Mazer Archives July 2021 Newsletter | Out of the Archives: Juanita Sanchez Collection
This month, we’re excited to feature the Juanita Sanchez Collection. A dear friend of Juanita and donor of this incredible collection, Bonnilee Kaufman, shares her story below.
Above Image: Bonnilee Kaufman stands in front of Mazer exhibition Out of the Box 2018 featuring an image of Juanita Sanchez smiling. Below the image of Juanita, copies of two pages from Juanita’s journal hang on the wall.
Bonnilee’s Story:
Juanita Sanchez (July 12, 1948- April 19, 2014)
If you’ve ever heard, really listened to the Native American flute, you’re bound to be transported; the sound of despair melodiously arresting. Juanita Sanchez taught herself to play that flute, to hold court, to breathe every note as prayer. But she always moved over, made room for others to shine. I was lucky enough to relish in that space.
Full Circle Bookstore Albuquerque New Mexico early 1990’s, Juanita began sponsoring lesbian writer salons. She was working hard at that time, pushing boundaries, writing honestly about her father’s indiscretions, their emotionally fraught relationship, juxtaposed with deep connections to him, how much she understood having also been so often pushed to the curb by whites, by racial injustices, by homophobia. Sometimes she shared, read her work aloud.
More often she designed publicity, sought out additional venues, brought along her own little plug-in mic, and always set an intimate stage for women’s voices. Juanita created community.
And she lived contradictions better than anyone. Totally content yet always striving. Against munitions yet took her license to carry serious as butches who always pack; pistol ready, always within reach. She renounced religion, then about-faced and converted to Judaism, before shunning it all again. We’d take day trips to the ancient Santuario in Chimayo, but she never accompanied me inside until that very last visit, three weeks before her fatal aneurysm. I didn’t think about it much then, but in retrospect, I recognize it as a sign of her prescience.
Juanita shared and bestowed. I miss her really well. Better than anything. Her memory a blessing.
Bonnilee May 26, 2021
Above image: Poster for Celebramos La Primavera con Artistas De Sante Fe y Albuquerque, Abril 9, 1991
Out of the Archives is a monthly Mazer newsletter dedicated to bringing our materials out of the archives to share with our community.
The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives is the largest major archive on the West Coast dedicated to preserving and promoting lesbian and feminist history and culture. By creating a safe place for women to explore the richness of lesbian history, perhaps adding to it themselves, we are paving the way for future generations to understand more fully their own identity and history and help maintain this vital link to their own past.