The Alchemist Manifesto

We invite you to listen to our newest episode where we sit down with one of the editors of the new book, Transmovimientos: Latinx Queer Migrations, Bodies and Spaces, Dr. Eddy Alvarez Jr. and contributors Bamby Salcedo, José Manuel Santillana and Dr. Katherine Steelman. Our conversation centers on the significance of healing as an in-roads into the process of editing and writing such a critical intervention into the fields of Chicanx and Latinx Studies. Sending peace and love your way. Episode is now streaming.

In the spirit of pausing and challenging ideas of productivity, we took a several month hiatus from the podcast. Deep into teaching during the pandemic, we need a space to unwind, clear our minds and rest. We thank you so much for still engaging the podcast and for catching up with us right where we left off. In our previous episodes in Season 2, we have spent time discussing new books and projects that center the importance of contemplating race and the structures that hurt and harm our spirits. In this episode, we center what we read and meditated with throughout the summer and how it is informing our evolution in and beyond the classroom. We start discussing an essay by bell hooks entitled “building a community of love: bell hooks and Thich Nanh Hanh” and center how mindfulness and Buddhism have become vital avenues of cultivating peace, compassion and community building in our classrooms. We also reference our dear friend and avid listener of the podcast', Dr. Anita Tijerina Revilla's beautiful work “Attempted Spirit Murder: Who Are Your Spirit Protectors and Your Spirit Restores?”. We also bring together Natalie Avalos' essay “Land-Based Ethics and Settler Solidarity in a Time of Corona and Revolution” with David Sheff and Jarvis Jay Master's The Buddhist on Death Row: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place,” and Pema Chödrön When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice For Difficult Times. By combining our studies and engagement with Buddhism, racism and contemplation, we welcome you to a conversation where we discuss how we are trying to walk in the world with love and compassion even and most especially in intellectual/academic institutions where this is often not the norm.

We welcome the editors of the newly released book Sparked: George Floyd, Racism and the Progressive Illusion, Dr. Walt Jacobs, Dean of the College of Social Sciences San Jose State University, Dr. Wendy Thompson Taiwo Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Dr. Amy August Assistant Professor of Sociology and Assistant Director of the Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Social Change to discuss the worthy work they did in producing this text as a way of contemplating the way communities of color responded to the execution of our beloved brother George Floyd. Join us for an intimate discussion of healing and writing, resisting police violence, navigating racialized traumascapes, and the importance of rupturing progressive illusions of Minneapolis and the US. Episode now streaming.

We are joined today by Janelle Olivia Levy, who along with myself, are contributing authors to a wonderful forthcoming special issue entitled “The Enduring Dangers of Essentializing Labor and Laborers” in Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies co-edited by my dear and brilliant colleagues and amistades Dr. Abigail Rosas and Dr. Ana Rosas. Along with Dr. Damien Sojoyner, Janelle Olivia Levy co-authored the essay “The Cost of Freedom: The Violent Exploitation of Black Labor as Essential to Nation Building in Jamaica and the United States of America.” A doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, Levy remind us in the essay that “a true commitment to Black life most hold an emancipatory politic divorced from canonizing labor exploitation.” We are also honored to welcome Dr. George Lipsitz. When Danny and I were doctoral students in American Studies, Dr. Lipsitz work and wisdom was foundational in our grounding of the field and how to be in the world. Dr. Lipsitz's work which includes brilliant and beautiful work such as Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, and the urgent The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics to name a few stands as a testament to collectively remember amidst devastation, to make connections when we are demanded to be individuated and to work through difference globally in the beauty of our ancestral practices. We also invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 13th from 9am-3:30pm for a virtual event that will feature more extensive dialogues about our essays for the special issue and further discuss the under-examined and dangerous erasures and rigors of essentializing laborers and labor across a diversity of contexts, locations, and relationships. It will feature a keynote presentation by our guest today Dr. George Lipsitz and be moderated by Dr. Rosas, associate professor, Chicano/Latino studies and history. We are so grateful for Dr. Abigail Rosas, Dr. Ana Rosas and Dr. George Lipsitz for your collaboration in making today's episode possible, a testament to the abundant energies of working relationally and comparatively. https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U5EvdmWjR4iCOjgquQHWWA

Our newest episode “Contemplating the Dangers of Essentializing Laborers, Part I” is a conversation with our brilliant colleagues and newest amistades Dr. Lilia Soto, Director and Associate Professor in Latina/o Studies at the University of Wyoming and author of Girlhood in the Borderlands: Mexican Teens Caught in the Crossroads of Migration and Dr. Salvador Zarate Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine whose published work you can find in Anthropology and Humanism, Aztlán: The Journal of Chicana/o Studies, and the Race and Capitalism Project. Along with Dr. Mario Obando, they are contributing authors to a wonderful forthcoming special issue entitled “The Enduring Dangers of Essentializing Labor and Laborers” in Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies co-edited by my dear and brilliant colleagues and amistades Dr. Abigail Rosas and Dr. Ana Rosas. We also invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 13th from 9am-3:30pm for a virtual event that will feature more extensive dialogues about our essays for the special issue. The event is an opportunity to learn more about the upcoming special issue of Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies that centers on the under-examined and dangerous erasures and rigors of essentializing laborers and labor across a diversity of contexts, locations, and relationships. It will feature a keynote presentation by Dr George Lipsitz, and moderated by Dr. Abigail Rosas, Associate Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at CSULB and Dr. Ana Elizabeth Rosas, Associate Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies and History. To register for the invite: https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U5EvdmWjR4iCOjgquQHWWA

Join us for a conversation with Dr. Elliott Powell, a friend and author of the newly released book Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music. Here, we ask Dr. Powell about the significance of interracial solidarities, genealogies over trends, and the power of the spiritual and erotic when we consider music as a form of world making and connection. We're inspired by Dr. Powell's analysis of reading and listening to John Coltrane through the cultural politics of James Baldwin's life and hope you enjoy. Sending peace, love and good vibrations!

Eavesdrop on our conversation where we discuss how amistad and community constitute a response to anhedonia. We discuss amistad as part and parcel of decolonization, collective resistance and everyday life. By focusing on amistad, we see the way struggle is not just a spectacle, or an event, it is full of quotidian, everyday and mundane acts of friendship and care. Here, we also respond to community and welcome you all into a new set of conversations. Sending peace and love your way.

We invite you to eavesdrop into our conversation “Anhedonia y Amistad”, Part I. We share our healing journeys in wrestling with sobriety and difficult emotional states during this ongoing global pandemic. We share how we navigate anhedonia, the emotional fallout, isolation and withdrawal that we experienced in our efforts in sobriety, through our amistad, listening to our bodies, and trying to stay present. We ask what are the decolonize paths that reveal themselves in sobriety? We send you good energy, love and peace during these trying times. *content warning: discussions about self-harm.

We invite you to our conversation entitled “Levantate y mira la montaña: Liberating Our Hearts in Teaching and Learning, Part II. The core of the conversation is located in our shared practice of walking meditation and how the activity allows us to move our insecurities and alchemize them into capacious meditations, either at the top of a mountain overlooking Tongva land finding bliss and euphoria or in feeling the light breeze and aiming to be in relation to our internal communities--our lungs, heart, blood, and bodies. Walking meditation is a practice we hold dear in our lives and also as a way of generating holistic and humanizing classrooms. The episode includes a conversation and for the first time features meditations for our ancestors. We share how reaching inward is vital in our work and lives. We send love and peace your way.

Following our “Getting to Know Us, Part I + Part II” episodes, we invite you to our conversation entitled “Y Aprender a Ver”: Liberating Our Hearts in Teaching and Learning. With the aim of liberating our hearts, we sit down for an intimate conversation on how we are gearing up for a new semester of teaching and learning with our students. We discuss why we find personal care and growth vital in starting another semester during a global pandemic as well as the significance of trauma-informed pedagogies, the difficult but urgent process of alchemizing our individual pain into ways of creating community in the classroom, and the importance of sharing pieces of personal and scholarly content that energize us. We share some of the tools we have picked up along our shared journeys of growth and how they can inform connection and foster vulnerability in the classroom during times of grief. We send love and peace your way.

Thank you to everyone who listened to our trailer and Getting to Know US, Part I. We are honored and thankful for your time and energy. In an effort to introduce ourselves to you all, we are starting our podcast journey with interviewing each other. Today's podcast is part 2 of an interview with my co-creator, co-host and above all my friend, Mario Alberto Obando. He is an Assistant Professor at Cal State Fullerton in the department of Chicana/o Studies. Mario's work is a reflection to his dedication to challenging historically oppressive structures and to imagine better worlds.

Thank you to everyone who listened to our trailer, we are inspired by your kind words and energized by each of you asking us when the first episode would stream. In an effort to introduce ourselves to you all, we are starting our podcast journey with interviewing each other. Today's podcast is part 1 of an interview with my co-creator, co-host and above all my friend, Daniel Topete. Danny is also a caring teacher and scholar; he teaches Chicana/o Studies at CSULA and we met at the University of Minnesota,Twin Cities in Minneapolis, MN where we both completed our PhD's in American Studies. His research focuses on the importance of Chicanx popular culture and music in shaping new identities and possibilities for Chicanx and Latinx communities.

Welcome to the “The Alchemist Manifesto: A Podcast with Mario Obando and Daniel Topete”; a podcast dedicated to two friends holding space and making time to have holistic and humanizing pláticas and charlas with the aim of alchemizing our individual experiences into shared healing and wisdom. The amistad that produces this podcast emerges from our shared commitment to social justice, as teachers and scholars in the fields of critical and relational ethnic studies, and of course, our creative and everyday efforts to imagine better worlds with our loved ones, communities and spirits.