Calle 24 presents
Paseo Artistico
Saturday, December 9 - FREE
This Saturday, December 9, the Latino Cultural District hosts the free, all-day neighborhood celebration Paseo Artistico with an eclectic mix of music, entertainment and art activities. As part of the festivities, Brava will host poetry readings by Juliana Lopera, Cathie Arellano, Maya Chinchilla and Denise Benavides in our Cabaret space between 2-4pm.
Read more about the poets and the work from which they will read below. For a full list of the day's events, click here.
Maya Chinchilla is a femme Guatemalan writer and author of “The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética” a celebrated book of poetry and vignettes taught in Universities across the country. She teaches creative writing and Latina/o/x Studies as a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, SFSU, currently at UC Davis in Chicana/o Studies, is often invited to give guest lecturers and writing workshops and is the editor of the forthcoming "CentroMariconadas: A Queer and Trans Central American Anthology" by Kórima Press.
The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética by Maya Chinchilla is a timely debut that makes visible the Central American-Guatemalan diaspora and disentangles the myths from the mayhem of civil wars, urban wars, and the wars raging in young hearts. Part memory, part imaginary, The Cha Cha Files honors Central American feministas, Long Beach roqueras, families divided by war, lovers separated by borders, and celebrates the pleasure and heartbreak of femmes, machas, y mariconadas. These poems, stories, and snapshots traverse California coastlines and southern borderlines, cut across tense multi-culti high-school hallways, sing Solidarity Movement songs, mosh through tribal slam pits, and find home in the vibrant Bay Area where radical activists and lovers alike come of age. Chinchilla’s hopeful and uniquely Chapina voice emerges as a significant contribution to U.S. Latina/o literary works.
Juliana Delgado Lopera is an award-winning Colombian writer, oral-historian based in San Francisco. The recipient of the 2014 Jackson Literary award, and a finalist of the Clark-Gross Novel award, she’s the author of ¡Cuéntamelo! an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latinx immigrants andQuiéreme (Nomadic Press 2017). She's received fellowships from Brush Creek Foundation of the Arts, Lambda Literary Foundation and The SF Grotto, and an individual artist grant from the SF Arts Commission. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in various publications. She’s the executive director of RADAR Productions. Find out more at julianadlopera.com
¡Cuéntamelo! is “[a] stunning collection of bilingual oral histories and illustrations by LGBT Latinx immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during the 80s and 90s. Stories of repression in underground Havana in the 60s; coming out trans in Catholic Puerto Rico in the 80s; Scarface, female impersonators, Miami and the 'boat people'; San Francisco’s underground Latinx scene during the 90s and more.” ¡Cuéntamelo! is bilingual. All stories in this book have both an English and Spanish version.
Denise Benavides is a performance artist, poet, and educator based in the San Diego / Tijuana border. Her debut collection SPLIT was published by Kórima Press and was a finalist for the 2017 Golden Crown Literary Award. She has toured & performed internationally using the page/stage to confront themes of xenophobia, homophobia, migration, mental health, race, and love. Always love. She holds a BA / MFA in English from Mills College and her work can also be found at Third Woman Press’ zine Gonna Be Alright (Vol. 2), Foglifter Journal, and Anxy Magazine. For more information, please visit www.denisebenavides.com
Denise Benavides’ debut collection SPLIT is a dedication to motherlessness and abandon—to a nightly killing and rebirths. At its worst, it is all teeth masticating through the body in an attempt to interrogate and cut out what no longer serves the Self. It is a collection not meant for the weak, but for those willing to walk through what haunts them the most.
Cathy Arellano is just another Mexican lesbian writer from The Mission. Arellano’s I LOVE MY WOMEN, SOMETIMES THEY LOVE ME was released this Fall from Kórima Press. In 2016, Kórima also published SALVATION ON MISSION STREET, a collection of Arellano’s poems and stories about love and loss within her Mission District-based family from the 1960s to the 2000s.SALVATION won the 2017 Golden Crown Literary Society’s Debut Author Award.
Cathy Arellano’s I LOVE MY WOMEN, SOMETIMES THEY LOVE ME depicts the lovers we’ve been and the lovers we’ve had. We haven’t always been fair; they haven’t always been kind. These poems compel us to consider what we keep at bay for the poet knows that actions and feelings must be acknowledged if they are to be changed, if we—and our liaisons—are to be transformed. Get ready to enter the ring of love and grapple like a luchador with passion and pain, hers and maybe yours