For those of you out in the Southwest region, get your spoons and salsa out! Check out this amazing tour! (It’s featuring my favorite Chicana performers ever, Chica Boom and Ms. Cherry Gallete!)

Mangos With Chili began as an annual touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performance artists. Founded in 2006 by sister femme vixen performance artists Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. Cherry Gallete, our breakout 2007 tour took 8 queer and trans performers of color to 8 cities in 12 days, raising a $13,000 budget through grassroots funding and door revenue. Mangos with Chili has received positive media coverage from Bitch and Make/Shift magazines (making Bitch’s Summer 2008, “Bitchlist: Things We Love”) as well as in independent and campus media and raves from audience members for reflecting the lives and stories of queer and trans people of color. We are the nation’s only traveling cabaret of QTPOC artists and are unique in being multi-gender – we consciously curate artists whose genders span the gamut from transwoman to Two Spirit to femme to trans fag to non-trans queer men. We create community, build bridges and foster cross-cultural dialogue by presenting breathtaking shows featuring queer and trans of color artists creating high-caliber work that we tour to different geographic regions each year, hitting urban areas and college campuses, as well as the occasional small town. Sharing much-needed and little heard queer and trans of color stories brings together queer and trans people of color out from isolation, helping QTPOC build networks of love, support and survival.

Who We Are:

Mangos with Chili: the floating cabaret of QTPOC bliss, dreams sweat, sweets and nightmares, is an annual traveling cabaret of queer and trans people of color performance artists. Mangos with Chili offers two weeks of unforgettable performance in celebration of our lives, stories, survival, and the legacies we are creating for future generations of queer and trans people of color. Our goal is to create a cultural institution that will build the careers and visibility of QTPOC artists and save lives through sharing stories of QTPOC love, resistance and survival. Every year we select 8 diverse QTPOC performance artists and hit a different region of North America, touring colleges, queer of color bars and small town community centers. For the 2008 Queer Borderlands Mangos With Chili tour, selected artists will create new work addressing the themes of border crossing, migrations, deportations, location and legacy through creating work that answers the question: As Gloria Anzaldua’s children, what does it mean to be queer and trans brown people living on colonized indigenous land, transgressing borders in many facets of our lives, and being stopped by immigration, while loving, fighting and struggling to create new worlds?

Our History: Mangos With Chili began as an annual touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performance artists. Founded in 2006 by sister femme vixen performance artists Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. Cherry Gallete, our breakout 2007 tour took 8 queer and trans performers of color to 8 cities in 12 days, raising a $13,000 budget through grassroots funding and door revenue. Mangos with Chili has received positive media coverage from Bitch and Make/Shift magazines (making Bitch’s Summer 2008, “Bitchlist: Things We Love”) as well as in independent and campus media and raves from audience members for reflecting the lives and stories of queer and trans people of color. We are the nation’s only traveling cabaret of QTPOC artists and are unique in being multi-gender – we consciously curate artists whose genders span the gamut from transwoman to Two Spirit to femme to trans fag to non-trans queer men. We create community, build bridges and foster cross-cultural dialogue by presenting breathtaking shows featuring queer and trans of color artists creating high-caliber work that we tour to different geographic regions each year, hitting urban areas and college campuses, as well as the occasional small town. Sharing much-needed and little heard queer and trans of color stories brings together queer and trans people of color out from isolation, helping QTPOC build networks of love, support and survival.

Our 2008 Lineup Includes (Bios Below): Veronica C. Combs/Vixen Noir multi-media performance artist and founder of LiquidFire Productions; NaR the queer Arabic Hip Hop duo; First Nations, Two Spirit Poet Qwo-Li Driskill; Chicana burlesque starlet Chica Boom; Zuleikha Mahmood a mixed Afghan writer and zine maker; Southwest based Two Spirit MC Tre Vasquez; mixed Chicano and Filipino writer and performance artist Nico Dacumos; and tour founders Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. Cherry Gallete. All are extraordinary artists and trailblazers in their own right with impressive work and credits to their names.

Co-founder/ Co-Artistic Director Bios

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and femme of color powerhouse. The author of Consensual Genocide (TSAR), she has toured North America and Sri Lanka multiple times. Her work has been anthologized in Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Time and Place, We Don’t Need Another Wave, Colonize This!, With a Rough Tongue, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Brazen Femme, Femme, and A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over the World. She writes for Bitch, Colorlines, Hyphen and Make/Shift magazines. From 2003-2007 she produced Toronto’s acclaimed Browngirlworld queer/trans of color spoken word series and was one of the co-creators of Toronto’s Asian Arts Freedom School, a writing and radical Asian history program for APIA youth. Newly relocated to Oakland after running away from America for a decade, she is completing her MFA in creative nonfiction at Mills College, touring her one-woman show, Grown Woman Show, and finishing her second and third books, Dirty River and Love Cake. She is a keynote speaker at Femme 2008.

Ms. Cherry Gallete is a Moroccan and Chicana dancer, burlesque artist and producer committed to the telling of post-colonial fairy tales of modern resistance that celebrate queer desires, histories, survivals, migrations, and revolutions through movement and performance. Known for presenting genre pushing work based in sultry, brave, sacred, and profane fusions of traditional Afro-Brazilian, Arabic and Latin dance forms with burlesque and ultra-gay cabaret, Cherry feels blessed to have had opportunity to present work as a solo artist in theaters, festivals, cabarets, clubs, and varied stages across North America. Cherry has curated productions for the Femme 2008 Conference in Chicago, and for local arts institutions Galeria de la Raza and QueLaCo in addition to producing

2008 Performer Bios:

Vixen Noir is a San Francisco-based erotic performance artist, burlesque dancer, actress, poetess, contemporary and jazz dancer, singer as well as director, producer, choreographer, erotic workshop facilitator and filmmaker. She has been wowing audiences internationally with her sexy jaw-dropping performances for over 17 years! She integrates her extensive dance and theatre background to create performances that range from sublime to raucous, raunchy to seductive, titillating to beautiful, and that are artistically compelling and visually stimulating. Her work embodies a commitment to claim erotic power, build bridges across racial, social and economic divides and celebrate the diversity of gender expression. Vixen’s performances and productions are unapologetically sexual and inspire others to revel in their own sexual power. One of Vixen’s most notable claims is as founder and former Artistic Director of liquidFIRE Productions, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization dedicated to the authentic representation of lesbians and queer women of color on stage (1997 – 2006).

Nar is a queer Arab hip hop crew, featuring a girl-boy emcee duo. Both emcees have roots in the mountains of Lebanon. Mazen was born there and moved to the states as a political refugee at the age of 5, fleeing the Israeli invasion. Tru Bloo came up in Las Vegas, NV as a first-generation daughter of Syrian-Lebanese immigrants. NaR means “fire” in Arabic and describes our deep passion for social change and revolution. We believe in humanity and the liberation of all oppressed peoples. Although we are the first queer Arab hip hop crew, our lyrics focus primarily on greater political issues–not merely the eradication of homophobia, although that is one of our many struggles. We are committed to music, as it bridges cultural, social, and economic gaps in pursuit of the revolution– a Revolution to bring Social Justice to all!!

Qwo-Li Driskill is a Cherokee Two-Spirit/Queer writer, scholar, educator, activist, and performer also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ascent and the author of Walking with Ghosts: Poems. Hir artistic and scholarly work appears in numerous publications, and s/he performs and facilitates workshops at events across Turtle Island. Qwo-Li grew up in rural Colorado and attended the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley before moving to Seattle in 1998 to attend Antioch University. S/he is currently an assistant professor at Texas A&M University.

Queer Chicana starlet Chica Boom takes off more than just her sombrero. This bordertown Chica organizes with communites of color to destabilize the gringo heteroempire by day and tantalizes audiences with her vibrant drag and strip-tease by night. Senorita Chica Boom has been seductively weaving her cultural and sexual identity through burlesque, alternative dance, theatre and street performance across nation. Chica Boom’s provocative posturing shakes and breaks the mold of submissive mestiza. She is the quintessential Xicana Marimacha Mistress, she’ll dance her way into your corazon and leave you caliente! Chica was crowned with the prestigious title of Ms. Gay Latina 2005 and 2006 and has appeared on numerous publications featured not only as a burlesque performer and also for her contributions to radical woman of color organizing. She is currently a member of the national steering committee of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence.

Zuleikha Mahmood is a queer mixed Afghan writer who lives in Oakland. Her zines include the wombs and the browns, and letters forged by the daughter putting on her scarf in a masjid parking lot. She’s featured on Muslim Wakeup’s Sex in the Umma column and has work forthcoming in Kohl, an anthology of Afghan American women’s fiction. Committed to documenting the lives of Muslim drop-outs, fuck-ups, queers, and whores, she curated the 2004 Queer Muslim Film Festival in Amherst, Massachusetts and has organized readings and performances for several writers, including Jennifer Tseng, and I Was Born with Two Tongues. She is a VONA alum and a proud femme shark

Nico Dacumos teaches high school in Oakland and performs and writes in his spare time. He has performed at San Francisco PRIDE, City Lights Books, and Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles. Nico also develops workshops exploring race and sexuality. Workshops have been presented for UC Davis, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges, Sistersong, Georgians for Choice, and Femme Conference 2006. His written work appears in the anthology Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. Stalk him at http://nicoelrico.blogspot.com.

Tre Vasquez is a two spirit rappero from the ‘border’ lands of arizonaztlan. He is an MC by nature and uses hip & spoken word as means to mobilze and inspire uprise towards FREEDOM. He is known for his work featured in shows such as the national Sex Workers Art Show Tour, “Rockin’ the Macho Cockless,” and “Queer MCs for the Straight Hip Hop” but really he could be any vato you pass on the street. He is a masculine female-born gender resister down to bang on the colonial system by existing true to his creation

Friday, October 10, 2008: Voice Factory Theater, San Francisco, CA

Saturday, October 11, 2008, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA

Sunday, October 12, 2008, drive back f

Monday, October 13, EastSide Community Arts, Oakland, CA

Tuesday, October 14, 2008, UC Davis, Davis, CA

Wednesday, October 15, 2008, workshop, UC Berkeley, Poetry for the People, Berkeley, CA

Thursday, October 16, 2008, UC Santa Cruz. CA

Friday, October 17, 2008, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA

Saturday, October 18, 2008, UCSD, San Diego

Monday, October 20, 2008, driving

Tuesday, October 21, 2008, Tucson, AZ location TBA

Wednesday, October 22, 2008, Taala Hooghan Indigenous Youth Center, Flagstaff, AZ

Thursday, October 23, 2008, FireWomyn, Albuquerque, NM

Friday, October 24, Santa Fe, NM, Wise Fool cabaret

Saturday, October 25, Denver University, Denver, CO

What People Are Saying About Mangos With Chili:

“I went to the Toronto show last night and it was brilliant. To see women and men empowered by their bodies and minds rather then being restrained by them was remarkable. I’ve never been to an event like this before, but I’ll be sure to be there next year! Thanks to those who organized the night and even more to those who shared their stories and lives.”

“It was a major treat meeting you the other night, you and the rest of the fam did a brilliant, fabulous, extra incredible performance that blew all of our minds here in Philly and then some. I left taking so much with me. Thank you for sharing your concerns, passions, dreams, pursuits, personal experiences, and the like, making a resounding statement to me that I’m not alone in a place where it’s easy to slide back into insular spaces.”

“Your show last night was so wonderful: powerful, intelligent, thrilling, sexy, warm, biting, insightful…”

“I hope you felt the love on Saturday night at Buddies. As usual the show was moving ( I cried) and inspiring (dreams can become reality.)”

“So powerful, I feel like our ancestors felt it.”

Press:

Bitch Magazine, “Bitchlist: Things We Love”, Issue 40 (Summer 2008)

Make/Shift Magazine Issue #2: www.makeshiftmag.org

Swarthmore Phoenix: http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2007-04-05/living/17159

Asia Pacific Forum: http://www.asiapacificforum.org/news-detail.php?news_id=39

Video and audio clips available upon request

For more information, bookings or donations, please contact:

Co-Artistic Directors, Mangos With Chili

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. Cherry Gallete

mangos.with.chili@gmail.com

www.myspace.com/mangoswithchili

To make a tax-deductible donation, visit www.counterpulse.org/donate and indicate “Mangos With Chili” as the recipient.