2023 Presenters: María Suárez Toro

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

Registration Links and Conference information here

Tona Ina: Literary Creation of a Matriarchal Archetype to Tell Narratives about Feminist Paradigm Shift

This presentation is about my experience of creating a literary character, Tona Ina (Sea Light in Yorba) as an archetypal character to tell the untold stories of the Ocean, its fresh waterways and the sacredness of women. . I created a character who would tell the stories of our communal archeological scuba diving, which is contributing to the recovery of the untold history of the afro-descendant population on the coast of Costa Rica.  Tona Ina features literary stores in diverse voices about present day challenges that affirm women’s tenacity.

Sharing voices about alternative ways of being in the planet through storytelling by Tona Ina is best done when we dive deep into women’s alternative experience to overcome  mainstream paradigms of patriarchy and capitalism. Tona Ina is the extension of the gift of voice and choice in today’s world, as part of the maternal gift economy and an ecofeminist paradigm of symbiotic interaction of the human species as part of nature.

María Suárez Toro is a PHD in Pedagogical Mediation of Holistic Paradigms, currently, a community underwater archelogy graduate, a feminist journalist, an activist in defense of human rights, an educator, a fisherwoman and scuba diver and writer. She was born in Puerto Rico and has been a resident of San José, Costa Rica for close to 50 years.

She is currently coordinator of a youth community diving Center Ambassadors of the Sea in Costa Rica’s Southern Caribbean. She was a co-director of the Feminist International Radio Endeavor (FIRE) from 1991 to 2011, of which she is a co-founder. She worked as an educator in literacy in many countries in Central America during the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1998 – 2017 she was an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Denver.