Poetry. LGBT Studies. Asian American Studies. In these poems, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores how queer people of color resist and transform violence through love and desire. Remembering and testifying about the damage caused by the racial profiling of South Asian and Arab people post 9/11, border crossings and internal and external wars in Sri Lanka and the diaspora, LOVE CAKE also documents the persistence of survival and beauty—especially the dangerous beauty found in queer people of color loving and desiring. LOVE CAKE maps the joys and challenges of reclaiming the body and sexuality after violence, examining a family history of violence with compassion and celebrating the resilient, specific ways we create new families, take our bodies back, love, fight, and transform violence.

Author City: OAKLAND, CA USA

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Worcester-raised, Toronto-matured, Oakland-based queer Sri Lankan writer, performer, and teacher. She is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili, North America's only touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performing artists. She is a commissioned performer with Sins Invalid, the national performance organization of queer people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Her one-woman show, Grown Woman Show, has toured throughout North America. The author of CONSENSUAL GENOCIDE and LOVE CAKE, her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies. She writes regularly for Bitch, Colorlines, Hyphen, Left Turn and Make/Shift magazines. The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, which she co-edited with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani, will be published by South End Press in 2011. She is one of Feminist Press's 2010 "40 Feminists Under 40 Who Are Shaping the Future" and a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee.

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