DATA OF INTEREST

GUEST:
Yasmín Silvia Portales

HOST:
Marta María Ramírez


Synopsis:

Among the letters with which today we refer to people according to their gender or sexual orientations, lesbians and bisexuals continue to be the most neglected in the public discourse. What is happening in the interior of the emerging Cuban LGBTIQ+ community? Yasmín Silvia Portal, one of its most senior activists, tells us.


Bio:

Yasmín S Portales Machado (Havana, 1980) is a cultural journalist, web editor, literary critic, LGBTI activist and writer. She graduated from the Curso de Técnicas Narrativas del Centro de Formación Literaria Onelio Jorge Cardoso (2003) and holds a degree in Theater Arts from the Instituto Superior de Arte (2007). She has a Master´s in Spanish from the Romance Languages Department at the University of Oregon (2018). Since 2018, she is a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and works with the Program in Gender & Sexuality Studies, Northwestern University.

Her research explores how the science fiction of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean represents families and sexualities, with a focus on Cuba. She has published essays in the anthologies “Women Past and Present: Biographic and Multidisciplinary Studies” (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), "La isla y las estrellas. El ensayo y la crítica de ciencia ficción en Cuba" (Editorial Cubaliteraria, 2015), "Anatomía de una isla. Jóvenes ensayistas Cubanos" (Ediciones La Luz, Cuba, 2015) y "Isla diseminada. Ensayos sobre Cuba" (Editorial Hypermedia, 2020, forthcoming).

Her stories have appeared in "Deuda temporal. Antología de narradoras cubanas de ciencia ficción" (Col. SurEditores, Cuba, 2015), "Sombras nada más. 36 escritoras cubanas contra la violencia hacia la mujer" (Ediciones UNION, Cuba, 2015), "Órbita Juracán. Cuentos cubanos de ciencia ficción" (Voces de Hoy, Miami, 2016) and “Navegar Chicago” (Editora Nós, Sao Paulo, 2021). Her areas of interest include: Cuban science fiction, public policy and cultural consumption, queer theory, LGBTIQ rights, Marxism, and science fiction in film and TV.

VIDEO

LGBTIQ+ Lesbians and bisexuales, the most invisible?

PODCAST