Molcajete de música
Playlist by DJ Despeinada | Photography by Lucía Plaza
Bonnie Ilza Cisneros is a fourth-generation educator in a line of Tejana schoolteachers. She taught middle school English for five years in San Antonio Independent School District and coordinated the El Placazo Barrio Newspaper program at San Anto Cultural Arts. Bonnie earned a Creative Writing Master's degree from Texas State University, was altered forever at the Macondo Writers Workshop in 2016, and was awarded an artist grant from NALAC in 2018. Her poems and essays have appeared in El Retorno, Chicana/Latina Studies, River Teeth, Porter House Review, Infrarrealista Review, La Voz de Esperanza, Buckman Journal, and Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. Moonlighting as DJ Despeinada, she spins all-vinyl soundscapes of the borderlands. Throughout the pandemic, she led workshops and published zines at San Antonio and Chicago Public libraries, presented lectures for community colleges and universities, recorded radio shows for WFMU and Marfa Public Radio, and curated a variety of cultural experiences within her community as part of an ecosystem of local artists who cross-pollinate their talents, resources, and energies for collective healing. All the while, Bonnie and her husband raise two m’ijas and keep a flock of five gallinas in San Antonio, Texas. You can learn more about her work at her digital archive: www.bonniecisneros.com
