féi iká shumarí (b.1993, Chihuahua, Mexico) is a 2 Spirit/trans woman, (un)documented writer, performance artist, and graphic designer. féi is the author of HOOD CRIATURA (Sundress Publications, 2020), the forthcoming CHABÓCHI DOLL (Abode Press, 2026) and (UN)DOCU MENTE (Noemi Press, 2027). féi is descendent of the Pi’ma, Rarámuri, and Cora peoples. For more of her work go to feiikashumari.com
What is the first transmission you received that altered your understanding of language?
Simply put, my maternal grandfather taught me how to write backwards at 8 years old after migrating to Inglewood from Mexico for a second time. The only way to decipher the message, holding the writing to a mirror. Autistic as I was and having the written language be a wall of brick between me and the speaking and academic world, I entered language unforced, bewitched by its mystery through this invitation my grandfather extended me. From there, language became more so an experiment of how meaning is built beyond syntax or craft: it is an engagement of something beyond the cacography and page, but of presence, choices (outside of writing), literal self-reflection, and a backwardness corrected only through lifting off the page. Additionally, the invitation also became an entry point into how to attract my readership. Many, at first glance, don’t pick up my illegibility, metaphorically. Those that can decipher the call to action stand in front of the mirror and experience writing as a performance art, as an embodiment of existence that insists on being a phenomena.
In what way does transness tune/re-tune the craft choices you make?
Is it crude to implore that I’m quite frankly—bored—with the way language is used? To me the written language begets to be more than itself. Where is the splatter of a sonnet? The twirl of language? What is the duty of illegibility in a literary cosmology that almost requires trauma dumping to be deemed substance-worthy? I welcome linguistic revolutions into my poetics easily. Transness, yes, may be the culprit, it usually is the criminal at TSA. But maybe, for someone like me, being diasporic and of Indigenous descent are equal accomplices to the genius craft of my poetics. The three languages: Rarámuri, Spanish, and English bounce around to find my edges. Mapping the place of and makings of my body requires endless expansion, a rabid 2 Spirit force. Traditional forms and fancy sentencing must be rearranged, or else I can’t breath. It’s simple. Here is how I survive/approach a poem: Form is the first thing to break, second is linearity. Third, we take the autonomy of words as collectively accepted and break them, merge them with others or add extra letters (e.g.: I will fight till the end of my life pleading that “presence” should be spelled with double eses: “Pressence”. Fourth and final step, I walk a mile from the writing and ask it: Can you hear me? Who we are is what we write and there was never a truer and irrefutable fact. The judges, awards, and those in the pedestals could never (quantify the validity of the force we translate to language).
If your work could transmit beyond this moment, to future readers, or even back to a younger version of yourself, what would you want it to carry?
I believe the work I create in the now is resounding both into the past and into the future, to my many selves and readers of time immemorial. Always in my work is the seed of: live now, write later. And when you do write make it like no writing has ever been.