Leah Lakshmi

www.myspace.com/leahlakshmi

is NOW THAT I CAN'T PLAN MY GAY WEDDING I GUESS I'LL JUST DESTROY THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!Posted at 5:52 AM Nov 8, 2008 view more

  • Leah Lakshmi

  • 34 / Female
  • Oakland, but my heart is still in t.o. and bk, California, US
  • Last Login: 8/28/2009

71064887|34|11111|http://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/66/m_b26dd088307145579d4be4f2c1e9067b.jpg

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Interests

  • General

    telling stories, manipedi, daughter of Lakshmi and Kali, nerding out in the poetry section, coconut popsicles on the stoop, following the words, my heart’s desire, the Chinatown bus and the cheap plane tickets, being part of a movement to transform Sri Lanka into a land that knows justice, peace and beauty, being part of radical Asian, South Asian, and queer/trans of color artistic families, going on tour, spending all my money at the farmer’s market, ending abuse, the next book and the one after that and the one after that, hearing June and Gloria yell in my ear to quit smoking so I can live to be an elder, embracing and being tender with my beautiful and chronically ill survivor body, booty shorts, martial arts, sarcasm, being the teacher my grandmother and mother were that I didn’t know I would be, stepping outside of my comfort zone, my unborn daughter, teaching baby femmes and fags about hair and makeup, femme solidarity and mutual respect instead of drama, driving, rivers, swimming holes and oceans, being a solitary one and the life of the party.
  • Music

    blue scholars, jean grae, patti smith, mystic, bahamadia when she's not about jesus, blackstar, state of bengal, common, tribe called quest, mike ladd, zap mama. get me in the bhangra club and I'm a happy girl. oh, and I just fell back in love with the coup.
  • Movies

    No More Tears, Sister. Tongues Untied. Summer of Sam. Eve's Bayou. Real Women Have Curves. Girlfight. Desperate Living. Times Sqaure. Style Wars. The Spook Who Sat By the Door. Continuous Journey. Born in Flames.
  • Television

    Battlestar, Firefly, Weeds.
  • Books

    chrystos, sapphire, june jordan, ai, mahmoud darwish, gloria anzaldua, qwo-li driskill, octavia butler, letta neely, samuel delany, suheir hammad, sonia sanchez, martin espada, marge piercy, dorothy allison, shyam selvadurai, paul beatty, yasmin tambiah, sri lankan feminist and labor history books you can't find off the island, jean arasanayagam. my brilliant friends whose words save my life and illuminate it. cherry galette, ching-in chen, maceo marti cabrera estevez, dulani, victor tobar, ignacio rivera, sham-e-ali al jamil, marian yalini thambynayagam, hana abdul, karene, nico dacumos.
  • Heroes

    Marlon Riggs. Essex Hemphill. Chrystos. Audre. Gloria Anzaldua. Sapphire. Shyam Selvadurai. The women, men and trans people of Sri Lanka who fight for economic and political justice daily despite 23 years of civil war. Survivors. My friends and lovers.

Details

  • Status: Single
  • Here for: Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends
  • Hometown: Worcester MA, Brooklyn, Colombo, Toronto
  • Height: 5' 6"
  • Ethnicity: Other
  • Zodiac Sign: Taurus
  • Occupation: boss lady

Schools

  • Mills College

    • Oakland, CA
    • Graduated: N/A
    • Degree: Master's Degree
    • Major: MFA Creative Writing, Creative Nonfiction
    2007 to Present
  • Eugene Lang College-new School

    • New York,New York
    • Graduated: 1997
    • Student status: Alumni
    • Degree: Bachelor's Degree
    • Major: Writing and Third World Women's Studies
    • Clubs: Burning the president in effigy. Trying to get Jacqui Alexander tenure.
    1994 to 1997

Companies

  • Brownstargirl Productions, www.brownstargirl.com

    • Toronto to Brooklyn, US
    • boss lady

Blurbs

About me:

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan writer, spoken word artist and cultural worker whose life’s work is telling queer of color, radical South Asian, high femme and survivor stories. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1975, to a white working class mom and a Sri Lankan father, she came of age within riot grrl, queerpunk and young woman of color activism, only to run away from America in 1996 to live in Toronto for a decade.

The author of Consensual Genocide (TSAR Press, 2006), she has performed her work widely throughout North America, including performances at Yale University, Oberlin College, University of Southern California, Swarthmore College, Poets Against Rape, Femme 2006, The Loft, louderARTS, and the immigrant rights rallies and benefits for queer youth centers down your block. Her writing has been widely anthologized in the young queer and feminist of color press, including work in the anthologies Yes Means Yes, Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Time and Place, We Don't Need Another Wave, Colonize This!, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, Brazen Femme, Femme, and A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World. Her writing has appeared in Bitch, Colorlines, Make/Shift, Fuse, Fireweed, Mizna, Thirdforce, Herizons, Xtra Toronto, NOW and Lodestar Quarterly.

From 2003 to 2007 she produced Toronto's acclaimed Browngirlworld queer and trans of color spoken word series. In 2005 she co-founded Toronto's Asian Arts Freedom School, Toronto’s only writing and radical Asian history program for APIA youth. For seven years, she taught writing to queer, trans and Two Spirit youth in Toronto through Supporting Our Youth’s Pink Ink program and won the 2004 City of Toronto Community Service to Youth Award.

With Ms. Cherry Galette, in 2006 she co-founded Mangos With Chili, the annual roving queer and trans of color performance roadshow of “sweets, sweat, dreams and nightmares,” bringing 9 queer and trans people of color artists to 8 cities in ten days with no core funding. Their 2008 Queer Borderlands tour will take Mangos through Aztlan, from Oakland to Juarez to Austin.

Her one-woman show, Grown Woman Show, an exploration of long-term incest survivor identity, queer of color love, family and heartbreak and the possibilities for healing and reconciliation, had a successful four-day run in Toronto and is currently touring North America.

She is currently completing her MFA at Mills College and finishing her second book, Dirty River, a memoir of coming of age and running away from America as a young queer brown survivor girl in 1990s queerpunk and people of color activism.

Leah is a co-editor of The Revolution Starts At Home, a zine about confronting partner abuse in activist communities, and a co-chair of the 2008 Asian Pacific Islander Spoken Word Summit. Her website is brownstargirl.com ..You should create your own MySpace Layouts like me by using nUCLEArcENTURy.COM's MySpace Profile Editor!..

Who I'd like to meet:

Comments

Displaying 25 of 368 comments
  • Oct 13 2009 8:08 PM

    hope to see ya out this thursday man! rain or shine lets boogie 

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  • Oct 9 2009 10:29 AM

    Hey gorgeous! I was at a talk by Del Lagrace Volcano last night in Glasgow, and there you were -- in full colour and looking fine --on the screen as part of the Femmes of Power presentation. I actually shouted out "Leah!" in a room of 30 people, which was vaguely embarrassing but oh well. Holy do I miss you.
  • Sep 11 2009 6:15 PM

    Next Ships In The Night

    09/17/09
    SF Underground
    10pm-2am
    $5 21+

    Come Support Mangos With Chili




    MANGOS WITH CHILI the floating cabaret of QTPOC bliss, dreams, sweat, sweets & nightmares . North America's only annual queer and trans people of color performance tour. Recently named one of Bitch Magazine's Bitchlist of things they love!

    Mangos With Chili is a Bay Area based arts organization committed to showcasing high quality work of life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences in the Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-​Samarasinha and Ms Cherry Galette, Mangos with Chili features an annual touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performance artists, offering unforgettable performance in celebration of our lives, stories, survival, and the legacies we are creating for future generations of queer and trans people of color.


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  • Aug 16 2009 7:28 PM

    Get your copy of ARC AND HUE at Willow Books Poetry and Aquarius Press online at 20% off before 9/1/09. 
    Available on Amazon soon.



    ARC AND HUE will be available at the NYC book party on Sunday, Sept. 20, 5:30-7:30 p.m. 
    Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, New York, NY 10012.  Between Houston & Bleecker, near the F & 6 trains.

    ARC AND HUE will also be available at the Chicago book parties:
    10/1, 8:30 p.m. Katerina’s, 1920 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago, IL 60613
    10/2, 8 p.m. The Silver Room, 1442 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60642
  • Aug 14 2009 12:54 AM

    Get your copy of ARC AND HUE at Willow Books Poetry and Aquarius Press online at 20% off before 9/1/09.  Available on Amazon soon.



  • Jul 30 2009 5:54 AM

    Friday @ Femina Potens! Saturday @ the Garage! Details online or hit me up. Come out and support queer art/music/collaboration!
  • Jul 21 2009 4:29 PM

    how many times a day are f'n harassed, accosted or just annoyed because of some ignorant *$&%off who wants to tell you how nice your ass looks, how much of a dyke you look like, ask if you're a boy, yell his number to you, follow you, touch you, stare at you, not give you a job less you give up some head, or just not give you a job, pull you over in your car/on your bike for no reason, kick you out of the club etc

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  • Jul 1 2009 10:07 PM

    AK Press Fuck The Fourth Semi-Annual Sale
    It's that special time again! Everything in the warehouse 25% off, with hundreds of titles marked down to $1–5! Snacks and refreshments on us! Tell your friends! 674-A 23rd. St Oakland, CA
    b/t MLK and San Pablo

  • Jun 5 2009 7:26 AM

    Come support your local Native Delegation to Chiapas!

    CasaZapa House Party
    678 30th st, Oakland CA
    (between MLK & West)

    Date: Saturday, June 13
    Time: 8:00pm - ?
    $3 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
    Free Food! Cheap drinks!
    Spinin: DJ Mixteka, DJ Agana, & Lalo playing cumbias, salsa, hip-hop, reggae, rock en Español and pretty much anything else you can think of...
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    This delegation is a space of encounter for the Indigenous communities in Chiapas and the Indigenous communities in the California Bay Area to exchange knowledge, culture, histories, and experiences in order to find the connections in the work we are doing as a way to support each other and strengthen our struggles. TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!!!
  • May 18 2009 10:53 PM

    What good is sitting alone in your room?
    Come hear the music play.
    Life is a cabaret, old chum,
    Come to the cabaret!


    Big Gay Cabaret
  • May 6 2009 4:05 AM

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    So Fab.
  • May 1 2009 11:14 PM

    Fuck the rain -- get yr rain kerchief like my grandma, and get ready to WRRRK!.

    *TONIGHT!* Benefit for Homo A Go Go, 9pm doors, 10pm show, El Rio.




    WRRRK! flyer




    Homo A Go Go

    Your Queer Arts Revolution now in San Francisco, August 13-16
  • Apr 23 2009 7:25 PM

    your daily reminder that you are strong beutifal and the bomb.com
  • Apr 9 2009 7:14 PM

    it was delish
  • Apr 6 2009 8:38 PM

    LEAH, I heard the portland grown woman show was amazing!! wish I could have been there, I know folks were so greatful that you came there and shared your experience/art! xoxo
  • Mar 25 2009 1:13 AM

    Greetings:

    Please take a moment to complete the market research survey on behalf of www. BlacGurlzInk.
    com (its located on the website - click the "March 2009 Survey" tab) and we will send you a FREE gift for your time!

    Being a new business we are eager to start off on the right foot, and to do that we would like to know whats on YOUR mind as a consumer. The only way we can think to do that is by asking you, thus, the survey.


    So here's the scoop on how this works!

    *The first 10 people to complete the survey will receive FREE, our 2009 Calendar!

    *Everyone else who completes the survey will receive a FREE greeting card of our choosing for your time.


    *Free shipping for US respondents. To our overseas friends, we will work with you to ship international, so please complete the survey, too, if you so choose.


    This all ends, March 30, 2009 so hurry and complete your survey and Thank you!

    Love, Peace & Prosperity,

    Blac Gurlz Ink www. blacgurlzink.
    com
  • Mar 13 2009 12:47 PM

    microphone Pictures, Images and Photos

    Body Heat Femme Porn Tour in SF @ Center for Sex & Culture - March 26th & 27th, and @ Velvet March 28th!!!
  • Mar 10 2009 8:53 PM

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  • Mar 10 2009 8:23 PM

  • Feb 25 2009 5:45 AM

    Cant Wait to see u Fly queers on Friday!

    =)
  • Feb 13 2009 7:22 AM

    hey how come i had to borrow ur book from a friend who lives here? then i read it today. very powerful. 2thumbs up. nah but dang...
  • Feb 12 2009 9:50 PM

    we gotta chill soon..imma come thru for the event.
    can't wait for the book, man! i'm mad stoked
  • Feb 2 2009 2:42 AM

  • Jan 28 2009 6:00 PM

    "Asking for help takes its own strength and bravery.
    "--Genne, Epsiode 7 of FemmeCast

    Asking for help is a skill--how do we learn it?

    Episode 7: Asking for Help. Running time: 69 minutes.


    In this episode host Bevin Branlandingham and FemmeCast contributors discuss their strategies for learning to push past the Steel Magnolias facade and receive help.

    www. Femme-Cast. com

    We debut our newest contributor, our Femme Shark Correspondent Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha!
    "You can be a mess and still be a powerful Femme. We're not going to cut down one another when we're vulnerable.
    "

    Self-Help Correspondent Genne discusses being the partner of someone with a bad drug addiction and how that taught her the importance of asking for help.


    We debut the Femmes of Color Roundtable series, moderated by Fatshion and Beauty Correspondent, Tara Shuai.

    "My experience of how my race, my fat and my femmeness intersect is that I think that people don't expect fat East Asians. I feel like a bodily contradiction, simultaneously desexualized and hypersexualized.
    "

    Bevin interviews Jenny Lowery, aka Pidgeon Von Tramp, Queer Fat Femme Burlesque performer with the Von Foxies of Seattle, writer and founding board member of the Bent Writing Institute.


    FemmeCast: The Queer Fat Femme Podcast Guide to Life is a FREE audio newsmagazine for Queer Fat Femmes, Fatshionistas of all sexualities and Queers of all genders. Hosted by Bevin Branlandingham with a cadre of regular contributors, we're discussing dating, fat fashion, social justice, friendships, sex, gender, tranny talk, culture, travel, community and feature new music by Queer artists. A whimsical This American Life meets a radical queer how-to novel with MTV generation timing, FemmeCast will keep listeners laughing, connected and inspired.
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