Writing Your Body

Sor Juana wrote constantly—poems, letters, theological arguments—as a way of asserting her intellectual authority and claiming space. Writing your body means using whatever expressive form available to you—literal writing, art, movement, conversation, ritual—to define your physical self on your terms. Most people inherit their body-identity from others: from family, culture, medical institutions, beauty industries, and traumatic experiences. Writing your body is the practice of actively authoring your own narrative. What is your body's story from your perspective? What do you notice about it that others have never mentioned? What meanings do you assign to its marks, capacities, and limitations? This might be literal journaling, but it can also be claiming a different way of moving, speaking about your body differently, or creating art with or about it. The act of expression itself is transformative—it moves you from object being described to subject doing the describing.