The Rotten Department, included in my memoir and essay collection Naming the Body: A Queer Woman’s Restorative Mapping fo the Self (Mouthfeel Press, 2026) was just published in the Fall/Winter issue of Women’s Studies Quaterly BODY MATTERS, as translated by National Book Award winner for Translated Literature, Robin Myers.
Project Muse gives access to the entire text. For those interested it can be found here.
Thank you so much to the editors Sherren Inayatulla and Andie Silva for including my exploration through memory and language of institutional (in this case, university) violence toward women’s bodies in my native country. By mirroring academic language and formatting, it confronts the very institution on its own turf. And yet the blank space becomes the negative space or the void that refuses to share the space or to put the spotlight on that same institutionalized violence.
maría mínguez arias 