Achy Obejas

Achy Obejas, born in 1956 in Cuba, left her homeland with her family as an exile when she was six years old. Raised in Michigan City, Indiana, Obejas completed undergraduate work at Indiana University before earning an MFA from Warren Wilson College. As a journalist, Obejas has written for the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine and The Advocate. She is an English/Spanish poet and the author of three novels including The Tower of the Antilles which was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Recognized as a leading figure in Latinx and LBGTQ literary circles, Ojejas has taught at the University of Chicago, Roosevelt University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, DePaul University and Mills College.

Obejas was appointed to Chicago’s first Committee on Gay and Lesbian Issues and was instrumental in the 1988 passage of a historic human-rights ordinance to prohibit sexual-orientation discrimination in the City of Chicago.

She has worked as a bilingual translator, introducing English-speaking audiences to contemporary Cuban female writers and making English-language works by US Caribbean writers accessible in Spanish. Most recently, Obejas has worked with Netflix on global projects.

Why this stop? The Blue Line California stop is one of the L stops serving the Logan Square neighborhood, the setting of Obejas’ novel Memory Mambo.

Connect — Read Memory Mambo or one of Obejas’ other novels.

Photo Credit - Kaloian