S A T O R I
Member
About -Geneffa Jahan
JULY 15TH, 7 pm
Artist Statement
Geneffa Jahan is a community poet. For 20 years, she has written for local readings and published in her college’s literary magazines, Porter Gulch Review and Journal X. She won their Best Poem awards in 2015 and 2021, respectively.
As an organizer, she created the Salaam Initiative and Chai Society at Cabrillo College, where she has taught English since 2000. She continues to curate cultural spaces through events such as Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. Her photo project was displayed in the traveling exhibition, Shadow & Light.
Twice a reader for In Celebration of the Muse, she has helped coordinate that event for the HIVE Poetry Collective (member 2022-2024), for whom she has taped poetry podcasts aired on KSQD’s Sunday night Poetry Show. Her personal essay, “Laid to Rest,” is forthcoming in Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace Vol. II (2025), edited by Maxine Hong Kingston.
Artist Bio
Born in London, England to East Indian parents from Tanzania and Uganda, Geneffa immigrated with her family to Canada at age 10, where she completed her schooling and attended university. Assuming the Persian surname, Jahan, meaning “world,” she envisions a global movement where we all heal by spilling the chai.
Spilling the Chai: Poems about Family and Food takes us to the most intimate room of the house and the most ritualized moments of a family to explore what must be revealed, addressed, and undone, choosing which spices to carry forward and which to discard.