 Kicking off 2020's GLOW Queer Artist feature is Ananya Garg! Ananya Garg is a South Asian lesbian, poet, and spoken word performance artist. She sees her creative practice as a community practice whether she writes in a circle or alone with her pen. Ananya has performed in Tasveer's 2018 Yoni Ki Baat, directed by Uma Rao, Tasveer's Subcontinental Drift, and Yoni Ki Baat 2018 in San Francisco at the Tenderloin Museum. She has also appeared in the University of Washington's Womxn's Action Commission's "The ____ Monologues," Lavish: A QTPOC Arts Showcase hosted by the Q Center at the University of Washington, the Viva La Healing Conference at the Ethnic Cultural Theatre, and more. She has also read at Hugo House, Gay City, and featured with YouthSpeaks Seattle, Alchemy Poetry Series, and Amplifier. Ananya has taught poetry and art through the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in the Bay Area, and worked as an educator for the Seattle Freedom Schools. Why do you write? What compels you to write? I write for myself, my communities, and my ancestors. To quote Audre Lorde, "poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action." I write because I must. It is my survival. Describe your work in five words. Raw, longing, urgent, curious, still. Artistic influences/inspirations? My queer ancestors whose memories were erased by the violence of British colonialism but live on in my body. The brown queer elders in my life and the brown queer futures. first time
I can’t remember the last time I had a meal like this food I grew up with that grandmother made and her mother and her grandmother what we are doing upholding traditions of ancestors like they did but not the same we are queer, and we are queer food we are laughing and with each other doing in the same way and at the same time the first time a different way I am now with people I am with my people previously published on Asian American Feminist Collective Comments are closed.
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