Día de los Muertos Celebration Featuring African Mexican American Poet Ariana Brown

Join us as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month alongside JMU’s Hispanic Caucus with a poetry reading by Black Mexican American poet Ariana Brown. This event will take place in the Memorial Hall Forum as part of the Día de los Muertos Ofrenda Exhibition. The evening will include a viewing of Hostile Terrain 94, an exhibition highlighting migration as a global human rights issue while focusing on the 1994 policy that still plays a pivotal role in US immigration at the US/Mexico border today. Alongside Ariana’s performance, there will be a faculty-led discussion, a performance by the Lua Project, a tour of the exhibition, and participants will have the opportunity to purchase a copy of Ariana’s book at the end of the event. The poetry reading will begin at 7 PM. This event is free and open to the public, and free parking will be available at Memorial Hall. Offered in collaboration with JMU’s Hispanic Caucus, JMU Student Life, JMU Libraries, and CMSS.  See full event details and registration information.

Artist Bio:

Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet based in Houston. She is the author of the poetry collections We Are Owed (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). Her academic and poetic works explore queerness, Black personhood in Mexican American spaces, girlhood, loneliness, and care. Ariana is a national collegiate poetry slam champion, winner of two Academy of American Poets Prizes, Lambda Literary Fellow, and a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant. 

She holds a BA in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies from UT Austin, an MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas. She currently develops ethnic studies and ELA curriculum for high schools and colleges and teaches creative writing to teens in Houston.