Contemporaries Essays

Black Latina Girlhood Poetics of the Body: Church, Sexuality and Dispossession

Like Xiomara, the teenage protagonist of Elizabeth Acevedo’s poetry novel The Poet X, I was always afraid of getting disciplina — of getting caught up and revealed as an imposter…

Slow Encounter

I Natalie Diaz writes, “In my Mojave culture, many of our songs are maps.” Diaz does not mean this in the sense of a settler colonial map. They do not…

Poetry, Pulse, and the Anthology

It has been over three years since forty-nine people were murdered at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Public attention has waned. But for certain communities, it is impossible…

Afro-Boricua Archives: Paperless People and Photo/Poetics as Resistance

In her monograph, Boricua Literature, Lisa Sánchez González argues that in the face of national, colonial, and institutional erasure, Boricuas — the Taíno-derived demonym for Puerto Ricans — find themselves…

The Body of Contemporary Latina/o/x Poetry

Among scholars and teachers of Latina/o/x literature, it has become commonplace in recent years to speak about the vitality of poetry, which has long been subordinated to narrative in research…

Trace Alignment: Object Relations after Ana Mendieta

A Palimpsest of Returns In July 2017, I accompanied twelve students from Oregon State University to Cuba on a study abroad trip. It was also my first trip to Cuba,…

Feeling Like a Bad Trans Object

Being trans in a cis culture means that too many first encounters with oneself come through the shame of exposure. I remember being called gay by kids so many times…

Tasting Embarrassment, or, Liking Leo

I want to embark on a self-conscious exploration of encountering white stardom. To my mind, the white star is objectified as someone else and for someone else, and yet, through…

It Me: Annotation and Restraint

I. Restrained When I am feeling pulled in many directions at once by my interests or my values or my actions, my friend Adam has long advised me that we…

Back to Plath

Is Sylvia Plath assigned to high school English classes in this forsaken country? I wouldn’t know — at least not from personal experience. I don’t remember reading her in my…