Cristina Luisa White has had two dedicated interests for most of her life—the performance arts and the healing arts. She began as a playwright and has several produced plays and one published play to her credit. Her interest in the healing arts led her to write her first published book, The Healing Environment. A Pushcart nominee, she continues to write plays, fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry.
At age fifteen, she was given her first guitar. She spent some years as a singer/songwriter with the duo Moon in Taurus, and she has now returned to life as a songwriter.
Her most recent work is Sex and Soul Redux: A Memoir of Salvation. In this return to her earlier memoir Sex and Soul, Cristina expands her story of one woman’s journey toward authenticity and a meaningful life. In her quest to reconcile body and soul, she sets out on a forbidden road that reveals itself to be a life-affirming path to salvation.
Print and eBook editions of Sex and Soul Redux are available at Amazon.
The print edition of Sex and Soul Redux is also available at Barnes & Noble.
Cristina’s other book is These Several Women: Love Poems, a collection of poetry about love, desire, and memory. The work is inspired by a belief that love is the life blood of our existence here on earth—these poems sing that anthem.
Print and eBook editions of These Several Women are available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Also available from Cave Art Press is Youth in Wartime: Recollections of World II, an anthology that includes “One Cup of Rice,” Cristina’s account of her earliest years with her mother in the Philippines at the outbreak of the war and the aftermath of that experience. The fourteen eyewitness accounts from young people around the world describe “…the lives of ordinary people caught in the maelstrom of global conflict.
Print and eBook editions of Youth in Wartime are available at Amazon.
The paperback edition of all three books can be ordered through your local bookstore.
In 2022, Cristina’s nonfiction contribution “Forgiveness” in the Timberline Review Issue 11 earned her a Pushcart Prize nomination. She was a featured writer at the 2020 and 2018 Literary Arts Oregon Writers of Color Spring Showcase, and her work has appeared in several publications, including Orion Magazine, Pigeon Review, Discretionary Love, Occult Detective Magazine, Willawaw Journal, VoiceCatcher, and Gay Flash Fiction. Her first book, authored as Cristina Ismael, was The Healing Environment, a pioneering work in the field of healing design.
Her work as a visual artist includes the cover design for her book The Healing Environment and the frontispiece illustration for The Book of Jobs, a novel by Skye Atman. She has shown her art and photography in San Francisco at the Cartoon Art Museum, the BJE Library, and the Blue Danube Café, and in Corvallis at the Majestic Theatre Gallery and the Giustina Gallery, Oregon State University. Her photos have been published in The Spirit of Corvallis and Atención San Miguel.
She contributed oil and mixed media paintings to the art-poetry collaboration Beyond Words, created by Terri Thomas, featuring visual and sound-scape creations inspired by Terri’s poetry. To date, Beyond Words has been exhibited at the Benton County Historical Museum, the Lincoln City Cultural Center, the Alsea Public Library, Studio Beatrice and Pegasus Art Gallery.
Along with Write Away, her blog on this site, Cristina writes at zen crunch, her blog at www.cristinawhite.wordpress.com.
Sex and Soul Redux is a memoir that reveals the author’s quest to reconcile body and soul. Cristina L. White recounts her struggle between the dictates of a religious upbringing and the call to be true to one’s sense of self. Told that following her heart would condemn her to hell and damnation, she listened instead to an inner voice, one attuned to “…my spiritual body and the canon of my bones.” In her transition from compliance to nonconformity, Cristina shares her sexual awakening, spiritual transformation, and political affinities—a trinity that fueled her change from good Catholic girl to an out and open gay woman of faith.
“The first paragraph had me. Read it three times before I could go on. Cristina’s writing is poetry. My eyes and heart were opened.”
Marion Whitney
poet and author of My Poems
“This is…a delicate exploration of relationships and identity that will leave you wondering why you haven’t opened yourself more to others and to life. Here is a daring portrayal of the human capacity to both define and be defined by love—love of self, love of God, and love of women.”
Larina Warnock
poet and author of Guitar Without Strings
“This is a book for everyone who feels obliged to choose between societal norms and authentic individuality—or, as the author puts it in this penetrating memoir—“…whether I wanted to be fully alive, or settle for something less.”
Susan R. Harper
Librarian
These Several Women: Love Poems is a collection of poetry about love, desire, and memory. The collection captures the wonder and beauty experienced when we fall in love; it also speaks to the ache that comes when love takes a turn we didn’t expect and everything falls to pieces. The work is inspired by a belief that love is the lifeblood of our existence here on earth—these poems sing that anthem.
All those who have been in love, who have known passion and heartbreak, will find an echo of their own memories here. And if you are a woman in love with another woman, somewhere in these poems, you will recognize yourself.
Print and eBook editions available at Amazon. Print editions are also available at Barnes & Noble and through your local bookstore.
“Cristina White’s poems…are hymns of honest gratitude for the memories of loves lost and the persistence of longing. In them, women who love women will surely recognize the sweet paradox of evanescent hope amidst her celebration of shining, small details.”
—Claire Goodman
Professor Media Arts, Long Island University
“Cristina White’s poetry brings the love between two women seductively into focus: “Now there are no hours/nor minutes, nor seconds/only this moment when/we are silent/while our hearts speak.” The very act of reading these rich poems opens us up to the deepest experience available on this planet—that of love.”
—Jade Rosina McCutcheon
Director, Scholar, and Author
Awakening the Performing Body
“A beautifully written collection of poems, pulsing with an overarching lyrical rhythm. From the first quivering anticipation to graceful sensual discovery through to love’s abiding depth, these poems reflect the universal heartbeat of what it is to love and in loving, discover yourself. Whoever you love and share your life with, these poems will touch you with their honesty and beauty.”
—Terri Thomas
Performer, Voice Actor, Writer