CALACS Book Prize 2020

Winner

Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda. Women Made Visible. Feminist Art and Media in Post-1968 Mexico City. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Gabriela Aceves’ pathbreaking book sheds light on an important group of Mexican artists, women who beginning in the 1970’s radically pushed the boundaries of artistic, political and urban space in Mexico. Aceves draws on her own unique combination of talents and sensibilities, including her keen artist’s eye along with her capacity for theoretical sophistication, conceptual innovation, and meticulous archival research. Like the artists she examines, Aceves challenges readers to expand their notion of what can be considered an archive: not only something “stored in vaults,” but also “things that circulate and that are exhibited,” and which can themselves become works of art. Through Aceves’ book we learn how to see differently. It’s a brilliant accomplishment.

Honorable Mention

Alison Crosby and M. Brinton Lykes. Beyond Repair? Mayan Women’s Protagonism in the Aftermath of Genocidal Harm. New Brunswick, Camdem, and Newark, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2019.

In a bibliography rife with the genocidal and gendered levels of violence during Guatemala’s thirty-six year civil war, Beyond Repair? Mayan Women’s Protagonism in the Aftermath of Genocidal Harm is a welcome addition. Here it is the Mayan women (Q’eqchi’, Kaqchikel, Chuj, and Mam) who set the agenda defying simple identifications as victims or survivors. What emerges from this extraordinarily complex eight-year feminist participatory action research are the voices of the women themselves. This volume sets a new standard for community-based research in its collaborative model as the authors allow the subjects themselves to reveal their perspectives on trauma, restoration and reparation. Beyond Repair? invites new definitions of healing, hope, protagonism and the breaking of silence.