Calle de la Resistencia is an independently published book by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro. She will deliver a talk and reading based on the book at the Kelly Writers’ House at the University of Pennsylvania. The talk, entitled “Calle de la Resistencia: Narrative, Poetry and Perreo Combativo from an Afrolesbian Boricua,” will take place on March 2 at 6:00 PM in the Arts Café. She will be introduced by Odette Casamayor-Cisneros (Dept. of Romance Languages, UPENN). [This event will also be available to watch in a video recording via their YouTube Channel.]

YOLANDA ARROYO PIZARRO is an award-winning Afro lesbian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and feminist activist from Puerto Rico, who addresses both racial and gender issues, and sexual identity in her combative, non-conformist, and creative works. She offers lectures about antiracist, decolonial feminism, LGBTTQ issues and how to be a black woman in today’s society. She is also the Director of the Department of Afro-Puerto Rican Studies, a performative project of Creative Writing based in San Juan and has founded the Chair of Ancestral Black Women to respond to the invitation promulgated by UN and UNESCO to celebrate the International Decade of Afro-Descendants 2015−2024.

Her book Las Negras, winner of the PEN Club Puerto Rico National Short Story Award in 2013, explores the limits of female characters during the slavery period that challenged hierarchies of power. She also won the Prize of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in 2015 and 2012, and the National Prize of the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature in 2008. Her work has been translated into German, French, Italian, English, Portuguese and Hungarian. (http://narrativadeyolanda.blogspot.com/).

For purchasing information, see https://www.amazon.com/Resistencia-Spanish-Yolanda-Arroyo-Pizarro/dp/1088771866

For more on the talk, see http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/calendar/0320.php