Sarah Lennon
Sarah Lennon is a fourth-year Honours Sociology student at the University of British Columbia, with a minor in Latin American Studies.
Her research explores Afro-Latina feminist traditions through an intricate and moving case study of the lives and legacies of Marielle Franco and Vanessa Rentería, two Afro-Latina women whose fatalities reveal the enduring impacts of state violence among Black and Afro-Latina women. Drawing on testimony and collaboration with the Instituto Marielle Franco, community advocates, and activist networks, her thesis examines how grief is powerfully transformed into healing, political action, and collective solidarity in Afro-descendant communities.
Beyond her research, Sarah enjoys teaching dance, writing poetry, exploring Vancouver’s diverse food scene in search of the perfect shawarma and pho, and learning new languages. Having lived across three continents and four countries, she is deeply passionate about finding middle ground and building community across cultures. She is continually working toward her goal of becoming a polyglot.
Afro-Latina Feminism, State Violence, and Collective Healing - They Tried to Bury Us, but Didn’t Know We Were Seeds
Afro-Latina women continue to confront racialized and gendered state violence, starkly visible in the 2018 assassination of Brazilian councilwoman Marielle Franco and the 2024 police killing of Afro-Colombian migrant Vanessa Rentería in Canada. However, these experiences remain marginal within frameworks such as Latinidad and Canadian multiculturalism, both of which constrain how anti-Black racism is recognized and addressed. Drawing on discourse analysis, in-depth interviews with community members and activists, and engagement with feminist organizing spaces, this study uses a narrative-informed analytical approach.
This study examines how Afro-Latina women and their communities respond to state violence. It foregrounds Afro-Latina testimony and political legacy, placing the work of the Marielle Franco Institute in conversation with Rentería’s case to show how grief transforms into collective action within Afro-Latina epistemologies. Loss emerges as a site of organizing that builds solidarity, sustains communities, and asserts demands for justice. By tracing these connections, this study identifies transnational patterns of anti-Black state violence while demonstrating that Afro-Latina feminist practices do more than respond to harm, they reimagine justice through collective care and challenge the limits of dominant institutional frameworks.
How did you become interested in this topic? Why did you choose it for your thesis?
The legacy and activism of Marielle Franco has always inspired me. Her courage, conviction, and unwavering commitment to justice have profoundly shaped my understanding of my own voice and identity as a Black woman. Throughout my intellectual horizons in Latin American Studies at UBC, with supervision and support from my professor and now supervisor, Dr. Ana Vivaldi, I became increasingly aware of a disconnect in how Afro-Latino experiences, histories, and ways of knowing are represented within academic and public discussions of the region. Yet Afro-Latino communities have made invaluable contributions to Latin America and offer powerful frameworks for understanding justice, life, and collective care.
My interest in this topic was further shaped by my experiences as an immigrant living and studying in Canada. Canada is often celebrated for its multiculturalism, but through my initial consultation with this topic, I found that many Black Canadians continue to be excluded from the promises of this policy. This exclusion can be particularly pronounced for Afro-Latino individuals who navigate multiple layers of intersecting marginalization, including race, language, and migration status. For many, the realities of life in Canada can feel far more isolating and complex than the multicultural ideal suggests, and I wanted to shine light on this.
Can you summarize your project and its main findings for us?
My thesis explores how Afro-Latina women and their communities navigate patterns of state violence by anchoring their work in the legacies and feminist thought of Marielle Franco and Leila Gonzalez, drawing on Afro-Latino epistemologies and traditions of resistance. Through this framework, I examine the case of Vanessa Rentería in Canada, an Afro-Latina woman who was fatally shot by the RCMP in her home, as an example of transnational solidarity and shared struggle.
While these cases occur in different national contexts, I found striking similarities in how institutions often attempt to erase or minimize the racialized and gendered realities of violence experienced by Black women. One of my central findings is that the harms experienced by Afro-Latina women are frequently compounded by dominant national narratives, particularly ideologies of mestizaje and myths of racial democracy in Latin America, and multiculturalism in Canada, which can hinder ongoing forms of anti-Black racism and shape how the state and the media contextualize violence.
At the same time, my research found that families, activists, and community members actively resist these forms of erasure. Through public memorials, storytelling, community organizing, and ancestral traditions rooted in practices such as the quilombos, they create alternative archives of memory that preserve the lives, dignity, and humanity of Black women. Rather than understanding grief solely as a private response to loss, my thesis demonstrates how grief can become a collective and intentional decolonial political practice that generates consciousness.
Ultimately, I argue that justice is not produced solely through courts and state institutions, which remain shaped by enduring histories of colonization and racial exclusion. Instead, community-led responses offer alternative pathways toward justice and healing. The successful prosecution of those responsible for the assassination of Marielle Franco by Brazilian authorities after six years of endless collective mobilization serves as a powerful example of this and how these movements led by Afro-Latina women offer an important framework for imagining future pathways to justice for Vanessa Rentería, her family, and her community as well.
What was your favourite part of doing research?
My favorite part of doing the research was witnessing my data collection come to life firsthand, it was such a fulfilling experience to create an inquiry and see it all come together, revealing even more than I anticipated. Trusting the process and the community I had with the cohort, peers, and my supervisors gave me the boost to be optimistic in this aspect as well.
What’s one memory that stands out the most to you from the process of researching and writing your thesis?
Connecting with the wider Latino community and those at the Instituto Marielle Franco was incredibly meaningful. One of my priorities throughout this research was to ensure that my approach remained sensitive, ethical, and grounded in care. Hearing from women who knew Marielle and Vanessa, as well as those who work to preserve their legacies, motivated me to shape this research as best I could in honor of their lives and struggles. I believe that research of this nature must remain attentive to the humanity of those involved.
Without reciprocity and accountability, research can become exploitation disguised as knowledge production and scholarly inquiry. The participants I interviewed came from real communities and carried lived experiences that extended far beyond the scope of my project. Grounding myself in that reality allowed me to think critically about how I could challenge and reform research practices that have historically reproduced forms of control, extraction, and domination, particularly in relation to Black women and marginalized communities. Ultimately, this experience reinforced my belief that research should not only seek to understand the world but also remain accountable to the people whose stories, knowledge, and experiences make that understanding possible.
