Empowering you to recognize your own story

Hi, my name is Jazzie, and yep, Jazzie is my real name. I was named after a 1970s clothing line (aptly so, because I'm a vintage clothing enthusiast).

As an author, generational curse breaker, child/narcissitic/sexual abuse survivor, former foster child and family black sheep, my mission is to inspire you to recognize yourself through the power of storytelling. Every story is unique and has the potential to inspire others. Let me take you on a journey of self-discovery.

I was born in the Philippines on United States Navy base, making me equal parts not-American and not-Filipino. At age two I moved from the Philippines to Southern California with my biological mother where we experienced a chaotic and complicated immigrant journey.

A traumatic series of events forced me to confront what couldn’t be spoken about in a Filipino-American home: abuse, sexuality, identity, and independence.

When I was a teen, I was placed into foster care in Los Angeles County where I again had to re-consider and re-define notions of identity and culture.

My memoir, Brownsheep, is about the struggle of growing up as an unseen Filipinx kid in Los Angeles. The work placed as a semi-finalist in 2022 for the BookLife Award for memoir.

The first chapter of Brownsheep was recently published in the San Francisco Writer’s Conference 2022 anthology, Everything Intensely, as a finalist in non-fiction.

I was honored to receive a literary fellowship from Authentic Voices, a women of color collective supported by the Women of Color Podcast and Women's National Book Association. Part of my next work, Cultural Detox: On Identity, Rules, and Being will appear in the the Authentic Voices anthology in 2024.

I am a member of the South West Writer's Association, Women's National Book Association, have a degree in Communication and was awarded with the George Parker Scholarship for Formerly Orphaned Youth. I currently live and write in New Mexico with my chosen family and two black cats.