“Meeting Lisa Perez during the summer before my first semester of doctoral studies at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign empowered me to demand visibility as a working-class Chicana at a PWI (predominantly white institution). From the start of my Ph.D. journey, Lisa taught me by example how to have courage to theorize from my lived-experienced by weaving the work of Black Indigenous and Chicana intellectuals — including those not typically seen by the academe — as central to liberatory practices that conceive of and actualize new ways of living otherwise and in refusal of systems of racial capitalist exploitation, settler colonial extraction, and white supremacy that have plagued human societies globally. Through Lisa’s mentoring, I have learned to realize practices of radical care and sisterhood that fuel and sustain this commitment to creating life free of domination and filled with dignity.
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