Staceyann Chin

Staceyann Chin
Born (1972-12-25) December 25, 1972
Jamaica
Occupation Poet, writer, performance artist

Staceyann Chin (born December 25, 1972) is a spoken-word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights political activist. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Pittsburgh Daily, and has been featured on 60 Minutes. She was also featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she shared her struggles growing up as a gay person in Jamaica.

Personal life

Chin was born in Jamaica but now lives in New York City, in Brooklyn. She is of Chinese-Jamaican and Afro-Jamaican descent. She announced in 2011 that she was pregnant with her first child, giving birth to a daughter in January 2012. She has been candid about her pregnancy by means of in-vitro fertilization, and wrote about her experiences as a pregnant, single lesbian in a guest blog for the Huffington Post.[1][2]

In 2015 Chin’s off broad way performance MotherStruck! Depicts her personal journey to motherhood as a single woman, lesbian and activist who does not have health insurance or a “serious, stable financial set up,” but wants to have a child. Told through Chin’s uniquely personal and poetic lens, this solo show explores how the process changed her life and how she makes peace with what she learns from this profound experience. [3] “For many women of color, choosing to become a mother challenges institutional policies that encourage white, middle class women to produce and discourages and even penalize low income racial ethnic women of color from doing so.[4]” Choosing to have a child as a single Black lesbian revokes oppressive institutions such as capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heterosexism which work to further maintain the subordinacy of women thus making the personal political.

Career

Openly lesbian,[2] she has been an "out poet and political activist" since 1998. In addition to performing in and co-writing the Tony-nominated Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin has appeared in Off-Broadway one-woman shows and at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She has also held poetry workshops worldwide. Chin credits her accomplishments to her hard-working grandmother and the pain of her mother's absence.

Chin's poetry can be found in her first chapbook, Wildcat Woman, the one she now carries on her back, Stories Surrounding My Coming, and numerous anthologies, including Skyscrapers, Taxis and Tampons, Poetry Slam, Role Call, Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies. Chin's voice can be heard on CD compilations out of Bar 13- Union Square and Pow Wow productions. In 2009, Chin published her autobiographical novel, The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir.[5]

She is a host on Logo's After Ellen Internet show, "She Said What?" and a co-host of Centric's My Two Cents.

In 2009, Chin performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.[6]

She currently teaches a seminar at the arts-oriented Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn.

Critical analysis

Chin's "activist driven"[7] work has garnered praise in various publications. Of her one-woman show Border/Clash, The New York Times wrote that Chin "is sassy, rageful and sometimes softly self-mocking."[8] The Advocate wrote, "With poems that combine hilarious one-liners ("I told her I liked the way she made that pink push-up bra look intellectual") with a refusal to conform ("I want to be the dyke who likes to fuck men"), Chin is out to confront more than just the straight world."[9] And in the book, Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz referred to Chin as "definitely the prize to win" among the three New York City Poetry Slam venues during the years she competed, adding:

“ To watch Chin perform is to watch the very essence of poetry manifested: her performances are imperfect, volatile and beautiful. Chin's poetry is passionate and well-written, sure; but it's her ability to communicate that passion in performance that is unparalleled. She becomes the poetry.[10] ”

As a feminist performer Chin displays autonomy by sharing the details of her life that differ from standard patriarchal Ideals. Her work speaks on her experience of being black queer and a woman simultaneously. More often than not Chin’s work embodies nuances of intersectional storytelling and stand point theory because it is based off of her real life experiences. The black women's ability to forge the individual unarticulated, yet potentially powerful expressions of everyday consciousness into an articulated, self-defined, collective stand point, is a key to black women's survival. As Audre Lorde examines “it is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others.”[11]

Awards

Chin was the winner of the 1999 Chicago People of Color Slam; first runner- up in the 1999 Outright Poetry Slam; winner of the 1998 Lambda Poetry Slam; a finalist in the 1999 Nuyorican Grand Slam; winner of the 1998 and 2000 Slam This!; and winner of WORD: The First Slam for Television. She has also been featured by Public-access television cable TV programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan as well as many local radio stations including, WHCR and WBAI. The Joseph Pap Public Theater has featured her on more than one occasion, and Staceyann has toured internationally, with performances in London, Denmark, Germany, South Africa and New York's own Central Park Summer Stage. In 2015, she was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month.[12]

Works

Books

Anthologies

Performances

Interviews

References

  1. ↑ Chin, Staceyann (November 22, 2011). "Coming Out Pregnant!". Huffington Post.
  2. 1 2 Boykin, Keith (October 3, 2006). "Staceyann Chin's Redemption Song". KeithBoykin.com. Retrieved 2007-10-29.
  3. ↑ "about".
  4. ↑ Davis, Angela (1981). "Women, Race and Class". ISBN 9780394713519. For many women of color, choosing to become a mother challenges institutional policies that encourage white, middle class women to produce and discourages and even penalize low income racial ethnic women of color from doing so.
  5. ↑ Chin, Staceyann (2009). The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir (1st ed.). New York: Scribner. ISBN 0-7432-9290-1.
  6. ↑ "Credits". The People Speak. Retrieved 3 March 2013.
  7. ↑ Corece, Mark (March 19, 2008). "Multifaceted: Staceyann Chin Talks". Windy City Times.
  8. ↑ Lee, Felicia R. (July 17, 2005). "A Def Poetry Jam of Her Very Own". The New York Times.
  9. ↑ Glitz, Michael (April 29, 2003). "Getting Raves for Her Rants: Chinese-Jamaican Poet Staceyann Chin Brings Her Outraged Eloquence from Broadway to HBO's Def Poetry". The Advocate.
  10. ↑ Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. Soft Skull Press. Page 181. ISBN 1-933368-82-9.
  11. ↑ Collins, Patrica (2002). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. p. 36. ISBN 9780203900055. The black women's ability to forge the individual unarticulated, yet potentially powerful expressions of everyday consciousness into an articulated, self-defined, collective stand point, is a key to black women's survival. As Audre lorde examines “it is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others”
  12. ↑ Malcolm Lazin (August 20, 2015). "Op-ed: Here Are the 31 Icons of 2015's Gay History Month". Advocate.com. Retrieved 2015-08-21.
  13. ↑ Staff (December 12, 2011). "Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness. Edited by Rebecca Walker.", Publishers Weekly.

External links

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