Erika Lopez

Last updated
Erika Lopez
Born1968 (age 55–56)
New York City, New York, U.S.
OccupationNovelist, Cartoonist, Performance Artist
Notable worksFlaming Iguanas, They Call Me Mad Dog!, Hoochie Mama
Website
www.erikalopez.com

Erika Lopez (born 1968) is an American cartoonist, novelist, and performance artist. Lopez has published six books or more and has internationally achieved her performance art. She is of Puerto Rican descent who has published six books and speaks openly of her bisexuality. [1] She lives in San Francisco, California.

Contents

Life and education

Erika Lopez was born in New York City, New York and is the daughter of two civil rights activists, a Puerto Rican father, Rafael Lopez-Sanchez; and a German-American mother, Deborah Reese. [2] Both of her parents converted to Quaker and she was raised attending Quaker meetings. [3] During early childhood she was raised in Philadelphia, while her parents were still married. [3] During most of her high school years, her parents divorced and she lived with her mother and her mother's lesbian partner, the family was often moving. [3]

Lopez attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and also studied at Moore College of Art and Design and the University of the Arts. [4] [5] She moved to San Francisco, California in 1994. [3]

Novels

As a struggling artist, Lopez applied for and received grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, each of which gave her $2500 to write. [4] A cross-country motorcycle trip served as inspiration for her first illustrated novel, Flaming Iguanas (1997), which includes numerous images made with rubber stamps and was published by Simon & Schuster. [6] [7] [8] That same year she published a book of cartoon stories called Lap Dancing for Mommy. Lopez went on to publish two additional illustrated novels with Simon & Schuster, They Call Me Mad Dog! (1998) and Hoochie Mama: The Other White Meat (2001) before her relationship with Simon & Schuster's publisher, David Rosenthal, soured (they've since kissed and made up and are actually friends, as she now refers to Rosenthal as her "maker" for letting her have her way with her career right away, making her the "megalomaniacal monster" she says she is today). These three books form a trilogy of very-loosely autobiographical novels which describe the exploits of "Tomato Rodríguez" (Lopez has stated that the novels are not autobiographical, but that there are intersections between her life and the experiences of Tomato). [9]

After a stint on welfare, and while touring her show, Lopez decided that the people in the suits didn't know how to run the arts industries, or the country's economy, and so she decided to take her fate into her own hands and become a "mini-mogul." Along with James Swanson, Kamala Lopez, and Jeffrey Hicken, they started a book publishing company, Monster Girl Media to go along with Monster Girl Movies, as a part of their coalition of Do-it-Yourself businesses in charge of their own development, production, merchandising, and promotion. Their first publication is "The Girl Must Die: A Monster Girl Memoir" (2010) along with the matching, "The Girl Must Die: 18 Postcards."

They work with a rotating roster of other Monster Girls Mujers and Men like Alison Penton Harper, Bianca Laureano, Kate Gottli, Suzanne Rush, and Peter Maravelis.

Performance art

Lopez is best known for the performance art characters of “Grandma Lopez” and "The Welfare Queen" which she created after she began to receive welfare after her fight with Simon & Schuster. [4] These characters are at the heart of Lopez's performance piece Nothing Left but the Smell: A Republican on Welfare, which she has performed at locations as varied as San Francisco (California), New York City, Edinburgh (Scotland), London and Manchester (England), and Oslo (Norway). [4] The text of this performance piece has been published in a self-edited artist edition and is also available online. [10]

In April 2004, Flaming Iguanas was presented onstage at Theatre Rhino in the Mission District of San Francisco. [11]

Published works

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adamari López</span> Puerto Rican actress

Adamari López Torres is a Puerto Rican actress known for participating in several Puerto Rican and Mexican soap operas. She was a host on the Telemundo morning show Hoy Día and its predecessor Un Nuevo Día for 11 years, and is a Latina ambassador for WW, formerly Weight Watchers.

Charlotte Ayanna is a Puerto Rican-American actress, author and former beauty queen who won Miss Teen USA 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia de Burgos</span> Puerto Rican poet (1914–1953)

Julia Constanza Burgos García, also known as Julia de Burgos, was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and teacher.As an advocate of Puerto Rican independence, she served as Secretary General of the Daughters of Freedom, the women's branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She was also a civil rights activist for women and African and Afro-Caribbean writers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miguel Algarín</span> Puerto Rican poet (1941–2020)

Miguel Algarín Jr. was a Puerto Rican poet, writer, co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café, and a Rutgers University professor of English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oscar Collazo</span> Puerto Rican militant

Oscar Collazo was one of two Puerto Rican militants of the Nationalist Party who on November 1, 1950, attempted to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman in Washington, D.C. He had been living in New York City after growing up in Puerto Rico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Puerto Rican literature</span> From oral story telling to its present-day

Puerto Rican literature is the body of literature produced by writers of Puerto Rican descent. It evolved from the art of oral storytelling. Written works by the indigenous inhabitants of Puerto Rico were originally prohibited and repressed by the Spanish colonial government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Rivera</span> American LGBT rights activist (1951–2002)

Sylvia Rivera was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who was also a noted community worker in New York. Rivera, who identified as a drag queen for most of her life and later as a transgender person, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iyanla Vanzant</span> American writer

Iyanla Vanzant is an American inspirational speaker, lawyer, New Thought spiritual teacher, author, life coach, and television personality. She is known primarily for her books, her eponymous talk show, and her appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. From 2012 to 2021, she served as host of OWN's Iyanla: Fix My Life.

Magali García Ramis is a Puerto Rican writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes</span> Puerto Rican author, scholar, and performer

Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is a gay Puerto Rican author, scholar, and performer. He is better known as Larry La Fountain. He has received several awards for his creative writing and scholarship as well as for his work with Latino and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) students. He currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Nemir Matos Cintrón is a Puerto Rican author who resides in Florida. She has published several books of poetry and parts of a novel. She has openly thematized her lesbianism in much of her work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Ramos Otero</span> Puerto Rican poet

Manuel Ramos Otero was a Puerto Rican writer. He is widely considered to be the most important openly gay twentieth-century Puerto Rican writer who wrote in Spanish, and his work was often controversial due to its sexual and political content. Ramos Otero died in San Juan, Puerto Rico, due to complications from AIDS.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a Puerto Rican filmmaker, writer, and scholar. Her work is focused on a comparative exploration of coloniality, primarily in Puerto Rico and the United States, with special attention given to the intersections between race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and politics. She is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University in New York City. She has also contributed to the Huffington Post, El Diario/La Prensa, and 80 Grados, and since 2008 has served as a Global Expert for the United Nations Rapid Response Media Mechanism. She is one of the best-known Puerto Rican lesbian artists currently living in the United States.

Elizabeth Marrero is an American of performance artist, comedian, and drag king who is best known as Macha, the "papi chulo drag king", a character she created in 1999. Her solo and collaborative work is characterized by her open exploration of lesbian and Puerto Rican issues in a working-class or ghetto environment and by her links to stand-up comedy. She was born and lives in the Bronx, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore</span> American activist and author

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is an American author and activist. She is the author of two memoirs and three novels, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies.

Michelle T. Clinton is an American poet.

Dr. Dolores Mercedes Piñero, (1892–1975) was one of the first four Puerto Rican women to earn a medical degree. She was also one of the first civilian doctors, and the first Puerto Rican female doctor to serve under contract in the U.S. Army during World War I. During World War I, Piñero helped establish a hospital in Puerto Rico to attend soldiers who had contracted the swine flu.

<i>Yo-Yo Boing!</i> Spanglish book by Giannina Braschi

Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) is a postmodern novel in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. The cross-genre work is a structural hybrid of poetry, political philosophy, musical, manifesto, treatise, memoir, and drama. The work addresses tensions between Anglo-American and Hispanic-American cultures in the United States.

References

  1. ↑ Torres, Lourdes. "Boricua Lesbians: Sexuality, Nationality, and the Politics of Passing." Archived 2012-09-20 at the Wayback Machine CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 19.1 (Spring 2007): 230-49. Retrieved on July 7, 2009.
  2. ↑ La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence. Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009, page 126. ISBN   0-8166-4092-0
  3. 1 2 3 4 May, Sandra. "Erika Lopez: 20 Questions" Archived January 5, 2009, at the Wayback Machine . Philadelphia City Paper July 17–24, 1997. Retrieved on July 7, 2009.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Bio on Erika Lopez Home Page Archived 2009-06-18 at the Wayback Machine , retrieved on July 7, 2009.
  5. ↑ "Erika Lopez". Women's Studio Workshop. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  6. ↑ La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence. "Cultures of the Puerto Rican Queer Diaspora." In Passing Lines: Sexuality and Immigration, eds. Brad Epps, Keja Valens, and Bill Johnson González, 275-309. Cambridge, Massachusetts: David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Harvard University Press, 2005. ISBN   0-674-01885-0
  7. ↑ Laffrado, Laura. "Postings from Hoochie Mama: Erika López, Graphic Art, and Female Subjectivity." In Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance, eds. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, 406-29. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. ISBN   0-472-09814-4
  8. ↑ Cooper, Sara. "Queer Family and Queer Text in Flaming Iguanas". CiberLetras 16 (January 2007). Retrieved on July 7, 2009.
  9. ↑ Mite. "Interview with Erika Lopez". The Chickenfish Speaks. Summer 1999. Retrieved on July 7, 2009.
  10. ↑ Lopez, Erika. Nothing Left but the Smell Archived 2010-01-15 at the Wayback Machine . www.erikalopez.com. Retrieved on July 7, 2009.
  11. ↑ "Fiery Lizards". SF Weekly. 2004-03-31. Retrieved 2021-11-01.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.