safe spaces push us forward into connecting on an emotional level that moves us past survival and into thriving within our identities and the joy it can bring.

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