Yara Liceaga-Rojas

I am a queer Afrocaribbean Puerto Rican poet/writer, performer, an organizer of cultural productions, and an educator. My projects revolve around the visibility of marginalized subjects. I write and publish, perform at festivals, and coordinate projects that address origin, gender, race and class. Coming from a United States colony, Puerto Rico, my main concern is to be visible, since we as colonial subjects are made invisible by not having representation in the U.S. Congress or at the U.N. Self-determination has been stripped away from us. In my projects, I gather multi-disciplinary artists – such as musicians, writers, performers, visual and audiovisual artists – and I include cisgender, trans, and non-binary folks, and/or People of Color of various origins who are not usually given the space to perform their art. As the recipient of the Creative City grant from NEFA for a literary project called “Acentos espesos/Thick Accents” and the Cambridge Arts grant for “Poetry Is Busy: Visible Caribe Series;” I portrayed the complexities of life for migrants who live in the US.

Photo credit: Leonardo March