S A T O R I
Member
About -Geneffa Jahan
APRIL 4TH, 7 pm
Artist Statement
Last year, in honor of my mother who passed on in 2021, I published my first volume of poetry, Spilling the Chai: Poems about Family and Food. This poetry memoir 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.
These poems use tropes of food, memory, and multiple languages to explore themes of domestic abuse, racism, and resilience, allowing the multiple flavors of my life to mingle and linger in revelations that have waited decades to be shared.
As a college English professor, I encourage my students not to wait, but to break the silences that stifle them and realize what Audre Lorde tells us, “Your Silence Will Not Protect You” (The Cancer Journals). I approach college research and composition curriculum through the lens of “mesearch” and offer community workshops in poetry, voice, and movement to encourage all people, but especially those of minoritized genders and ethnicities, to spill with me.
For more information, please visit: https://geneffajahan.com/
To book readings and workshops, email SpillwithGeneffa@gmail.com
Artist Bio
Geneffa Jahan unravels threads of her ancestry from 13 generations of South Asian heritage. Born in London, England to Ismaili Khoja parents from Tanzania and Uganda, she immigrated with her family to Canada at age 10, where she completed her schooling and attended university. For the past 25 years, she has made her home in Santa Cruz, California where she teaches English composition and World Literature at Cabrillo College. She participates in local creative communities where she seeks to build bridges across cultural and linguistic differences. Assuming the Persian surname, Jahan, meaning “world,” she envisions a global movement where we all heal by spilling the secrets that silence our suffering.
As a creative, Jahan is a storyteller who uses her whole instrument and multiple platforms for self and community expression: she dances and trains flashmobs, writes for theatre where she has performed solo and ensemble pieces, and has published works of memoir in poetry and prose. In the fall of 2024, Jahan published her first poetry collection, Spilling the Chai: Poems about Family and Food (Jamii Publishing). She was selected to be her publisher’s Featured Author at the AWP Conference for 2025.