Yamary Sánchez Manso

Yamary Sánchez Manso – Yaya. Writer, editor, percussionist, artist, activist, Afrofeminist, Loiceña, Afro-descendant, black, poet. She is the daughter of Juan Luis Sánchez Parrilla and Yolanda Manso Escobar (both artists, artisans and representatives of the Boricua black heritage); She was born on August 12, 1994. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, she obtained a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature while extracurricularly taking gender and women’s courses at the same campus. Since 2021, she has been the editor of the Revista étnica, a space that not only makes Afro-descendant and Afro-Latin communities visible, but also the LGBTTQIA + community, providing a safe space of resistance and healing. In August 2020 she independently published a collection of poems “Negro Azabache” under the pseudonym Y. Macaná and in December 2021 she won second place in the José Gautier Benítez National Poetry Contest with her collection of poems “Cachivaches Entrelazados”, which It is about to be published, in the year 2023. Currently, she seeks to continue developing in spaces that aim to bring justice to vulnerable communities inside and outside the “Tropicolonia”.