My name is Women, Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect, published in Spanish in Costa Rica by Editorial Farben/Norma, 2008. I am currently being translated into English. I am looking for funds to finish translating myself and to find a publishing house in that language that would like to give me a home.

My previous name as a doctoral dissertation at the Universidad La Salle in Costa Rica in 2006 was Women at the Cutting Edge of Paradigmatic Change, containing many more chapters to be published eventually.

I have a literary pseudonym: Soyla Mar de Cambios (Sea Change) (1).

Literature to me is the vibration of the language of the soul connecting to the implicate order (Bohm). Whoever wants to communicate with me only at the mundane level can o so, but will miss more than half of the story. The mundane is worthwhile and it is necessary, but only to transform it. And in order to do that we have to transcend it.

Imagination is what I claim about artistic literature. It is an excellent resource because it allows us to see beyond what already exists, which happens to be where alternative world visions first emerge and have emerged in history.

I am about letting the imagination fly while also remaining grounded in women’s experiences and contributions. I feature an array of women throughout world history who, in their life endeavors and in a variety of disciplines, have made significant contributions, and yet have hardly been acknowledged. These are women who, in history, have not been commonly heard in their own voices. These include women who have announced alternatives to a paradigm that turns women and the rest of nature into “goods” for domination and control. Their voices are needed, in light of the global crises that stem from hegemonic systems of control, domination and dichotomization of our relations and interactions. Featuring women from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States, I challenge the current destructive relationships among humans and other forms of life.

I honor the “butterfly effect,” which holds that everything is so interconnected that the smallest action in any one place can provoke an immense effect elsewhere. African-American Rosa Parks, who is but one of the many women included in the book, personified the butterfly effect when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, contrary to the segregationist laws of the United States at that time. In doing so Rosa, against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, unleashed a wave of nationwide protests that led to the abolishment of those racist laws. In the book, Rosa names her own story and that of the civil rights movement in her country, breaking stereotypes about her participation and re-signifying the butterfly effect.

The batting of the wings of the butterfly, seen through a different lens, reveals the vulnerabilities of regimes that are based on control, domination and dichotomization. Such systems can be changed without violence, and here we aim to illustrate and contribute to that change. We aim to voice, to name, to inspire and be inspired and I aim to resonate.

  1. "Sea Change" comes from a poem by Shakespeare, used by The GAEA Foundation in its house for Artistic Residencies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and recovered by Valerie Miller and María Suárez Toro when they were there in January, 2007. This name is also used in their proposal for a Feminist Training School by Just Associates, and by Guadalupe Urbina for a song for Wings of the Butterfly.