“What’s left at the end of the day once we’ve divided and multiplied and subtracted pieces of ourselves to just be able to stay standing.” – Ana-Maurine Lara  Polymath extraordinaire Ana-Maurine Lara offers Tami and Kaiama much-appreciated  lessons in arithmetic and other miraculous methodologies.   Ana-Maurine Lara is currently an Associate Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Oregon. Her areas of interest include Afro-Latinidad, Black: Queer aesthetics, Afro-Indigenous relationships and traditional knowledges, and the struggle against xenophobia in the Dominican Republic. Also an award-winning novelist and poet, Dr. Lara spent 10 years as a writer and performance artist before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. in African American Studies and Anthropology at Yale University. Her short stories and poems have been published in numerous anthologies and literary magazines. In addition, she has written and performed many plays and performance art pieces, most recently Sanctuary (2021), a performance collaboration with Rosamond S. King, Akiko Hatakeyama and Courtney Desiree Morris (directed by D'Lo).