Latina Geniuses Are Everywhere
Poetic Art Show

Manya Yana Campos

Latina Geniuses Are Everywhere is a project of love.

It is an altar to honor the living Latina leaders that have inspired me. This project began on the front stoop of my mother’s house, while scraping guava jelly into our mouths; we asked each other the question:

What does it mean to be Latina?

As immigrant Mexican mother and first-generation daughter, we began to weave together a tapestry of story. It got heated, as it always does between my mother and me. We explored topics of intergenerational trauma, racism, colorism, Indigeneity, ancestral traditions; healing……we argued about gender roles, representation and debated formal education verses land-based learning.

Too often, brown women get lost in conversation, are doing the invisible work, and are socialized to not take up space. I want to honor these women, these leaders of the heart, who have moved me. I am most interested in the inner world of Latina women. I am intrigued by those asking the difficult questions and doing more than just surviving through these systems of oppression. Together we are decolonizing the mind, soul-searching, community building, crying, setting boundaries, tending to our own space, planting gardens, raising children, starting foundations, teaching and being students all at the same time. Unfucking the brain. Seeking realness. This is the spirit work. This is community.

Tlazocamati.

Manya Yana Campos is the daughter of Maria Esther Campos Gaytan. She is a Chicana poet, writer, visual artist, community organizer and mother creature. She grew up traveling between the redwoods of California, the jasmine and shit infested streets of South India and the sugarcane fields of Mexico. She has been published in Ofrenda magazine, We’Moon and The Jefferson Journal. She is the author of two chapbooks, Blue Corn, Mixed Masa and The Occasional Magic Trick and Radiant. A look of Defiance. She just completed a hybrid manuscript titled, Legalize My Mother and is a two time recipient of the Haines & Friends Visual Arts Grant. Manya received her MFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art. She lives with her blended family in Oregon.