Zulai Romero

ZULAI ROMERO
HISTORY MAJOR
MELLON MAYS FELLOW

Zulai is currently a History major in the BA/MA program. A queer native New Yorker, and the third child of Colombian immigrant parents, she is no stranger to pluralities of identity, and the social/political/economic tensions that can arise because of them. Her particular area of interest lies at an intersection between gender and people of the Latin American diaspora (within a praxis of decolonization). A focus like this undoubtedly requires an analysis of the role of Latin America on the world economic stage, but her interest has more to do with the cultural exchanges among Latin American cultures and their syntheses with (or rejection of) Western notions of gender and other values. To this end, Zulai has organized with other queer people of color outside of CUNY to facilitate the growing network of radical people of color to deconstruct and recreate their own narratives and, hopefully, to expand possibilities for self-determination. After graduating, Zulai hopes to pursue a Ph.D. within some field in the Humanities in order to make the academic production of the ivory tower more accessible to those who are too often merely the object of study.