Sankofa Talks is our platform to bring intergenerational conversations to the public. Through each talk we take time to retrieve and honor our Diaspora’s history, reflect on its contributions to our present and recognize the power it has to inform how we move forward into the future. This installment of Sankofa Talks is part of our monthlong commemoration of Juneteenth.
As we take this month to acknowledge our Diaspora’s U.S. history, we’re reminded that our ancestors were not only shackled physically but forced into mental prisons by being prohibited from learning, reading and writing, an effective tool of oppression. Our upcoming Sankofa Talks honors the resilience of our ancestors & their ability to create and inspire despite their circumstances. The road toward Black liberation continues today with literature as an integral part of the journey.
Our featured speakers, Bronx authors and educators of Caribbean roots Sofia Quintero and Lorraine Avila, will engage in an in-depth exchange about how they use literature and storytelling to break through generational trauma and internalized oppression.
“Sankofa” is a West African word of the Akan tribe that translates to, “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.”
Sofia Quintero
Sofia Quintero is a Gen-X Afro-Latina writer and hypnotherapist. Raised in a working-class Puerto Rican-Dominican family in the Bronx, the self-proclaimed “Ivy League homegirl” graduated from Columbia University and began her first career as a policy analyst and advocate working for various nonprofits including the Vera Institute of Justice and the Hispanic AIDS Forum. After years of working on diverse policy issues, Sofia turned to cultural work with the intention to meet audiences where they are, yet take them someplace better. Determined to write edgy yet intelligent stories for women who love hip-hop even when hip-hop fails to love them in return, Sofía wrote her debut novel EXPLICIT CONTENT of which Booklist wrote “Fans of Sister Souljah’s THE COLDEST WINTER EVER will find this debut novel just as tantalizing...” She has published seven more books with every major house and across genres. For over two decades, Sofia also has been a teaching artist and youth worker for organizations like Urban Word NYC, the National Book Foundation and Girls Incorporated of New York City. Sofia also co-founded Chica Luna Productions which won a Union Square Award for its groundbreaking combination of youth development, arts education and cultural activism. As a hypnotherapist she uses storytelling and specializes in serving artists and creative entrepreneurs, BIPOC (with a focus on overcoming internalized oppression) and cancer survivors. She was an inaugural Made in NY Writers Room Fellow with a TV pilot based on her Black Artemis novel BURN. Sofia earned an MFA from the TV Writers Studio where she is an adjunct professor teaching Brilliant But Canceled: a Mini-Room Simulation” which she designed to give emerging writers the experience of being in a writers room. When not developing TV and film projects, Sofia publishes across genres with every major house in the industry. She recently co-authored MISS ME WITH THAT with Rachel Lindsay, the first Black Bachelorette (Ballantine, 2022), and is working on her eighth book, the YA novel #KRISSETTE (Knopf 2024.) Sofia lives in New York City and writes feminist crime drama, urban teen realism, and “chica lit” comedies.
Lorraine Avila
Lorraine Avila (she/they) is a Bronxite with Caribbean roots in the Dominican Republic. Her mission is to break free from generational trauma by continuing to rupture traditions of silence. Avila is the author of Malcriada and Other Stories (DWA), Celestial Summer (out Spring 2022), and The Making of Yolanda La Bruja (forthcoming Spring 2023 from Levine Querido).
Avila has a BA from Fordham University in English and Middle East studies with a minor in Creative Writing and an MA in Teaching from New York University. She is an anti-racist educator; her expertise lies in middle school literacy and curriculum design. As of 2021, she teaches composition at the university level.
Avila is an MFA candidate at Pittsburgh University, a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow. In 2021, she received the Josephine and John McCloskey Memorial Nationality Room Scholarship and the Dietrich Diversity Research Grant. Avila is a VONA alumni and a Pushcart nominee. In 2020, she completed a successful Kickstarter campaign to self-publish Celestial Summer, a graphic novel that centers Black love, healing, and psychedelics (forthcoming Spring 2022.)
Her writing has been published in Teen Vogue, Bitch Media, Tasteful Rude, Our House LA, Latino USA, Catapult Magazine, Asteri(x) Journal, Hippocampus Magazine, Moko Magazine, The GirlMob, Accentos Review, La Galeria Magazine, and Blavity.
Avila spends the majority of her time between Pittsburgh, The Bronx, and the Dominican Republic.