Sonia Guiñansaca (born in

Cuenca, Ecuador Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos de Cuenca, commonly referred to as Cuenca (Kichwa language, Kichwa: ''Tumipampa'') is the capital and largest city of the Azuay Province of Ecuador. Cuenca is located in the highland (geography), highlands of Ecuador ...

in 1989) is a migrant poet, cultural organizer and activist whose work aims for culture equality and

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fu ...

, focusing on migrant rights,

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

LGBTQ+ ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is ...

rights, and

gender discrimination Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primaril ...

Background

Guiñansaca migrated from Ecuador to

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

at the age of five to reunite with her parents, who were undocumented. After graduation (

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

with a BA in Africana Puerto Rican Latino Studies and Women and Gender Studies) with her background in organizing migrant undocumented communities, she determined that not only policy but art and culture play crucial roles to bring social changes. Since 2013, she worked at Culture Strike as the managing director, an American organization with more than 200 artists of multiple disciplines working for a social change acknowledging and supporting

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

, women, color, migrant emergent artists. In particular, she created the first writing workshops by and for undocumented writers, then co-created the first and only national writing retreat for undocumented writers called UndocuWriters Retreat. In the spring of 2013, she created and helped launch Undocumenting.tmblr.com, a project highlighting the work of

undocumented immigrants Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country or the continued residence without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upwar ...

. Guiñansaca has performed in many different places such as

Museo del Barrio El Museo del Barrio, often known simply as El Museo (the museum), is a museum at 1230 Fifth Avenue in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is located near the northern end of Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, immediately north of the Museum of the City ...

Nuyorican Poets Café The Nuyorican (Puerto Rican New Yorkers) Poets Cafe is a nonprofit organization in Alphabet City, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip ...

, NY Poetry Festival, The Met,

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, London, Mexico, and featured in

Latina Magazine ''Latina'' was an American lifestyle, entertainment, beauty and fashion magazine for bilingual Hispanic women published in English by Latina Media Ventures. In May 2010, Latina Media Ventures named editorial director Galina Espinoza and publisher ...

, PBS,

Poetry Foundation The Poetry Foundation is an American literary society that seeks to promote poetry and lyricism in the wider culture. It was formed from ''Poetry'' magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Rut ...

, etc. She also presented Keynotes, workshops and panels in different Universities. In October 2017, she self-published her debut

chapbook A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookle ...

''Nostalgia & Borders'' and is editing the first undocumented poetry anthology ''Home in Time of Displacement'' and currently working on a new

''#PapiFemme,'' which will focus on the central themes of gender and presentation, as well as the queer and immigrant communities. She was named by ''

Teen Vogue ''Teen Vogue'' is an American online publication, formerly in print, launched in January 2003, as a sister publication to ''Vogue (magazine), Vogue'', targeted at teenagers. Like ''Vogue'', it included stories about fashion and celebrities. Since ...

'' as one of the "13 Coolest Queers on the Internet."

Works

*''Nostalgia & Borders'', 2017.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guiñansaca, Sonia People from Cuenca, Ecuador Hunter College alumni Queer women 1989 births Living people Ecuadorian poets Ecuadorian emigrants to the United States 21st-century Ecuadorian women writers 21st-century poets 21st-century Ecuadorian LGBT people Ecuadorian LGBT writers