Black Feminist Poetics against Displacement and Colonialism

A Conversation with Colectiva Feminista en Construcción

About the Presenters

Zoan Tanís Dávila Roldán is a Black feminist activist and lawyer from Puerto Rico, member and spokesperson of La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción. Zoán has worked in the Oficina Legal de la Comunidad and the Civil Rights Comission in Puerto Rico. She has represented protesters affected by state and police repression and impoverished communities at risk of displacement.

Shariana Ferrer-Núñez is a Caribbean Black queer feminist from Puerto Rican. She's an activist, scholar, organizer, co-founder and spokesperson of La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción. Her political practice centers Black feminism and decoloniality as forefront for dismantling systems of oppression, building movements for social justice through collective and popular power.

Colectiva Feminista en Construcción (Feminist Collective under Construction) is a grassroots Black-feminist movement-building organization based in Puerto Rico. They started out in 2014. La Colectiva brings together the student, anti-colonialism and LGBTTIQ struggle to oppose the anti-Black racist and patriarchal colonial system and works towards achieving structural change. They are building a grassroots feminist movement that recognizes that the different manifestations of oppression (including sexism, ci-sexism machismo, racism, xenophobia and capitalism) are interrelated and need to be opposed collectively. Their political project comes from the tradition of Black feminism, articulating in the struggle against heteropatriarchy, anti-blackness violence and capitalism.

Sponsors: Spanish and Portuguese; American Studies; Feminist Research Institute; DHI; Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies; History