STACEYANN CHIN [13.261]

Staceyann Chin 

(Nació el 25 de diciembre de 1972 en Jamaica ). Es una poetisa, artista de performance y activista avocada a los derechos LGBT. Su trabajo ha sido publicado en el New York Times, Washington Post y Pittsburgh Daily. Su trabajo también ha sido exhibido en el programa de televisión 60 Minutes de la CBS. Fue una artista invitada en The Oprah Winfrey Show, programa televisivo en el cual compartió sus experiencias al crecer como una mujer homosexual en Jamaica.

Chin nació en Jamaica y reside en Brooklyn localizada en New York City, Estados Unidos. Posee ascendencia Chino-Jamaiquina y Afro-Jamaiquina. En 2011 anunció su embarazo, dando a luz a su primer hija en enero de 2012. Compartió sus experiencias con sinceridad al respecto de su embrazo por medio de fecundación in vitro y su vida como una mujer embarazada, soltera y lesbiana en un blog para el Huffington Post.

Carrera

Chin ha sido una poetisa y activista política abiertamente lesbiana2 desde 1998. Actuó y escribió Def Poetry Jam, nominado a un Premios Tony, junto a Russell Simmons en el teatro Broadway. Mientras tanto, Chin se presentó en Off-Broadway con un acto solista en Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Fue anfitriona de talleres de poesía en todo el mundo. Chin reconoce su éxito y lo acredita al arduo trabajo de su abuela y el dolor causado por la ausencia de su madre.

La poesía de Chin puede ser hallada en su primer chapbook titulado Wildcat Woman, en Stories Surrounding My Coming y numerosas antologías incluyendo Skyscrapers, Taxis and Tampons, Poetry Slam, Role Call, Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies. Su voz puede oírse en compilaciones de Bar 13- Union Square y Pow Wow productions. En 2009 Chin publicó su novela autobiográfica The Other Side of Paradise - A Memoir. (New York: Scriber. ISBN 0-7432-9290-1).

Es la anfitriona en el show de Internet After Ellen de Logo (canal de televisión), llamado "She Said What?" y es co-anfitriona de My Two Cents de Centric.

En el 2009 Chin actuó en The People Speak, un documental que utiliza interpretaciones de cartas, diarios, y discursos cotidianos de los norteamericanos que resultan tanto musicales como dramáticas, basado en A People's History of the United States del historiador Howard Zinn.

Trabajos

Libros

Chin, Staceyann (Abril de 2009). The Other Side of Paradise - A Memoir. New York: Scriber. ISBN 0-7432-9290-1.

Antologías

"Authenticity", en Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness. Editado por Rebecca Walker (Soft Skull Press, 1 de febrero, 2012)

Actuaciones

Staceyann Chin: Performed Poems en Trikster - Nordic Queer Journal #3, 2009.

Tanto por decir

Tanto por decir

y el tambor sigue

golpeando en mi cabeza

Tanto por decir

y el tambor sigue

golpeando en mi cabeza

Tanto por decir

y el tambor

golpea mi cabeza

Tanto por decir

y el tambor golpea

Tanto por decir

y el tambor

Tanto por decir

Tanto

Tanto

Y el tambor

el tambor

el tambor

Toda Opressão Está Conectada

Todos os dias         

Eu tenho mais medo de dizer que sou negra

ou mulher

ou lésbica

em nome da união eu engulo alguma coisa que deveria

ter dito

sobre a epidemia de AIDS na África

ou a violência contra meninas no leste de Nova York

ou a taxa de mortalidade de meninos no sul de Chicago

Staceyann Chin’s — If Only Out Of Vanity

If only out of vanity

I have wondered what kind of woman I will be

when I am well past the summer of my raging youth

Will I still be raising revolutionary flags

and making impassioned speeches

that stir up anger in the hearts of pseudo-liberals

dressed in navy-blue conservative wear

In those years when I am grateful

I still have a good sturdy bladder

that does not leak undigested prune juice

onto diapers—no longer adorable

will I be more grateful for that

than for any forward movement in any current political cause

and will it have been worth it then

Will it have been worth the long hours

of not sleeping

that produced little more than reams

of badly written verses that catapulted me into literary spasms

but did not even whet the appetite

of the three O’ clock crowd

in the least respected of the New York poetry cafes

Will I wish then that I had taken that job working at the bank

or the one to watch that old lady drool

all over her soft boiled eggs

as she tells me how she was a raving beauty in the sixties

how she could have had any man she wanted

but she chose the one least likely to succeed

and that’s why when the son of a bitch died

she had to move into this place

because it was government subsidized

Will I tell my young attendant

how slender I was then

and paint for her pictures

of the young me more beautiful than I ever was

if only to make her forget the shriveled paper skin

the stained but even dental plates

and the faint smell of urine that tends to linger

in places built especially for revolutionaries

whose causes have been won

or forgotten

Will I still be lesbian then

or will the church or family finally convince me

to marry some man with a smaller dick

than the one my woman uses to afford me

violent and multiple orgasms

Will the staff smile at me

humor my eccentricities to my face

but laugh at me in their private resting rooms

saying she must have been something in her day

Most days I don’t know what I will be like then

but everyday—I know what I want to be now

I want to be that voice that makes Guilani

so scared he hires two (butch) black bodyguards

I want to write the poem

that The New York Times cannot print

because it might start some kind of black or lesbian

or even a white revolution

I want to go to secret meetings and under the guise

of female friendship I want to bed the women

of those young and eager revolutionaries

with too much zeal for their cause

and too little passion for the women

who follow them from city to city

all the while waiting in separate rooms

I want to be forty years old

and weigh three hundred pounds

and ride a motorcycle in the wintertime

with four hell raising children

and a one hundred ten pound female lover

who writes poetry about my life

and my children and loves me

like no one has ever loved me before

I want to be the girl your parents will use

as a bad example of a lady

I want to be the dyke who likes to fuck men

I want to be the politician who never lies

I want to be the girl who never cries

I want to go down in history

in a chapter marked miscellaneous

because the writers could find

no other way to categorize me

In this world where classification is key

I want to erase the straight lines

So I can be me

La Poeta Staceyann Chin

La poeta lesbiana Staceyann Chin, nacida de una madre china y un padre jamaicano, acertadamente comprende la complejidad de venir de dos razas y, además de esta, de ser un inmigrante y una minoridad sexual. En su espectáculo autobiográfico “Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires” (encontrado “off-Broadway,” expresión que se refiere a las producciones teatrales en Nueva York que no se representan en los escenarios grandes de Broadway, y que tienen  gran originalidad pero bajo presupuesto) ella dice: “I never belong to any one space, but I have a place in all the others’ spaces” (“Nunca pertenezco a un solo lugar, pero tiene un hueco en todos los espacios de los demás”).

Nacida en 1972, Chin se desplazó a Nueva York en 1997. Su obra es intensa y avispada. Pero ella es más que una avivada. Utiliza la escritura y la poesía de forma “palabra hablada” para hacer la vivisección del statu quo, con el enfoque en sus padres vagos, el fenómeno de golpear la gente gay, y otros temas sociales-políticos. Chin queda precisa en sus enfrentamientos.

Como ella dijo a The New York Times en 2005, “There are tons of things to be angry about in the world, and I am angry, but we have to be more strategic.” (“Existen miles de cosas en el mundo que se dan rabia, y claro que estoy enojada, pero hemos de comportarnos estratégicamente.”)

Y la poesía, simplemente, es su poder prudente, discreto, y estratégico. Chin elabora en este sentido en un artículo que escribió en 2013 para la revista The Nation. Describe que, después de escapar la violación en grupo en Jamaica con su desplazamiento a Nueva York, ella se dio cuenta de que todavía existe la violencia en este sitio reconocido como refugio para la gente gay y lesbiana.

Por lo tanto, Chin dice: “With nowhere else to go, I started screaming in poetry in response, in resistance, to the global phenomenon of oppression. It was here, among the poets, that I began to speak out.” (“Sin la oportunidad de huir de nuevo, comencé a gritar la poesía como respuesta, como forma de resistencia, de desafío al fenómeno global de la opresión. Fue allí, en la compañía de los poetas, que empecé a hablar con claridad, a denunciar.”).

Chin ha ganado muchos concursos de poesía “slam” en Chicago y Nueva York. Más recientemente, ella fue autora de una serie de artículos para The Huffington Post que detallaron su experiencia de hacerse madre mientras que estaba una lesbiana soltera.

The Poet Staceyann Chin

Faggot Haiku

Faggots reach into

their own asses we are not

afraid of our shit

Lesbian poet Staceyann Chin was born to a Chinese mother and Jamaican father. In her autobiographical Off Broadway show “Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires,” she aptly denotes the complexity of her existence as a biracial immigrant and sexual minority when she states: “I never belong to any one space, but I have a place in all the others’ spaces.”

Born in 1972, she came to New York City in 1997. Chin’s work is sharp. She uses written and spoken-word poetry to vivisect the status quo – whether her deadbeat parents or the phenomenon of gay bashing. But Chin is precise in her confrontations: as she told The New York Times in 2005, “There are tons of things to be angry about in the world, and I am angry, but we have to be more strategic.”

Chin 1And poetry, quite simply, is her strategic power. Chin elaborates on this notion in a 2013 article for The Nation. She writes that after escaping gang-rape in Jamaica by coming to New York, she learned that violence still existed even in the city known as a refuge for the gay community.

And so, upon this realization and “with nowhere else to go, I started screaming in poetry in response, in resistance, to the global phenomenon of oppression. It was here, among the poets, that I began to speak out.”

Chin has won poetry slam competitions in Chicago and New York, although most recently she wrote a series of blog posts for The Huffington Post as her experience becoming a mother as a single lesbian.