“Love Letter from Hanoi:” Internationalism and Revolutionary Discipline in Chicana Feminism

• In Event: Legacies of Left Internationalism in U.S. Women of Color Feminism

Abstract

This paper examines Chicana journalist Elizabeth “Betita” Martínez’s evolving revolutionary internationalism in her transnational solidarity work and contributions to Chicana feminism in the 1960s-1970s. In Martínez’s writing about her visits to Vietnam, Laos, and China during the 1970s, I locate a feminist revolutionary love-praxis that redefines corporeal discipline (a component of Left internationalist approaches to revolutionary love) as a commitment to practicing loving tender care (cariño) and mutual accountability among Third World women engaged in anti-imperialist struggles. I argue that Martínez’s work serves as a radical antecedent of current U.S. feminist approaches to revolutionary love in transnational solidarity work.

Presenter

• Natalie Havlin, LaGuardia Community College