This dissertation moves beyond an exploration of the gendered nature of communal violence and its traumatic impacts on Muslim women towards radical and liberatory methodological interventions. The Kalaashakti arts and healing workshops, conducted with Muslim women survivors of the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat, India, hold critical and holistic ethnography, the liberatory arts and spiritual activism at their core. I discuss the themes of belonging, connection, and empathy in the Kalaashakti women’s written work and argue that these indications of healing and recovery of the self and collective, despite the divisive logic of genocide, are significant for social transformation. I argue that self-epistemology, or self-knowing, is possible through mindfulness and creative expression and can lead to self-transformation and therefore social change. I conclude with how these women’s stories and poems traveled to the U.S. for a public art and awareness-building event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the genocide. I offer “Gujarat Genocide and U.S. Solidarity” as a hopeful example of transnational solidarity through art activism and evaluate the power of public expression and witnessing to create new critical, public cultures.

This article is excerpted from a longer research paper and project examining moments amongst the intersections of immigrant rights, gender justice, and social change. This piece is collaboratively crafted by two Ph.D. students, one in Urban Planning and the other in Women’s Studies, as a reflection on their actions with Tod@s Somos Arizona, a grassroots collective. These excerpts emerge from experiences right before a major act of civil disobedience and the ensuing jail time. Both women identify as queer women of color who are also experimenting with a spectrum of queer as an analytic.