The Cha Cha Files
Photo: Rio Yañez
June 4, 2014
The Cha Cha Files
Maya Chinchilla
MCCLA
7:30pm
Tickets: $12 – $20
Brown Paper Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/668131
Join us for a night of faggotry, pageantry and poetry at The Cha Cha Files, a multi-media performance extravaganza and book release. Bay Area Guatemalan-American cultural worker, educator, and writer, Maya Chinchilla celebrates her cultural and political muses in her debut collection of poetry and stories. Her work honors Central American feministas, Long Beach rockeras, lovers separated by borders and the glitter, fluidity, and heartbreak of joteria, machas y mariconadas. This book is a must-have for students of the struggle, women of color and femmes of all kinds.
This night features Maya’s work along with special guests including San Antonio based “bearlesque” performer and author, Dino Foxx. More than your average book release, this is a night of performance art, a celebration of triumph, a glimpse into heartbreak and a realization of all possibilities in between.
BIOGRAPHIES
Photo: Rio Yañez
Maya Chinchilla is a Bay area-based writer, video artist, educator and author of The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética (Kórima Press June 2014). As a Central American Latina femme, she writes and performs poetry exploring historical memory, heartbreak, tenderness, and the fight for justice. Her work has been described as sassy, witty, performative, self-aware, and honest. Her work draws on a tradition of truth-telling and poking fun at the very wounds onto which we hold.
Maya holds an MFA in English and Creative Writing and has presented solo and collaborative work across the country. Her work has been quoted (and misquoted) in essays, presentations and books particularly on themes of US Central American poetics, Chicana/Latina literature, gender and sexuality. She is also a founding member of the performance group Las Manas, co-edited Desde El Epicentro: An anthology of CentralAmerican Poetry and Art, and was an artist-in-residence at Galeria de La Raza in San Francisco and La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, CA. Born and raised in Long Beach by a mixed class, mixed race, immigrant and extended activist family, she has lived and loved in the Bay Area for the second half of her life. For more information and updates visit: www.mayachapina.com
Dino Foxx, author of When the Glitter Fades (Korima Press 2013), is a nationally presented actor, singer, burlesque dancer, spoken word poet, fire-eater and bearded drag queen living in San Antonio, TX. Foxx is founding member of the Tragic Bitches poetry collaborative, a member of the Stars and Garters Burlesque All-Star Cast and the co-producer and emcee of the San Antonio Burlesque Festival.
