Amanda Rodriguez
Amanda Rodriguez is a queer, first generation Cuban-Sicilian American and the Marketing Director for environmental nonprofit Dogwood Alliance in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Ohio and an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. Her short fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and lesbian erotica can be found in Germ Magazine, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Mud Season Review, Thoughtful Dog, Rigorous, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Change Seven, ImageOutWrite, Cold Creek Review, The Acentos Review, Label Me Latina/o, Lou Lit Review, Scalawag, Indolent Books, NILVX, PANK Magazine, Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year, Volume II, and The Rumpus. She is also the first-time filmmaker of the award-winning short documentary Stories Happen in Forests. Amanda lives in Weaverville, North Carolina with her excessive collection of books.
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
Horace Mann, 1st president of Antioch College
The above quote from Horace Mann, the first president of Amanda’s alma mater: Antioch College, has been an inspiration and guiding tenet in Amanda’s life and art.
Artist Statement
Video by Next Observer
I glory in colossal changes. Huge upheavals that dismantle systems of power and control, that change our way of life. Changes that wrest authority from the wicked and the small-minded. Changes that make public spaces safe for women, Black people, and Black trans women. Changes that give reparations to Indigenous people and descendants of enslaved people. And that’s just locally.
Why stop there? I want to see explosive global changes that bring an end to racism, white supremacy, misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, and class structure. I imagine changes where people aren’t exploited for labor and our planet isn’t exploited for resources. In this way, I am young-at-heart. I am a revolutionary.
There’s a belief that the famous fog of London didn’t exist until Charles Dickens wrote about it. His writing about it didn’t just bring the fog to people’s attention; in a way, it brought the fog into being.
This is why I write and make art. I write to create change. To cheat reality.
I don’t just want to expose the ills of our world; I seek to create reality and, like Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to recreate the past. To move through the shadows of today, I want to shine a light on what might be tomorrow. Because, like the London fog, if we can’t see it, if we can’t imagine a future that is different, how can we strive for what could be?The practice of cracking open and rewriting reality is a very powerful way to resist, rise up against, and reclaim oppressive narratives.
Amanda Rodriguez
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