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Contemporaries Essays, The Body of Contemporary Latina/o/x Poetry

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…

Contemporaries Essays, The Body of Contemporary Latina/o/x Poetry

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…

Contemporaries Essays, The Body of Contemporary Latina/o/x Poetry

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…

Issue 4: Political Reaction and the Politics of Slapstick, Peer Reviewed Articles

Writers for Goldwater

In Political Fictions (2001), Joan Didion insists that her politics are not “eccentric, opaque, somehow unreadable.” She writes: They are the logical product of a childhood largely spent among conservative…

Contemporaries Essays, Someone Else's Object

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,…

Contemporaries Essays, Someone Else's Object

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Someone Else's Object

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Someone Else's Object

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Someone Else's Object

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…

Contemporaries Essays, Someone Else's Object

Introduction: Someone Else’s Object

A Lost Doll In her essay, “Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes,” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick gives an account of a childhood memory that she likes to think of as…