Rising Stars: Meet Jessennya Hernandez

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessennya Hernandez.

Hi Jessennya, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?.
My self and my work are constantly evolving as I’ve been learning to bridge academia and the local communities that I am blessed to be a part of. I think, like many other BIPOC children who grew up in racially and economically segregated cities in the IE, I began to think critically about the social world around me when I was very young. For example, my elementary school of predominantly Black and Brown kids was the lowest scoring in the state at the time and my middle school was heavily policed by staff disciplining us. I observed and experienced the kind of inequalities that academia theorizes about and it wasn’t until college where I was able to identify a particular (academic) language to describe it. College was a way for me to escape my little world, and getting my PhD was a way to actually fulfill a dream.

Look, getting a PhD is NOT for everyone and I will be the first to say that. It took me a few years to come into my own and to trust my intuition. With little support from my -very white- department (besides my incredible advisor), I began to interview and follow around the kind of Black and Brown femmes, women, and queer people who inspired me. I’m talking about the political creatives and artists who are everywhere out here in the IE who some people may not know about because they are not mainstream or on social media. However, they are actively creating something through their medium of choice and using it to do something different and better for themselves and those around them. Most of them taught themselves. I’m sure you know of a badass Brown queer DJ, DIY jewelry maker, female rapper, or artist who makes stickers and clothes with their original designs. So as part of my dissertation, I was able to begin diving into the world of some of greater LA’s art spaces and the kinds of knowledge they build through their work. A lot of it is about calling out toxic masculinity or capitalism, and I love how their work is also centered around healing and taking care of each other and building little worlds that are safe and comfortable for Black and Brown women and queer people. They remind me of the kinds of work that I do with the mutual aid and abolitionist collectives that I work with in Illinois and in the IE.

Once I finally stopped and focused on what was right in front of me, I was really led down this path of people building autonomy in their own lives and creating change around them. This helped me more actively do the same in my own life. Overall, being able to be in both academic institutions and informal collectives is definitely a privilege. I have been able to situate my life in a way where I can dedicate myself to researching, understanding, and helping to highlight and build the kinds of knowledge and spaces that really nurture abolition, mutual aid, anti-normativity, and also just safe spaces for queer and trans-BIPOC. I acknowledge that academia is limited and highly violent to BIPOC, especially immigrant and working-class; yet I can also acknowledge that it has given me essential tools to be a better community worker for the various collectives I am a part of, whether focusing on houseless neighbors in the IE or mentoring younger Black and Brown working-class grad students trying to navigate academic systems.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
This question makes me laugh because of well….trauma! One thing I have come to realize about community organizers and scholar-activists is that we all have trauma and have experienced pain and harm. I think that for a lot of us, it’s our traumas and what we have done with them that have led us to where and how we do research and organize. So many of us are ambitious and care so much about how to understand and improve the conditions of those around us. It is safe to say we all work extremely hard and probably over-work ourselves a little too often. I am no exception to any of these observations! I work for my university as a graduate employee and live paycheck to paycheck; academia is very financially precarious as a working-class child of immigrants. But aside from constantly working for my own economic livelihood and learning how to implement joy and relaxation to prevent burnout, the biggest struggles and transformations for me have been in my emotional and spiritual health. When I first moved out to Illinois for grad school, I felt a major culture shock. The IE is primarily Latinx and Illinois and my university is very white, and like at any university, academia can be racist, exploitative, elitist, exclusionary, and patriarchal.

So I felt very isolated in my first few years of my Sociology PhD program. Some of my professors were racist and they demeaned me. It was very chaotic to say the least. I was not close to my family at that time and I did not cope with my depression, childhood traumas, and anxiety in the best ways. It wasn’t until I was almost dropped from my program that I realized I had to make some changes. And that was when I really began intentionally building and nurturing my relationships with my queer family, including but not limited to blood relatives, Black and Brown friends, comrades, and colleagues. I learned that I don’t always have to be hyper-vigilant and take on everything alone. I learned how to ask for help and time and time again, my queer family came through. I gained a community that I am so proud of (some of them are pictured below). I am almost a doctor, and I know for certain its because my queer community has taken such good care of me. And this is something I realized that is critical for how I organize in community. I think that actively working on healing trauma and nurturing queer BIPOC networks is essential. Not only are we understanding the larger and interconnected sources of our personal pain, but we are creating the connections necessary for building people power and mutual care so that we have each other’s back when it all comes crashing down. And when bumps and ruptures and violence come up as we move forward, which they will, I know we will be taken care.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’ve written an article about the foster care system in LA county and how former foster youth have navigated the system in ways that built self-determination despite a failed state structure. I have another article on Queer Kinship in academia coming out very soon. My dissertation research looks at creatives in greater LA who create spaces and forms of knowledge that help them to navigate their material dispossessions as working class, immigrant, queer BIPOC. I am really interested in how their work helps them envision liberatory futures in their daily lives. For example, right now I am writing an article on how their work centers healing. I also work for my graduate employee union on campus (GEO at UIUC), that is critical for the rights and livelihoods of graduate students and employees, who are already exploited for their labor. Neoliberalism is attempting to crush unions nationally and globally, so it is really important to strengthen and build unions to protect workers’ rights.

I work with Feed The Block, a mutual aid collective in the IE that follows radical Black and Brown feminist traditions of radical love and community care. These people are now a critical part of my family. One thing I have really enjoyed doing is political education focused on for example transformative justice, abolition, and women of color feminisms. We have also been building important connections and networks with other local groups in the area that align with our anti-state politics (e.g., The People’s Coalition and More Hope). At the university in the Gender and Women Studies department, I have also designed and taught my own course: Race, Gender, Power. I have also mentored many younger grad students and high school students of color, mainly femmes and women. I mention all of these things because they are all essential to what I do and my path. I do not get paid for most of this work because it is my responsibility to my community and the people I am around.

So I am really proud of the research that I have done, the articles I have and continue to publish, the tens of thousands of dollars I have earned through fellowships, grants and scholarships, the classes I have taught, and so much more, but I am MOST proud of the family and connections I have built. I study Sociology and Gender and Women Studies within an academic institution, but it is the things that I learn and practice with my comrades and queer family on the ground and in the streets that are critical for my own research and writing, what I teach in the classroom, and how I move forward towards a radical feminist and anti-racist future. Remaining rooted in grassroots work and everyday life is how we must learn how to negotiate and resist racist, capitalist, and colonial systems of harm and violence as a community and within local networks.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/feedtheblock_ie/?hl=en
• Other: https://gradschoolfemtoring.com/episodes/23/