Next Wednesday: Poetry, Queerness, Disability Justice: Readings with Y-Bình Nguyễn, Naomi Ortiz, & Sunu P. Chandy

LX
Lydia X. Z. Brown
Fri, Sep 17, 2021 2:50 PM

[image: Poetry Disability Justice.jpeg]
Please join the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network for a free evening
listening to some great poetry and engaging in conversation around
disability justice, poetry, and queerness!
We will provide ASL interpretation and CART captioning for this event,
which participants will be able to join by video or phone.
RSVP now
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-queerness-disability-justice-tickets-168727900693
Speakers
Y-Bình Nguyễn (she/they) is a proud daughter to American War in Vietnam
refugees, descendent from a rural farming community in An Giang, Việt Nam,
and situated in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She is currently the Literary
Curator & Program Director at El Taller Bookstore Café and Co-Founder &
Literary Editor at Exposed Brick Literary Magazine. Y-Bình’s poetry and
prose focuses on the poignant themes of transgenerational trauma & healing,
critical compassion, queer coming of age love stories, diaspora hustles and
bustles, eco-resistance sci-fi, and visionary fiction. On sunny days, you
can find her relearning how to grow food in pots she's made, immersed in
works by creatives of color, and figuring out how to be the best role model
for her younger sisters (Bảo Trân and pup Nieves).
Naomi Ortiz is a Poet, Writer, Facilitator, and Visual Artist. A
2021-2022 Border Narrative Grant Awardee for their poetry and visual art
project, Complicating Conversations, describing the struggle to bear
witness to climate-change and support the sustainability of the
borderlands. Their intersectional work focuses on self-care, disability
justice, eco-justice, and relationship with place. Ortiz is a Disabled,
Mestiza living in the Arizona U.S./Mexico borderlands. Using a lens of
disability justice and as the daughter of formerly undocumented,
indigenous, and multiracial peoples, Ortiz provides powerful, thoughtful,
and transformative insights into interdependence and being in relationship
with both vulnerability, and what sustains us. Their work is rooted to
care, ceremony, and the critical-feeling of living in multiple worlds.
Sunu P. Chandy is a social justice activist through her work as a civil
rights attorney and a poet. She is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala,
India. Her collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, won the 2021 Terry J. Cox
Poetry Award, and is forthcoming from Regal House in 2023. Sunu is also the
legal director for the National Women’s Law Center and on the board of the
Transgender Law Center. Sunu was recently selected as one of the 2021 Queer
Women of Washington. Sunu writes poems to build pathways out of the mazes
of our lives—whether a social injustice, a personal grief, or often, both,
and to remind herself of life’s small joys, with grateful observation and
occasionally, humor. She is always seeking what holds us together,
personally and collectively. She is turning over this question of who does
North America mean when it says “us,” and who do our communities of origin
include within that idea, too. She wants her poems to open up spaces that
can create a home for those of us who often don’t feel at home in this
nation, given patriarchy, racism, and the range of systemic violence
including minor slights that can make up a day. She writes about the cost
of our liberation, and the compromises that we may make along the way, no
matter our backgrounds. She hopes her poems may provide anchor to others
and more freedom to love with authenticity. Sunu's poems want to help us to
hold on to the truth of our lives, with less shame, as we work to build a
world that is enough to hold all of us.
Moderator: Lydia X. Z. Brown, AWN Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External
Affairs
Please note that after registering on EventBrite, you will also receive
instructions for receiving a Zoom link. AWN will host this event on Zoom as
well as livestream to Facebook.
[Photo: Event banner shows a book with its inner pages curved into heart
shapes, and a wooden box with woody purple flowers in it. There are photos
of three people. The first person is Y-Binh, a Southeast Asian femme,
smiling in orange romper, sitting reading from seeds to marketplaces with a
fence and mill buidling in the background, and the famous clocktower in
Lawrence, MA. The second person is Naomi, a Light-skinned Mestiza with
short dark hair looking intently to the side. An earring with a concentric
circle design swings below the hairline. The backdrop is a mountain, cacti,
and desert trees. The photo credit for Naomi's photo goes to Rachel
Scoggins. The third person is Sunu, a South Asian women, smiling, in a
black and white picture, wearing a black scoop-neck top and an Indian scarf
draped across her with diamond and circle shaped patterns of white designs
on black. She has her nose pierced, and she is facing directly to the
camera. The photo credit for Sunu's photo goes to Fid Thompson. There is
text above the photos of Sunu, Naomi, and Y-Binh. The text says, Poetry,
Queerness, Disability Justice, 22 Sept 2021 at 4pm Eastern / 1pm Pacific.
The corner shows the AWN logo - a large "a" with a dragonfly on it, and the
words awnnetwork.org.
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fawnnetwork.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2wnoALCmBPFWw7TcxZpST6-XvsQCaFxHnmLaetThGShwvwcxQObjPQGjk&h=AT3Cd9vTmR8d1eXmdD2cRW6hWd9ec4HtJ_V0IxvL2gRFgyRthFCsXOZJhEZ1P_YiOh-nYqGnWZZIbe3xFiavW-Q334cGLKlgnK2B8RLRlc0PjlMaGJSeYlbQDUiuN1paYjHP1SA&__tn__=q&c[0]=AT1m3jHDlTPfN-7HThjrHL7dXsQMUtldN3ZKRkWZTPqpmuWqQHZTHU2sdn3AmdMB6CTKyNnDSu0KoWHeBWVo2wMCZkGW0VaesSCHRtP3qgrDHaX--sYgYQP4EnP0pa89O9pf2grSyAAj-Am1y1kw6XZxRE7vxaHys9ruuOB4peDgPLx6
End
photo description.]

[image: Poetry Disability Justice.jpeg] Please join the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network for a free evening listening to some great poetry and engaging in conversation around disability justice, poetry, and queerness! We will provide ASL interpretation and CART captioning for this event, which participants will be able to join by video or phone. RSVP now <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-queerness-disability-justice-tickets-168727900693> Speakers *Y-Bình Nguyễn* (she/they) is a proud daughter to American War in Vietnam refugees, descendent from a rural farming community in An Giang, Việt Nam, and situated in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She is currently the Literary Curator & Program Director at El Taller Bookstore Café and Co-Founder & Literary Editor at Exposed Brick Literary Magazine. Y-Bình’s poetry and prose focuses on the poignant themes of transgenerational trauma & healing, critical compassion, queer coming of age love stories, diaspora hustles and bustles, eco-resistance sci-fi, and visionary fiction. On sunny days, you can find her relearning how to grow food in pots she's made, immersed in works by creatives of color, and figuring out how to be the best role model for her younger sisters (Bảo Trân and pup Nieves). *Naomi Ortiz* is a Poet, Writer, Facilitator, and Visual Artist. A 2021-2022 Border Narrative Grant Awardee for their poetry and visual art project, Complicating Conversations, describing the struggle to bear witness to climate-change and support the sustainability of the borderlands. Their intersectional work focuses on self-care, disability justice, eco-justice, and relationship with place. Ortiz is a Disabled, Mestiza living in the Arizona U.S./Mexico borderlands. Using a lens of disability justice and as the daughter of formerly undocumented, indigenous, and multiracial peoples, Ortiz provides powerful, thoughtful, and transformative insights into interdependence and being in relationship with both vulnerability, and what sustains us. Their work is rooted to care, ceremony, and the critical-feeling of living in multiple worlds. *Sunu P. Chandy* is a social justice activist through her work as a civil rights attorney and a poet. She is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India. Her collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, won the 2021 Terry J. Cox Poetry Award, and is forthcoming from Regal House in 2023. Sunu is also the legal director for the National Women’s Law Center and on the board of the Transgender Law Center. Sunu was recently selected as one of the 2021 Queer Women of Washington. Sunu writes poems to build pathways out of the mazes of our lives—whether a social injustice, a personal grief, or often, both, and to remind herself of life’s small joys, with grateful observation and occasionally, humor. She is always seeking what holds us together, personally and collectively. She is turning over this question of who does North America mean when it says “us,” and who do our communities of origin include within that idea, too. She wants her poems to open up spaces that can create a home for those of us who often don’t feel at home in this nation, given patriarchy, racism, and the range of systemic violence including minor slights that can make up a day. She writes about the cost of our liberation, and the compromises that we may make along the way, no matter our backgrounds. She hopes her poems may provide anchor to others and more freedom to love with authenticity. Sunu's poems want to help us to hold on to the truth of our lives, with less shame, as we work to build a world that is enough to hold all of us. Moderator: Lydia X. Z. Brown, AWN Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External Affairs Please note that after registering on EventBrite, you will also receive instructions for receiving a Zoom link. AWN will host this event on Zoom as well as livestream to Facebook. [Photo: Event banner shows a book with its inner pages curved into heart shapes, and a wooden box with woody purple flowers in it. There are photos of three people. The first person is Y-Binh, a Southeast Asian femme, smiling in orange romper, sitting reading from seeds to marketplaces with a fence and mill buidling in the background, and the famous clocktower in Lawrence, MA. The second person is Naomi, a Light-skinned Mestiza with short dark hair looking intently to the side. An earring with a concentric circle design swings below the hairline. The backdrop is a mountain, cacti, and desert trees. The photo credit for Naomi's photo goes to Rachel Scoggins. The third person is Sunu, a South Asian women, smiling, in a black and white picture, wearing a black scoop-neck top and an Indian scarf draped across her with diamond and circle shaped patterns of white designs on black. She has her nose pierced, and she is facing directly to the camera. The photo credit for Sunu's photo goes to Fid Thompson. There is text above the photos of Sunu, Naomi, and Y-Binh. The text says, Poetry, Queerness, Disability Justice, 22 Sept 2021 at 4pm Eastern / 1pm Pacific. The corner shows the AWN logo - a large "a" with a dragonfly on it, and the words awnnetwork.org. <https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fawnnetwork.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2wnoALCmBPFWw7TcxZpST6-XvsQCaFxHnmLaetThGShwvwcxQObjPQGjk&h=AT3Cd9vTmR8d1eXmdD2cRW6hWd9ec4HtJ_V0IxvL2gRFgyRthFCsXOZJhEZ1P_YiOh-nYqGnWZZIbe3xFiavW-Q334cGLKlgnK2B8RLRlc0PjlMaGJSeYlbQDUiuN1paYjHP1SA&__tn__=q&c[0]=AT1m3jHDlTPfN-7HThjrHL7dXsQMUtldN3ZKRkWZTPqpmuWqQHZTHU2sdn3AmdMB6CTKyNnDSu0KoWHeBWVo2wMCZkGW0VaesSCHRtP3qgrDHaX--sYgYQP4EnP0pa89O9pf2grSyAAj-Am1y1kw6XZxRE7vxaHys9ruuOB4peDgPLx6> End photo description.]