Description: "Black women in the department of Chocâo, Colombia, respond to the violence endemic to their region with activism and storytelling. Tania Lizarazo focuses on members of COCOMACIA, a Black farmers' association that defends communities and territories along the nation's Pacific lowlands' rivers. Drawing on the life stories of members, Lizarazo explains how Chocâo's Black Colombian women answered firsthand experiences of violence with a dedication to survival and activism. Survival amid armed conflict proves to be an embodied practice. Day by day, the women imagine what memory, peace, and justice could look like when the bloodshed ends. Though peace may seem impossible, wishing and working for a better world motivates these women to steadily dismantle the scaffolding of violence built around their lives. A merger of eyewitness accounts and theory, Postconflict Utopias explores the links between lived knowledge and survival while revealing the power unleashed when women ask the simple question, "Why not?""--
Review Quotes: "Postconflict Utopias is a must read for Colombianists, Black feminists, and other scholars. The stories and narratives of Black women in Colombia invite us to fundamentally rethink violence, organizing, and utopia. We see the power and magic in women's everyday practices through which women collaborate, care and (re)make themselves and their worlds."--Kiran Asher, author of Black and Green: Afro-Colombians, Development, and Nature in the Pacific Lowlands