Transcript: ANTONIA ESTELA PEREZ on Uncovering Plant-Human Intimacy /305
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast, I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with Antonia Estella Perez.
Antonia Estela Perez The communities that are often most in in connection to the plants, whether or not they realize it or not, are communities of color.
Ayana Young Antonia Estela Perez grows medicines, gardens, and networks that work to interrupt anthropocentric, individualist, separatist socialization and bring folks into deeper awareness of their ecological family and belonging. They are first gen, born and raised on Lenape territory in NYC, and descended from the Mapuche peoples of Chile. They have cultivated a deep relationship with their plant relatives since a very young age, and their passion for open-source pedagogy founded the inclusive healing, learning, and collaboration space Herban Cura along with its medicinal product line.
Well, Antonia, thank you so much for being with us today. And having this grounding conversation that we're about to dive into. I'm really looking forward to exploring with you and learning more about your work.
Antonia Estela Perez Thank you so much, Ayana, it's an honor to be here.
Ayana Young Awesome. So to start off, I want to ask for listeners who are unfamiliar with your work with Herban Cura, if you could speak a bit on your offerings and mission, and maybe as part of that share a bit about your own spiritual and decolonial journey in relation to this work?
Antonia Estela Perez Absolutely. So Herban Cura is an organization that started about five or so years ago and it comes out of my own personal journey growing up in New York City, being first generation, my parents are from Chile, and growing up here, I was always interested in understanding my story and relationship to this place and understanding why I ended up here. Growing up, when I would return to Chile, there was always the question “Do you feel more Chilean or gringa?” And there was this constant inner dialogue and questioning within myself in regards to these questions, and understanding why my parents ended up on these lands, which was due to a US-backed coup on September 11, 1973, which caused my parents the need to leave Chile due to being part of the Communist Party.
So long response towards my relationship to place was influenced by my both my relationship to my motherland, Chile, and all the stories that I heard of the mountains and land there, and my parents, both of my parents, relationship to land. And I think that inspired them as they were on these lands to begin to relate to the land that they were now inhabiting, and bring my brother and I towards building that sensitivity that they grew up with. So they would bring us out of the city and to the forest. And my mom, even if she didn't know the plants that she was harvesting for these bouquets that she would adorn the house with, she was harvesting these plants that I now harvest like golden rod and Queen Anne's lace, and there was that beauty in relationship to the land and the plants that we were living on.
I would say, when I was in middle school, I got really interested in wanting to know the plants that were growing around me with more, more intimacy and so I would go on plant walks with my mom, my mom's friends, that were gardeners and go to the Botanical Garden and identify these plants and my mom gifted me a book that was about plants and their medicinal properties. So I would learn to identify a plant and then go back to the book and see what are that plant’s properties and so I got really excited and curious and just began opening my eyes and relationship to New York City and the surroundings in such a different way where I was no longer just seeing a sea of green, but I was seeing my new friends.
Even if I was in a car, I could say, “Oh, that's a maple, that's an ash or that's probably burdock or yellow dock that's growing on the side of the road.” So throughout high school and college, I kept this building upon the skills of intimacy with land and feeling that it was so essential towards understanding and orienting myself to land and place in the worlds. And from there in high school, starting clubs, like focused on teaching my classmates how to make chapstick or their own deodorant. And in that moment in my life, it was, I think I was looking at this work from a place like very anti-capitalist, questioning consumerism, especially growing up in New York being like, “Well, why why can't we make the things that we consume, or what would shift if we, if we made these things ourselves, and we didn't need to depend on buying them at the supermarket?” And also when we make things ourselves, we know the ingredients behind them.
So that evolved into college wanting to know more. Now I was at Bard College and spending more time in the woods. And I had this whole idea of like, I want to learn everything that I need to know for the apocalypse. So need to know more about plants and cooking and ovens and shelter building and fire making. And I wanted to not just learn this for myself, but bring my community with me. And upon returning to New York after college, I felt this work can continue and that work will look like Herban Cura. So started hosting all these workshops in my living room and other friends living rooms and city parks and bringing forth these conversations and these opportunities to connect with the plants and collectively begin orienting ourselves to the environment that we live in. So that's, that would be my response, but perhaps I could also share the Herban Cura mission statement as well.
Ayana Young Yes, please.
Antonia Estela Perez So our aim is to increase collective intimacy with plants many of us interact with daily. Often these are plants whose recent histories include violence and exploitation, maize, coffee, cacao, sugar, indigo, cotton, tobacco and others, we can uncover this intimacy through understanding their original constellation of relationship and ethnoecology. Through Herban Cura, we seek to create access to ancestral wisdom, both through the repatriation of Indigenous lifeways and also through remembrance and reclamation of how to live in solidarity with the earth with our human and more-than-human-kin. We believe this knowledge puts us on the path to healing by remembering what it means to be in a direct and balanced relationship to the plants, and more-than-human-beings that cohabitate with us on the land. We understand this work of remembrance and reclamation to be decolonizing and abolition work. This work is in service to dismantling white supremacy, settler colonial logics, transphobia, ableism, homophobia, and human supremacy wherever it lives in us and within our communities.
Our educational offerings of knowledge shares and immersions provide a forum for exploration of healing traditions, practices, and relationships from diverse cultural and ecological contexts, with content ranging from demonstration of applied skills and preparation of foods and remedies, to people’s histories and cosmologies, all presented as interwoven diasporic legacies. We prioritize and center Black, Indigenous, people of color, as well as queer and trans facilitators and participants.
Ayana Young Thank you so much for reading that that was really just nice to hear all of the thought and care you put behind your work.
Antonia Estela Perez And I would also love to name that this work has been not just my own thinking and work, but I'm currently in collaboration with Em McCann and my brother Sebastián Perez, and I also give gratitude to everyone who has facilitated with Herban Cura as well as all of my own teachers, that have supported me in deepening my thinking around this work.
Ayana Young Thank you for naming them, because yeah, we can't do any of this work alone and it takes so many relationships and support systems. And it's nice to be reminded of that. I am wondering, how can learning the stories of plants help us to fortify our understanding of the interconnectedness of plants and people in terms of colonization or exploitation in the present day global food economy? What is the impact of learning these stories on our collective imagination?
Antonia Estela Perez This is a question that I ask myself all the time and I don't have a clear answer, except my current thoughts around this, but it's a it's definitely a continued exploration and a lot of study that I'm inspired to continue doing. Something that I currently think about in terms of the global food economy, just going to the supermarket and seeing all these plants that are there, but their presence there is as a commodity. And I think that when we begin to look at these plants that are at the supermarket, for example, a banana, or even the white sugar in that paper bag, or the coffee, that's also being sold in these different packages. And we think, not just where are these plants being grown? But where did they originally come from? And what were what were the human plant relationships that existed?
And I think that there are two parallel histories, or many parallel histories happening. So when I'm thinking of these plant stories, I want to personally learn the story of this plant pre-colonization, pre-exploitation, where were they geographically growing? What were the ways that they migrated, either through humans or animals in a way that wasn't necessarily rooted in in violence and capital. And then there's that other parallel story of the plant that is rooted in that colonial context that I think is so important to understand, because our current economy and food, the foods that we eat, have been shaped by these plants, how certain countries, present day ecologies, and economy exist is because of the cash crops that were grown on those lands, I'm thinking of the Caribbean or Bahia in Brazil, or Ecuador, and how the ecologies of these lands have been shaped by cash crops and their economies.
So I think learning these plant’s stories help orient us to, again, why things are the way that they are, and also help us to take responsibility for how we're going to continue to relate to these plants, not just as a commodity, or transform our relationship to these plants beyond being a commodity and help us rethink as we as we're doing this decolonial work. How are we still influenced by that colonial legacy in our consumption and our interaction with these plants, and I think it's hard for us because so many of us have grown up going to the supermarket to receive our nourishment, to think of these beings as beings and as plants that are being grown by certain geographies, landscapes and peoples and so much of the colonial legacy around labor that kind of exploitative labor continues to exist in the production of these plants, thinking coffee, sugar, bananas. So I think those are two really important reasons to understand these stories, in terms of understanding that more ethnobotanical story pre colonization, it helps us to bring reverence to these plants that have been so distorted because of colonization. And, for me, I think it also brings softness and empathy and also opens up a whole well of grief when I think of these plants in relationship with their human caretakers.
I think of maize, I remember there was a moment even though when I would go visit my family in Chile and they would eat maize, and it was a huge part of our culture. When I was in the United States, on Turtle Island, I would think of maize as corn and think of this plant as like, not even as a plant, but just as this product that was so problematic. And now I've through my learnings and my travels, I've come to a different position and relationship to this plant, where I see how this plant has undergone so much violence and I always think how the ways in which these plants have experienced so much tragedy and violence. And that same violence has been committed to the peoples that were in original relationship to these plants, like maize, and that there's continued violence upon these plants and the humans that labor to maintain and grow these plants like corn when, when it's in the context of the global food economy.
So I think the importance in learning about these stories is to take responsibility for learning, and connecting more deeply with these plants in their pre colonial form, but also how do we begin to revere and respect and heal those relationships with them, as well as understand that these politics of exploitation continue to exist, and there are people that are growing and maintaining these plants for the global food economy, that are still undergoing terrible working conditions. And so that legacy of colonization is still very much alive and while we can be drinking a cup of coffee in this very sterile or beautiful cafe, there's a shadow side to that cup of coffee, that while we can't see it is happening simultaneously. So I think of all the simultaneous and parallel histories that are happening, that aren't only rooted in in that exploitation, and that and I would also like to add because I don't want to make it seem like people are no longer in this deep, deep intimate relationships with plants that have that have become also cash crops, I think. Parallel there are also many communities around the world. It also in their original geographies of where these plants come from, that continue to be in deep relationship and in a caring reciprocal relationship with plants. And I think maize is a huge example of that all throughout North and South, Central and South America and I see that with coffee and cacao as well and, and sugar cane. So I want to uplift that reality as well, that there continues to be keepers of those wisdoms and relationships with plants that have been that have also experienced such deep exploitation.
Ayana Young Oh, thank you for those reminders. The Shadow sides are so real but of course, the systems of power want us to be completely forgetful of that. Yeah, appreciate that and I'm just wondering if you could also speak a bit on dismantling the mythology that Black and Indigenous peoples and people of color residing in urban areas are disconnected from the natural world by virtue of their localities? And how does the practice of plant identification subvert this myth?
Antonia Estela Perez I want to begin by saying, we've always turned to the plants. I think that part of this mythology comes as a continued tool of colonization, to separate us from ourselves and the land. Because by being in relationship to ourselves in the land, there's power, and there's recognition, there's that connection, and that intimacy that supports us in knowing that we can survive and that we are in such deep relationship with the land, that the land can provide us with the things and sustenance that we need. the relationship not just in terms of sustenance, but also with spirituality and culture.
I would say, from my experience in New York City, the communities that are often most in in connection to the plants, whether or not they realize it or not, are communities of color, oftentimes, because they may be first generation, or second or third generation, but they still witness their aunties or grandmothers or mothers or uncles, in relationship to their plants, whether it's just the house plants, or making strong ginger tea for when they're sick, or going to the Botanica to get a limpia, and perhaps it's not always, that relationship isn't always claimed, as “I'm in relationship to the land orI have this connection”, it's just part of part of their life. But what's interesting is when I have in the past, when I've done these plant walks in the city, and especially with youth, and even some adults will say, “I don't know anything about plants, or I don't have a connection to plants.” And then we start having these conversations and all these memories come up. “Oh, yes, my grandma talks to the plants. Or I remember when I was sick, and my mom would make this garlic, ginger, honey tea.” And it's so beautiful to see and witness in these physical spaces how through conversation, through beginning to identify plants, all these memories and feelings will come up and that remembrance brings them not just in connection to that memory but also to their ancestors to where their ancestors came from whether that was on the island, Dominican Republic, or Puerto Rico or Ecuador and it's such an emotional moment for me and I think for everybody because they speak into see that as important and valuable knowledge that perhaps in some moment was told to them or are seen as something that isn't important or something that's we you need to let go of as you're coming on to these new lands that this kind of ancestral wisdom or survival knowledge is no longer relevant or isn't relevant.
Ayana Young Yeah, just hearing you speak is reminding me of all of the plants and it's spring and like I'm feeling them coming back through your voice and just looking outside and coming out of winter, feeling a bit lonely for them again, and how many reminders they offer us. Just want you to know that you're really awakening my plant love again, not that it ever went away, but you know that in the heart of winter there are other loves to connect with and that I'm starting to smell them and see them again. And yeah.
Antonia Estela Perez So something that that you just said of like, remembering we're not alone. I think that the plants offer that that gift that we're not alone. And in the city deepening relationship is so important. I was thinking about this with my brother yesterday, how we have a lot of living in the city, you could be surrounded by all these people and be in such close proximity, yet, we don't know each other's names, we're not interacting, we're moving so quickly through space and being driven by our minds and our economy and competition and we're not slowing down and we're not taking the time to turn to the person we're sitting next time on the subway and ask their name or their story. I hold that as a practice when I was younger, and every time I'm in the city is how can I move a little bit more slowly so that I can be present to my human and more than human kin. And I think this is a problem that doesn't just exist in urban environments. It's just a product of, of capitalism and in our thinking that we feel we need to be moving so fast and not waste time. And we lose our connection to ourselves in our heart and our ability to soften and really think about our relationship between all the life that is around us.
Ayana Young Absolutely, yeah, that slowing down is so necessary. And wow, there's an eagle that just flew by. I don't know what it's called when they do the noise, they're doing that Eagle call right now, of course. Wow just the timing of that.
I want to ask a question on how you navigate the decolonial or pre-colonial third space. How do those of us actively working to decolonize begin to know our ancestral practices and reconnect without culturally appropriating or participating in ways that are harmful to other cultures? And this is a question I've I've asked a number of people on the podcast because I think that I think that a lot of us have good intentions and I think we of course can be forgiven when we step out of boundaries, but just Yeah, your thoughts on how do we search and long for these connections in a good way?
Antonia Estela Perez I think we begin with ourselves. We begin with asking ourselves the questions that we've been asking through our time together. But asking those questions of where do I come from? Which can often be a very complicated question. So by no means do I mean to say like that's not necessarily a question that's going to point us in a clear direction. But I think it's a starting point, that can also lead us to really grief filled stories, and really violent stories. And I think, beginning to build relationship with the land that we're on, and learning those stories that often hold violence and grief filled stories, I see all these as mirrors of the tragedy that has occurred because of colonization throughout the world. But from within the context in which I'm speaking from is my relationship between North and South America that has many similar, similar histories, and the ways that colonization has played out and of course, always very specific to those places, and communities that colonization impacted. But I think, beginning from that, that place and seeing what comes from there, maybe it is a connection, or some answer or symbol comes through of a land that we do have relationship to and going there if we can, or maybe it's asking our grandparents or oldest living relative learning from them, and learning their stories of how they ended up in the lands that that they're in now. And so, speaking from my own journey, my search to understand and myself and how I've ended up here on this land, of the Lenape (Lenapehoking), being New York, it's brought me to return again and again to to Chile, and to travel throughout Central and South America, where I continuously learn the relationships that exists all throughout Central and South America in terms of Indigenous wisdoms, in terms of the foods that are eaten, and the relationships that exist between the people and these plants is so similar and it makes you think how, of course there's all the similarities, there are the similarities between the plants, maize, tobacco, potatoes, amaranth, throughout North and South America, because these trade routes existed, and there was a whole civilization of millions of people that were on these lands, pre-colonization that had their own forms of agriculture, and stewarding of the land and animal tending. And it it fills me with so much excitement to think about all these pathways of connection that existed on these lands. And how part of my work right now, my internal and my personal work is to learn these pathways, and to learn how I can become more present to those pathways within the land that I'm living in and how can I become more intimate in the land that I'm living on? How can I build and deepen respect to the communities on the lands that I live in?
Ayana Young It's like I'm going into memories and lots of my own personal journeys and those of friends and yeah, I want to ask, how do you go about fostering for people in your community, an emotional attachment to place within the city? And how can those of us living in cities foster an understanding of our non separateness from the natural world?
Antonia Estela Perez One way is taking a walk along a block where people live, or where the, wherever the workshop, plant walk is taking place that the community that is attending is connected to, and we will take a walk in a place where it doesn't seem like there are many plants, and will literally just pause and look between the cracks. And maybe there's some moss that's growing there. And maybe there's a little dandelion that's growing out. And we'll take a moment to just acknowledge that there's life that is growing there and then there's that, that moment of our surprise, you're like, how is this living here? How is this plant able to thrive? Or maybe not thrive? But live here? And I say, “Well, how are we here? How are we living here in this environment?” This a parentheses, a thought that's coming up, but I often think of our bodies in the city, as also the lungs that are helping to purify the air here, that maybe because there aren't enough trees, I feel like our bodies are also an extension of the earth helping to clean the air here. Which is kind of a scary thought or an intense image, but I invite my community in these walks in these experiences to sit with a plant, and and observe and we'll do sit spots that they can continue to do beyond our time together. And then I invite them to sit in this place every day and observe, who are the people that walked by? What are the animals that maybe fly by or pass through or that maybe were there before if they notice any tracks and to begin developing a relationship through that slowness and through that pause. And when meeting a plant, and this is something that I learned from one of my herb teachers, Dina Falcone, is looking at the plant, not just from one dimension, but looking at the plant from many angles and perspectives to learn that plant in a more intimate way, and something I always share, when I'm teaching about plants, or sharing my experience with plants and how to develop these relationships, I hear the comparison of meeting a person, we can see a person from afar, and we're curious to get to know them. And we may approach them and ask their name, but we're not going to start touching them or being too intimate, because we need to develop trust.
So I relate that to getting to meet a plant and reminding them that these plants are are also living. So how can we begin to build that relationship of respect? And before we run towards what is this plants name? And what does it do? And falling into that trap again, of, of a commodity? Well, what can this do? For me, it's how can we foster a relationship and a friendship where we learn? What can I do for this plant? Not just what can this plant do for me. And I think that opens up our imagination in the city to think about how we can support these plants to thrive here, and how through having plants here, are we also supporting our community. Where can we plant medicinal plants, to not only have more green spaces, but also to have a living pharmacy for community, and even if we're not necessarily harvesting these plants for medicine, knowing that they're there, as a reminder that if they're ever needed, we have the knowledge of how to identify them, as well as how to prepare them, growing plants that are culturally relevant to the communities that live around these these spaces. How can we plant these plants?
So I think those are some ways that that we can begin to build more intimacies just slowing down. And, again, returning to story and being curious and observant and asking, asking ourselves, “How did these plants end up here?” And bringing it beyond just the plants, one of my friends and colleagues, Kale Mays, we've done a lot of work and thinking about the stories, the ecological histories that exists in New York and Kale always says, “What is the story of that street name? And who, before there, who laid down the concrete? And before that, who laid down the cobblestones? And before that? What was grown nn that land? Whose farm was it? And before that, where was the spring? Where was the creek?” And so beginning to do this time travel, that can, I think be inspired by recognizing the life that is growing through the concrete to ask ourselves what's the complex and multi dimensional stories that exist on this land? And how are these stories reflections of that grief filled story of of colonization and fragmentation of land and displacement, and the growing of private property.
Ayana Young Oh, goodness, there's so much there in that response, and it's really felt. Yeah. I keep wanting to hear more about your relationship with specific plants. I think you mentioned a few throughout this conversation, and I am just kind of seeing plants wave to me or something in my imagination right now. And I want to hear some of your personal plant relationships and any stories or what you've learned from them or how they've shown up for you in times of need.
Antonia Estela Perez Yeah, I want to share about mulberry because I'm looking out my window to mulberry that is just beginning to leaf. A mulberry that grows near the Mahicantuck River, also known as the Hudson River, the river that flows both ways and this one particular mulberry tree is a tree that I grew up observing throughout all seasons and when the mulberries would come out, I would see people come and harvest these small berries. And this was before I knew that they were mulberries and that they were edible, but I would see all these people come and harvest the mulberries. And I would see that happening in different parts of the city and I don't remember at what point I tried the mulberry but I remember just thinking it was the most delicious fruit and wondering why there was so much wasted mulberry, all throughout the city, just painting the concrete purple, and all the the the energy that was being put to fight them or complain against the Mulberry and to this day, I hear people say, “Oh, the mulberry stains the cars and stains the ground and it causes rat problems”, or what are we going to do with all these mulberries that are falling and disturbing our peace, essentially. And when I realized that they were edible, and that they were medicinal, and how tasty they were, I was so curious like, “Well, why why are we complaining about the mulberries instead of eating them?” And in that relationship with the mulberries not just this one, but then going down towards the river and seeing that there are all these mulberries that grow along the river and near these mulberries are also june berries that are native fruit shrub to the northeast, it got me so excited about the potential and possibility of having all this edible food growing in the urban landscape.
So I attribute mulberry to expanding my my vision and imagination of the sweetness that is possible to to feel within within the urban and how much abundance they offer and how many people and squirrels one tree can feed, through many seasons and years of harvesting mulberry there have been so many people that have stopped by and said “Oh, you can eat that?” And I say yes and then they stop me they they stop walking or park their bike and we start eating mulberries together and it's the most exciting feeling when someone gets curious to observe what is this person doing eating mulberries and their face is all purple and their hands are all stained, there is something yummy about this tree.
But I wanted to also share some stories and observations that I had visiting my friends in in the Amazon this past month, one day he invited us to take a walk through the jungle and he said this is the fruit season and we we just entered the path and he harvested cacao del monte, which is a kind of cacao looks very similar but much smaller and a bit sweeter and more sour. And throughout that walk we're just harvesting these these different plants and it was reminding me or teaching me how intimate we and his family are to the land that they live on. And not just with the plants but also knowing that pathway that they were on, that they learned, went from their grandparents and their parents and learned to walk on when they were young children. So a path that I didn't know and couldn't recognize at first, and felt that I needed to be guided through, this pathway was also their garden, and was their land where they harvest these fruits, as well as where they hunt for the animals. And then thinking of back to the question of intimacy, how I'm thinking of deepening intimacy in my life right now to the land, is how am I walking on the lands that I move through? And how can I walk through these paths, knowing how to feed myself, and knowing and being so comfortable and knowledgeable of these paths, or where I'm oriented, that I'm not getting lost. And I think it's difficult to compare, even though the Amazon is under great threat, that there are still certain lands where you can walk for days without having a fracturing of that land.
So I'm thinking a lot about how to, I'm living in upstate New York, how to steward the land in a way where I am in this big, where all of that is my home, and where there's all this abundance of food as I'm walking through the forest, and wherever I walk, I know my way back home. So thinking in terms of plants that I've been developing relationships to, from a more ancestral perspective, I would say is cacao. And probably my first relationship with cacao in its commodified form was some chocolate bar, probably Twix, because I used to love that when I was allowed to eat candy, so probably middle school, but being able to be in a relationship with the plant where chocolate is transformed from and to see the many varieties of cacao that exists, cacao types of cacao that aren't made into or extracted for, to make chocolate, and to be able to become more intimate with the tree and to be intimate with the fruit itself, not just the seed which is then used to make chocolate. I currently have the desire to deepen intimacy with all these plants that have been commodified. Like, as I've mentioned, cacao, bananas, maize, and that Indigo and I want to understand more deeply what these plants look like in their true form, what they look like when they're growing on trees, and also learning how to prepare them in their traditional ways. So I've had the opportunity to learn how to toast cacao seeds, grind them on a metate, toast them, and I’ve had that same opportunity with maize, both learning how to grow it, harvest it, grind it, prepare it, and similarly with tobacco last year I seeded about seven different varieties of tobacco and grew about 400 tobacco plants.
And so learning about how these plants grow, how they are how they've been prepared traditionally, and rethinking especially tobacco and Coca, how these plants that have been so demonized, in what ways are they medicine? And in what ways are they culturally and spiritually important, for many cultures? Yeah, I think about that as well with sugar cane. In its unprocessed form it's so medicinal and when I've been in Thailand, I see sugar cane everywhere, and people drinking the juice, and it's a huge part of Thai traditional medicine. So those are the plants, some of which can grow here in the northeast, many of them that can't, but that I'm on a continued journey to deepen relationship with.
Ayana Young Antonia, thank you so much for sharing so much wisdom, but also personal insights into your world. It was really special to hear so much of what you shared. And yeah, I just appreciate the time with you. And I'm definitely feeling the urge to go outside and look for all of the plant can that are starting to spring up here and welcome them back.
Antonia Estela Perez Yeah, maybe see some more eagles. It was such a pleasure spending this time with you and thank you for all the questions and opportunities to reflect on all these plants and thoughts that I will continue to be thinking about and growing and expanding
Emily Guerra Thank you for listening to this episode of For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today is by Julio Kintu and the Ulali Project by Pura Fe. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Ali Constantine, Erica Ekrem, Emily Guerra, and Julia Jackson.