Maya Chinchilla is a Bay Area-based Guatemalan-American poet best known as one of the founders of EpiCentroAmerica and for writing The Cha Cha files: A Chapina Poética. She is of mixed US, German, and Guatemalan heritages. She was a lecturer at University of California, Santa Cruz where she developed courses on Central Americans in Diaspora and Creative Writing. Chinchilla is also a lecturer at the University of California Davis in the department of Chicano Studies.
The literary collective, EpiCentroAmerica or epicentros, emerged in the 1990s as a space to give Central American American youth to explore their identity. It has been described as fundamental to the movement to reimagine Central American and Central American American identity in the literary arts in the early 21st century. An associated 2007 anthology, Desde el EpiCentro, which was edited by Chinchilla and Karina Oliva-Alvarado, has been described as critical in troubling traditional understandings of Latino identity. She has had multiple publications in various journals and anthologies, including Mujeres de Maíz, Sinister Wisdom, Americas y Latinas: A Stanford Journal of Latin American Studies, Cipactli Journal, The Lunada Literary Anthology The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the U.S. Some of Chinchilla's research interests are Latin American/Latino Studies, Gender and sexuality, Latinx discourse and cultural production, creative writing and performance, Central American Studies, Latino/as in the media, Film production and Aesthetics, Media and Communications. Chinchilla has directed two short documentaries, "The Last Word" and "Made in Brazil" both of which screened at different festivals in 2006. When she was a graduate student at San Francisco State University, she also won the STAND award in 2006 from the Film Arts Foundation.
The Cha Cha Files is a collection of poems that brings to light the Diaspora of the Central American in the United States. The book is a queer text that uses erotic language and writing, while using autobiographical references to emphasize the struggles of the Central American Woman. In addition she discusses gender performance while articulating and reclaiming her mestiza and indigenous roots.
Other literary works
Church at Night was written by Maya Chinchilla after the Orlando nightclub shooting. In 2018, the poem was published in A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Femme on Purpose appears in The Jota Anthology. In her poem "Central Americanamerican" she "diffracts the construction of Central American identity beyond a geographic notion and along the multiple coordinates of migrations, generations, heritages, languages, ethnicities, races, sexualities, cultures, and discourses magnified in the Central American diasporas."
More information
Besides her literary work, Maya Chinchilla directed various video projects including "Solidarity Baby" and "The Last Word".
