We invite you to our conversation with queer Chicanx educator Ale, who teaches English to 9th graders in LA. She shares about the pandemic as a portal to creativity, letting go of perfectionism, co-creating space with her LGBTQ+ students, and what it means to explore her queer identity from a place of joy and ease. We also reflect with J, a college senior on the cusp of graduation, about her exploration of selfhood and sexuality in school. Brooklyn high school teacher and poet Meghan Dunn shares a poem about girlhood and the body from Curriculum, her beautiful book of poems. Finally, we ask: What are the ties to heteronormativity that you must break in order to do your self-work? What do you have to relinquish as a return to loving yourself and to loving? How will you move into deeper connection with yourself?

Intellectual Inheritance

• “Seven Stages of Conocimiento,” Gloria E. Anzaldúa
• How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community, Mia Birdsong
• All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks
• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks 
• Yearning, bell hooks
• We Are the Ants, Shaun David Hutchinson
• “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver
• “The Known Unknown: Persona, Empathy, and the Limits of Imagination,” The Poetry Foundation,  Camille Rankine

Music

• “Floating” Smith The Mister | https://smiththemister.bandcamp.com 
• “Fluffy” Smith The Mister
• “Joy Ride” YT SoundZ
• “CenterPeace” Deyuel IG: @Deyuel
• “Cumbia” Kevin MacLeod incompetech.com
• Giveon | Miguel | Lucky Daye Type Beat "Restore" Jay 808 Beats
• Dancing on Desks theme music produced by Mara Johnson, Elliott Wilkes, and monét cooper

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