In this premiere episode of “Bellies Out!” Joe Baez interviews Mx. André Terrel Jackson. André talks about their childhood, their current relationship with their body, what it’s like dating in the bear scene, and their visions for fat politics.

You can find Joe on Instagram as @thejoebaez. You can connect with André on Twitter, Hive Social, TikTok and Instagram at @TrickiVisaj. You can also connect with André on their personal Instagram which is @andreterreljackson. You can find all of André’s work on their website AndreTerrelJackson.com.

In this second episode of “Bellies Out!” Joe Baez interviews Dr. Caleb Luna. Caleb talks about their childhood, their disability, their health and movement practices, chub/chaser dynamics, and the state of fat politics today. You can find Joe on Instagram at @thejoebaez. You can follow Caleb on Instagram and Twitter at @dr_chairbreaker. You can also get in touch with them at their website, Caleb-luna.com.

This audio will take you through the life of a one Black, nonbinary, queer, disabled person. You will be exposed to the mundane everyday tasks associated with a bodymind that is mine. Have you ever woken up and forgot to put on your ears?! I hope that you gain a little perspective outside of the idea that Blackness begins at struggle, that disability is always sad, and queerness is unwanted. Each of these facets of my identity is infused in all of the others. Come with me into a world of the ordinary joys.

Call and response has an important history in traditional West African music, especially in spiritual music and protest movements. Although the specific expression of this practice varies across the diaspora depending on the geographic location and musical lineage of practitioners, there are striking similarities in seemingly disparate locations, like the southern United States, Cuba, and northern Brazil. The preservation of call and response practices within these locations (and many others) suggests the importance of collectivity when healing from systemic oppression.

With this interest in mind, David Diaz invites students to join into this call and response by listening to and producing sounds and/or movements as they are comfortable. In joining a collective, there is also space for individuality, and even dissonance. In that interest, students can recognize the shared histories and practices that the music reveals, as well as the particularities of specific cultures and historical actors.

Oftentimes, when we engage with the framework of decolonization, it comes from a very specific theoretical strand within the academy and does not include or interconnect with the lives of Indigenous Peoples, especially those who have survived and continue to survive genocide. This OER engages with the idea of decolonization through a short narrative that highlights a conversation from a grandchild and their grandmother. The story does not adhere to a linear format of time, yet goes back and forth between the past and present, an almost cyclical reflections as one plans and figures out their future. The work of decolonization requires an entire epistemological, ontological, axiological, and methodological shift internally and externally. This is simply the beginning of a lifetime commitment.

Glossary
ahéhee’ – thank you
k’ad – phrase used to end a conversation or start a new one
kinaaldá – women becoming ceremony
nahjee’ – phrase used for expressing that I’m finished and/or go away.
shídeezhí – my little sister
shimásaní – my grandma
shiyazhí – my little one
yadilah – phrase used in frustration

References
Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Zed Books.
Tuck, E., & Yang, K. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society, 1(1), 1-40.

What can sports tell us about our relationship to power and resistance? In this audio short, I reflect upon my experience at the Final between Spain and England at the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup in Sydney, Australia and explore how women athletes confront and challenge deeply entrenched gender inequities on and off the playing field.

El chupacabra is an urban legend sourced from Puerto Rico that has been rumored to roam the island since the 1970s. But upon further inspection of these legends, where does el chupacabra actually come from? When was he first conceived in the Puerto Rican cultural imaginary? This audio short examines the lore of el chupacabra and interprets its symbolism amidst a fraught historical narrative.

Written & edited by May Santiago
Audio recordings & sound design by May Santiago

Opening audio is “Goatsucker” by The Killers, courtesy of Gordy, The Victims Fanclub & Island Records.
Bomba audio in Loíza, Puerto Rico from April 27, 2021 courtesy of Taino Vision LLC.
Archival audio of Madelyne Tolentino’s interview with Carmen Jovet courtesy of Borinken TV.

Environmental Design, House Music, and Queer Kinship defines environmental design then defines kinship as a familial relationship that is outside of the traditional family structure. Queer kinship is a practice and formation that is primarily a survival and care work framework. The short discusses the many Black LGBTQ owned bars and lounges that have been shuttered over the years and the implications of legislation on Black LGBTQ public culture.

The house music was a generous gift from DJ Boomer’s playlist, “Keep This Fire Burning.”

This episode summarizes and reflects on the presence of gay populations in postsocialist Chinese society, especially in the two well-known films Lan Yu and East Palace, West Palace.

Combining a review of Xie Jin’s Two Stage Sisters and a reflection on personal history, this episode attempts to introduce the presence of lesbianism in socialist and postsocialist Chinese society.

Gentrification and Queer Time was written as a response to the senseless murder of O’Shae Sibley, a Black gay dancer who was fatally stabbed in Brooklyn, New York’s Midwood neighborhood. This short introduces gentrification as a shift in the land costs and a shift in demographics. Queer time is introduced as a non-traditional time-system that is realized and appropriated by queer people for their survival at time.

Gentrification and Queer Time uses sounds from The Shrine, which is a music venue in Harlem, New York.

Dr. Caitlin Gunn and Dr. Caty Taborda created this trauma-informed, culturally responsive, gender neutral curriculum for people who have been impacted by domestic violence. It is offered here as an openly licensed educational resource.

Unlike most traditional domestic violence educational content, this curriculum was developed through an understanding of feminist, queer, and critical race theories. Lessons and group sessions refocus violent and toxic masculinities as the central cultural forces to be interrogated, understood, and challenged. This serves to provide maximum flexibility while also neutralizing language otherwise condemning and reducing individuals to identities of “abuser” and “victim.”

The curriculum is appropriate for ages 16 and up, with particular benefits for those ages 16 through 21. It is applicable to people and groups of all genders – women, men, non-binary and gender-fluid people, and mixed gender groups. It was designed for in-person facilitation (with printable handouts) but could be adapted for online settings.

American folklore is full of stories drawn from settler-colonial histories. Within that broad arena, tales of paranormal violence, battles with Indigenous ghosts, and “demonic” Natives continue to be popular story devices even today. These stories thus serve as effective tools for promoting certain ideas about Indigenous peoples, their resistance to colonial conquest, and their place in modern life. This episode takes a look at some of the first instances of authors using the trope of the “Native Burial Ground” in their fictional horror stories. Unsurprisingly, these tales of woe have real-life origins, collaborators, and consequences.

Music:
Holizna Radio, “I Love Myself More Than Anyone Else”

Sound Bites:
Horror Studio 1, episode: “3 TRUE SCARY Native American/Indian Burial Ground Ghost Stories”
Exploring With Cody, episode: “HAUNTED INDIAN BURIAL GROUNDS SWAMP AT NIGHT!”
Moe Sargi, “SOMETHING GRABBED ME IN THE HAUNTED NATIVE BURIAL GROUND ft OMARGOSHTV”

Special thank you to Horror Studio, Exploring with Cody, and Moe Sargi for allowing me to include some of their audio in this episode. Thank you, too, to Holizna Radio for graciously letting me use some of his wonderful music for this episode.

This entire project is in collaboration with The Pedagogy Lab. I wish to specially thank The Pedagogy Lab for the opportunity to work with them and my wonderful cohort. Lastly, I would also like to thank Ronald Young for his sound and technical expertise putting these episodes together.

“‘I would have just lived’: Surviving Japanese internment during WWII” (Part 1) is the first of a two part series that features the oral history testimony of Mitsue Salador and was written, researched, and recorded by Tatiana Bryant, with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. Listeners should note in advance that this audio Open Educational Resource includes themes of grief, xenophobia, racism, and war.

In the early 1940s, Japanese American teenager Mitsue Salador was directed to go to college for nursing because Japanese women weren’t hired as teachers at white schools. Dismayed, she entered college in Portland, OR to study nursing briefly, before she was forced into an urban detention center for people of Japanese heritage after Pearl Harbor. Mitsue organized a loophole escape from the detention center by applying to a college in the Midwest where she would be deemed as less of a potential threat away from active war theaters. Isolated from her family, she continued her education while her parents and youngest sibling survived an internment camp and older siblings navigated college and active military service. In Part 1, Mitsue Salador of Long Island, NY via Hood River, OR, talks about her lived experience as a college student and daughter of Japanese immigrants before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“‘I would have just lived’: Surviving Japanese internment during WWII (Part 2)” is the second of a two part series that features the oral history testimony of Mitsue Salador and was written, researched, and recorded by Tatiana Bryant, with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. Listeners should note in advance that this audio Open Educational Resource includes themes of grief, xenophobia, racism, and war.

In the early 1940s, Japanese American teenager Mitsue Salador was directed to go to college for nursing because Japanese women weren’t hired as teachers at white schools. Dismayed, she entered college in Portland, OR to study nursing briefly, before she was forced into an urban detention center for people of Japanese heritage after Pearl Harbor. Mitsue organized a loophole escape from the detention center by applying to a college in the Midwest where she would be deemed as less of a potential threat away from active war theaters. Isolated from her family, she continued her education while her parents and youngest sibling survived an internment camp and older siblings navigated college and active military service.

In Part 2, Mitsue Salador of Long Island, NY via Hood River, OR, talks about her lived experience as a college student and daughter of Japanese immigrants forced to relocate to a detention center after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The history of Indigenous Peoples within the US Empire is a tale of both violence and survivance, which can be difficult to engage and work through for many. This OER uses the process of a body scan, a mindfulness technique, to really get folks comfortable with their body and notice what is happening internally while using poetry as a medium to talk about the history of the Diné, or the Navajo, my community. Yet, this violence is not only unique to many Indigenous communities, but is something that many other marginalized communities have something in common as we all survive and navigate systems of exploitation and oppression in a world that denies us love and freedom. This OER ends with a reminder of how beautiful, brilliant and powerful we are and that our stories of resistance need to be shared and celebrated.

What is disability justice and how is it connected to everyday lived experiences? This piece was conceptualized through a disabled lens. Listeners are taken through each of my diagnoses as a way to exercise vulnerability, knowledge sharing, and connectivity. Disability justice is a political and social stance that intricately weaves together social identities and liberation with disability at the core. This work is important because all too often disabled people are pushed out of the spotlight and discouraged from acknowledging who we are. There was an intentional choice here to highlight the “unruly” body and mind that I have because it makes some people uncomfortable. I want folks to lean into the discomfort they might feel when discussing (or not discussing) disability.

This offering is an approximately ten-minute audio introduction to Afrofuturism. Approachable and digestible, this audio short guides students to engage with Afrofuturism not only as an analytic tool but as a conceptual approach to community organizing and creative work. At the end, students are invited into two different writing prompts. The short concludes with approximately 1 minute of instrumental music, no voice-over.

There continues to be a lack of health sex education that is queer and trans inclusive. Many of us are not exposed to our resources until later in life yet must learn everything regarding heterosexual sex practices and resources. This feels extremely homophobic and transphobic given the health induced epidemic we as a community experienced 40 years ago during the HIV/AIDS crisis. Now, in the midst of another global pandemic, reminiscent of survival’s guilt and potential recollections of the past and feelings of “we’ve been here before," we must educate and provide adequate resources around health education. In this short I engage in a reflective platíca where I revisit the first date with my partner where I learn about his status of being HIV+. The aim is to understand how we can move towards destigmatizing sex in our communities that are impacted by HIV and provide current resources, practices, and ultimately share how I am positively in love.

Prosthetic memories are a form of public memory built in public sites. In this audio short, the old abandoned cinemas and their histories & ghosts are explored through the idea of prosthetic memories. What stories have been told in these abandoned buildings? What stories do they tell now?

Written & edited by May Santiago
Audio recordings & sound design by May Santiago

Archival audio of Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894) courtesy of Edision Film Archive via Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Archival audio of Jack’s Joke (1913) courtesy of Edison Film Archive via Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Archival audio of “Aloma” from Aloma of the South Seas (1926) courtesy of Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Archival audio of Universal Newsreel Volume 27, Release 550 (1954) courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Archival audio of Atom for the Americas (1967) courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Archival audio of Universal Newsreel Volume 40, Release 59 (1967) courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Archival audio of La revolución nacionalista (1950) courtesy of Edgardo Huertas.
Archival audio of “Sara” performed by Quinteto Borinquen from August 3, 1916 courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings & Arhoolie Records.