Grisel Yolanda Acosta
Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta is full professor in the English Department of the City University of New York-BCC. She is the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity. Other select scholarly or creative works are in: American Studies Journal, Chicana/Latina Studies, The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, African American Women’s Language, Western American Literature, Diálogo, Kenyon Review, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, The Lauryn Hill Reader, and Paterson Literary Review.
Biography
Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta is an associate professor in the English Department of the City University of New York's Bronx Community College. She received her Ph.D. in English—Latinx literature, from the University of Texas at San Antonio and has presented and published her creative and scholarly work in London, England; Cartagena, Colombia; Catalonia, Spain; Buenos Aires, Argentina, and throughout the United States. Her creative work is in In Full Color: A Collection of Stories by Women of Color, Love You Madly: Poems About Jazz, Nineteen Sixty Nine: An Ethnic Studies Journal, Voices de la Luna, MiPoesias, Pembroke Magazine, Private International Photo Review, ¡Tex! Magazine, the NAACP Image Award nominated Check the Rhyme, Chicago’s After Hours, The Reproductive Freedom Anthology, Basta!: 100 Latinas Write on Violence Against Women, The Lauryn Hill Reader, Paterson Literary Review, American Studies Journal, and the Chicana/Latina Studies Journal. Her scholarly articles and essays can be found in The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, African American Women’s Language, The Handbook of Latinos and Education, Western American Literature, Diálogo, Salon, English Kills Review, The Kenyon Review, and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She is the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge, 2019), an anthology featuring over 30 scholarly and creative works by Latinas from the U.S. Dr. Acosta is currently working on First Spanish, which tells the story of Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood in the 1980s and 1990s.Education
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Ph.D. in English, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2010
M.Ed. in English literature, U of Illinois-Chicago, 1999
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Latino literature; creative writing; gender studies; womanist/feminist studies.
Personal Interests
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Science fiction; punk rock; Latinidad.
Websites
Books
Articles
Environmentalism
Published: Jun 05, 2019 by Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature
Authors: Grisel Y. Acosta
Subjects:
Literature, Environment and Agriculture
The "Environmentalism" chapter in the Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature focuses on how environments are depicted in various works of Latino/a literature, noting that that Latinx texts do not necessarily focus on the pastoral view of environments that ecocritical texts often explore. Some of the authors noted in this chapter include Junot Diaz, Piri Thomas, and Julia Alvarez.
News
Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere is published & available for purchase!
By: Grisel Yolanda Acosta
Subjects: Literature
Dr. Acosta's first poetry book, Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere, was a 2020 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize finalist and published by Get Fresh Books in 2021. It can be purchased at the link below.
Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta’s poems, “dark and precise like Borges Laberintos” are acutely aware of their punk and piercing powers. Such poems shriek fearlessly in black-lipsticked memory, and shine in their freakish dancing where chicas must always be "fighting for the ownership of our lives." Here you will find poetry that insists on schooling readers about a distinct kind of education and memory in relation to the creation of Acosta’s identity. Acosta’s poetry insists her readers bring new eyes, new hands, new minds, new anthems, and new music that is necessary and marvelous for its own sake, for its own wounds, and its own dreaming of dark and light. One of Acosta’s many strengths is her rich, un-bossed, and marvelous voice, which is always fierce, humorous, intelligent, and sensual. These fearless poems hold their own in the ring, unflinching and startling in their symphonic journey through the dangerous and complex fissures of family, race, womanhood, culture, blood, and belonging. Acosta places us at the defiant center of her art and her memory, which dazzles in its truths, powers, stars, feasts, scars, and songs. In this book, you will find that altars and bodies are inseparable, and you will discover a world where women’s lives open and close like pairs of bold, dark eyes. Acosta declares, “My mother was dark, too, but she had no voice. Today, I am her voice.”
– Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of Seeing the Body
I would be tempted to say, 'Reader, go straight to "Textbook on the Desegregation of an Afro-Latinx" if you want to witness the birth of a decolonized poet,' but that would cheat you out of the surreal, dangerous, and mythologized journey that is Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere. As soon as you enter Acosta's book, you are in the middle of a ritual, a dispatch from a poet who is on speaking terms with death. There is no travelling light in this orbital Afro-Latinx journey. Acosta time bends with precision and can take us to the exact moment where we understand the strength of our resistance to rote definitions of identity. This is punk poetry heavily invested in abolishment of oppressive tropes, a reading experience where board games become ideological battle grounds, where playground games become yet another portal into our mortality. To be sure, Acosta will make you laugh and cry on this trip while she riffs with Lauryn Hill, becomes a poet of the Americas, and makes you grateful for every waking breath you take.
- Willie Perdomo, author of The Crazy Bunch.