Shauna Barbosa facts for kids
Shauna Barbosa (born around 1988) is a talented writer. She wrote a book of poems called Cape Verdean Blues, which came out in 2018. She was also a finalist for an important writing award, the PEN America Open Book Award, in 2019. In 2018, she was recognized as a special Luso-American (Portuguese-American) fellow.
Early Life
Shauna Barbosa grew up in Roxbury, a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother is African-American, and her father is Cape Verdean. Her parents met while working at a company called Polaroid. Shauna has four brothers and sisters.
When she was 15, Shauna worked at a music store in Boston called Funky Fresh. This job helped her love for music and mixtapes grow. In high school, she wrote reviews of music albums for her school newspaper. Later, she worked as an intern at Vibe, a popular music magazine.
Her Work as a Writer and Teacher
Shauna Barbosa earned a special degree called an MFA from Bennington College in Vermont. An MFA is a Master of Fine Arts degree, which is a high level of education for artists and writers. Today, she lives in Los Angeles, California. There, she teaches creative writing to students at the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.
Her poems have been featured in many well-known magazines and websites. Some of these include The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, PBS NewsHour, and Lit Hub.
Shauna gets ideas and inspiration from many different writers. These include Lucille Clifton, Patricia Smith, and Anne Sexton. She also finds inspiration in the lyrics of musicians like Juvenile, Nas, Frank Ocean, Amy Winehouse, and Andre 3000.
About Cape Verdean Blues
Shauna Barbosa's collection of poems, Cape Verdean Blues, was published in 2018. When Publishers Weekly reviewed the book, they said it was a strong first book. They noted that Shauna explores how a person's identity is shaped by different experiences. They also mentioned that she writes about growing up Cape Verdean in Boston. Her poems look at what it means to be a woman of color and someone from a different culture.
The famous rapper Kendrick Lamar praised the book. He said that the words in the book "feel like experiences." He felt that they were personal and helped him learn new things. He also said they connect people on a "higher, spiritual level."
Lit Hub, a popular website about books, named Cape Verdean Blues one of their favorite books of 2018.
The book's title, Cape Verdean Blues, is a tribute to a jazz album. It is named after the 1966 album The Cape Verdean Blues by jazz musician Horace Silver.
Some of Shauna's poems have also been translated into French. Five of her poems appeared in the French magazine Europe in April 2020.
