Maya Chinchilla is a Bay Area-based American poet best known as one of the founders of EpiCentroAmerica and for writing ''The Cha Cha files: A Chapina Poética.'' She is of mixed American, German, and Guatemalan heritages. She was a lecturer at

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

where she developed courses on Central Americans in Diaspora and Creative Writing. Chinchilla is also a lecturer at the

University of California Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

in the department of

Chicano Chicano (masculine form) or Chicana (feminine form) is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans that emerged from the Chicano Movement. In the 1960s, ''Chicano'' was widely reclaimed among Hispanics in the building of a movement toward politic ...

Studies.

Background and education

Maya Chinchilla was born in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

to an immigrant family with

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

n roots. Her mother, sociologist Dr. Norma Chinchilla and her father founded the Guatemala Information Center (GIC). Chinchilla received a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

from

University of California Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located in Monterey Bay ...

, a Masters in Broadcasting and Electronic Communications Arts from

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

, and a

Masters of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admin ...

in English and Creative Writing from

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California is part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was relocated to Oakland in ...

Work

Scholarly work and critical reception

The literary collective, EpiCentroAmerica or ''epicentros'', emerged in the 1990s as a space to give Central American American youth to explore their identity. It has been described as fundamental to the movement to reimagine Central American and Central American American identity in the literary arts in the early 21st century. An associated 2007 anthology, ''Desde el EpiCentro'', which was edited by Chinchilla and Karina Oliva-Alvarado, has been described as critical in troubling traditional understandings of Latino identity. She has had multiple publications in various journals and anthologies, including ''Mujeres de Maíz, Sinister Wisdom, Americas y Latinas: A Stanford Journal of Latin American Studies, Cipactli Journal, The Lunada Literary Anthology'' The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the U.S. Some of Chinchilla's research interests are Latin American/Latino Studies, Gender and sexuality, Latinx discourse and cultural production, creative writing and performance, Central American Studies, Latino/as in the media, Film production and Aesthetics, Media and Communications. Chinchilla has directed two short

documentaries A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". The American author and media analyst Bill ...

, "The Last Word" and "Made in Brazil" both of which screened at different festivals in 2006. When she was a graduate student at San Francisco State University, she also won the STAND award in 2006 from the Film Arts Foundation.

''The Cha Cha Files'' (2014)

''The Cha Cha Files'' is a collection of poems that brings to light the Diaspora of the Central American in the United States. The book is a queer text that uses erotic language and writing, while using autobiographical references to emphasize the struggles of the Central American Woman. In addition she discusses gender performance while articulating and reclaiming her

mestiza ( , ; fem. , literally 'mixed person') is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturall ...

and

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

roots.

Other literary works

''Church at Night'' was written by Maya Chinchilla after the

Orlando nightclub shooting On , 2016, 29-year-old Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States before Orlando Police officers fatally shot him after a three-hour standoff. I ...

. In 2018, the poem was published in ''A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.'' ''Femme on Purpose'' appears in The Jota Anthology. In her poem "Central Americanamerican" she "diffracts the construction of Central American identity beyond a geographic notion and along the multiple coordinates of migrations, generations, heritages, languages, ethnicities, races, sexualities, cultures, and discourses magnified in the Central American diasporas." Besides her literary work, Maya Chinchilla directed various video projects including
Solidarity Baby
" "The Last Word".{{Cite news, url=https://mayachapina.com/video/, title=Video, date=2009-04-13, work=Chinchilla Like Tortilla, access-date=2017-03-08, language=en-USCentral American Unicorns in Space
and is the host o
Live and Queer.

References

{{Reflist

External links

*{{cite web, url=https://ciis.academia.edu/MayaChinchilla/CurriculumVitae , title=Maya Chinchilla | California Institute of Integral Studies - Academia.edu , website=Ciis.academia.edu , date=1970-01-01 , access-date=2017-03-15 *{{cite web , url=https://mayachinchilla.com , title=Chinchilla Like Tortilla | cha-cha-chapina poetics , website=Mayachinchilla.com , access-date=2017-03-15 *{{cite web, url=https://mayachinchilla.com/about/, title=About Me | Chinchilla Like Tortilla, website=Mayachapina.com, date=13 March 2009 , access-date=2017-03-15 *{{cite web, url=http://korimapress.com/cha-cha-files/4585686399 , title=Cha Cha Files - Kórima Press , website=Korimapress.com , date=2014-06-04 , access-date=2017-03-15 *{{cite web, url=http://lals.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=mchinchi , title=Maya M Chinchilla , website=Lals.ucsc.edu , date=2017-02-13 , access-date=2017-03-15 *"Chapina 2.0: Reflections of A Central American Solidarity Baby" Mujeres Talk 2013 https://library.osu.edu/site/mujerestalk/2013/05/13/chapina-2-0-reflections-of-a-central-american-solidarity-baby/ {{authority control {{DEFAULTSORT:Chinchilla, Maya Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American poets 21st-century American women writers American people of Guatemalan descent American women poets Mills College alumni Poets from California San Francisco State University alumni University of California, Santa Cruz alumni Writers from Long Beach, California