Penina Ava Taesali

Penina Ava Taesali

Penina Ava Taesali was born in Pasco, Washington, but her family moved to Yolo County, California, where she was raised. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of California at Davis, Taesali moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she lived and worked in BIPOC communities for many years. Taesali moved from Oakland to Salem, Oregon after losing her mother in 2013. She moved to the Northwest to write and to heal. But, she will always consider the “Biggity O” her hometown. Of Samoan, Irish and Portuguese working-class descent, Taesali’s commitment to social change and advocating for the arts is rooted in her personal history, identity, and intercultural complexity. She is the author of Sourcing Siapo (University of Hawaii, Ala Press, 2016), a full-length memoir-book of poetry. Her chapbook SUMMONS: Love Letters for the People, was published by Hawai’i Review in April 2018. Taesali earned her MFA in Writing from Mills College in 2012. Taesali, now retired, is learning how to enjoy the time and space to write, cook, and garden. She lives with her life partner, four cats, flourishing gardens and thousands of native birds in Salem, Oregon. Presently she is working on her father’s memoir.  

Taesali’s life’s work included working as the artistic director for the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, where she founded the Asian Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership, Talking Roots Art Collective. AYPAL TRAC served 150 to 200 low-income high school and middle school students annually. Taesali also founded the first and only Pacific Island non-profit in Oakland that advocated for language access, parent engagement in the schools, cultural arts education, and other social services. Her dedication to the community and the arts inspired many projects that included “Poetry in the Kitchen,” an intergenerational program she co-founded with the beloved oral historian and poet Al Robles.