[ottawa-activist-events] "Consensual Genocide" coming to Ottawa...
may el-abdallah
Launch party/ Performance for "Consensual Genocide"!
It's finally here! The long awaited first collection of poetry by queer
Sri Lankan writer and spoken word artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha,
Consensual Genocide, is full of the stories we've been waiting for. With
fierce power, Piepzna-Samarasinha tells raw truths about brown girl border
crossings, surviving abuse, mixed-race identities and femme lives.
Ottawa Launch: Sunday, April 9, 2006
SAW Gallery
67 Nicholas St.
Tickets: $5-$8 sliding scale (available at the door)
Doors at 7:00 PM
About the author:
A beloved cultural creator and activist, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
is a U.S. raised, Toronto-based queer Sri Lankan writer, spoken word
artist and arts educator. Her writing has been published in the
anthologies With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn, Colonize This!,
Dangerous Families, the Lambda Award-nominated Brazen Femme, Without a
Net, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws and A Girl's Guide To Taking Over the
World, as well as in the periodicals Lodestar Quarterly, Mizna, Exile,
Bamboo Girl, big boots, Broken Pencil, Fireweed, and Anything That Moves.
A frequent contributor to Bitch and Colorlines, she has performed her work
widely through the United States and Canada.
Since 2001, Piepzna-Samarasinha teaches writing to LGBT youth at
Supporting Our Youth Toronto, for which she won the city of Toronto
Community Service to Youth Award in 2004. She is currently completing her
first novel, Dirty River, and working on a collaborative performance about
Sri Lankan women's untold stories, Blood Memory: A Sri Lankan Storytelling
Project.
Ottawa Launch: Sunday, April 9, 2006
SAW Gallery
67 Nicholas St.
Tickets: $5-$8 sliding scale (available at the door)
Doors at 7:00 PM
Feature performance: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in all her fierceness
Co-sponsored by SAW Gallery, mother tongue books, VIA Rail
Advance praise for Consensual Genocide:
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's words leap off the page -- urgent,
sumptuous writing that demands, and deserves, a wide audience. I'm
listening.
- Anna Camilleri, author of I Am a Red Dress, editor Red Light and Brazen
Femme.
Leah's poems make me gasp out loud. My tears fall with relief at the
immediacy of her words, a relief that her voice is real, that it comes to
me, cutting through the denial of the post-911 racist war machine. Thank
you Leah for these beads of truth, this lifeline. To all who read this:
take refuge in her words, if only for a moment. Then use her strength to
help propel you towards your next act of courage, whether it's catching a
bus, crossing a border, fighting back, or reaching out.
- Nomy Lamm, activist, performer and fat freaky diva
In the poetry of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, there's a power that's
nearly atomic. The beauty of these poems lies in how Leah shows how
violence is passed down through generations of the South Asian diaspora
and also transformed. Leah bends the colonizers language and makes it
submit to her own tongue.
-Bushra Rehman, editor, Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's
Feminism, author, Marianna's Beauty Salon, queer Pakistani performance
poet.
Urgent. Beautiful. Remarkably hard and personal, Leah's writing
deconstructs history, culture and family dynamics… Leah's poems will shake
you out of your complacency and get you off your ass.
- Shameless
To order:
Contact Toronto South Asian Review Press, www.tsarbooks.com
Copies are available at mother tongue books (1067 Bank St.)!
Distribution: Through LPC in Canada, Small Press Distribution in the U.S.
- e-mail:: may...@hotmail.com
Homepage:: http://www.geocities.com/agitate_ottawa
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