spring reading

what I read in the month of March + the usual links

I wanted this newsletter to go out sooner, but I’ve been dealing with a… hm. I’m dealing with what some may call “having bipolar disorder” et cetera. But let’s get into it.

I read four fantastic books in March, two novels and two essay collections:

Where Are You From: Letters to My Son by Tomás Q. Morín

Morín’s poetry collection Machete is one of my favorites to revisit when I have writers’ block— his work always unlocks something generative for me. Morín's latest nonfiction book, Where Are You From, once again shows his imaginative mastery of language. These letters to his son get at (often painful) truths of race, colonialism, Latinx masculinity, belonging, and love. Each letter takes the reader on a journey through New Jersey, Texas, the body, dreams, dictionaries, y más.

The title, of course, comes from that annoying question too many of us have been asked, often followed by a No, where are you really from? I find Morín’s honesty when talking about race, and how to navigate white ignorance, super refreshing.

Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura

I can’t recommend Like Happiness enough. I was hooked from the first line. Perhaps generation is a theme in this list— I added several scenes to my memoir and wrote a new poem while reading Villarreal-Moura’s debut novel.

Like Happiness follows a young Tatum and the pain, excitement, humiliation, and exhilaration of being groomed by legendary Latino writer M Dominguez. The novel puts the actions of this powerful, abusive man under a microscope, and shows how misogyny and internalized cultural shame are replicated over and over again.

Details are everything as Like Happiness unfolds. Even the journalist uncovering M's pattern of abuse has misogynistic tendencies when speaking with Tatum. Further, the signs of M's lack of care are there the whole time, as well as his refusal to engage with other Latine writers. Ultimately, Like Happiness asks important questions about what we owe each other, the lines between fiction and reality, celebrity within particular cultures, in this case Latinidad.

Tejano side note: it was pretty cool to read a literary novel whose protagonist is from San Antonio! The dichotomies between the East Coast and Texas, and the united states and Chile was another interesting side-exploration in this book.

You Get What You Pay For by Morgan Parker

How do you self-actualize when the self has been decided for you pre-birth? Morgan Parker's debut essay collection blends personal essay and cultural criticism to explore this and other questions about Black American identity in the wake of oppression, slavery, and police brutality. Mental health is inextricably linked to the racist legacy of america, and Parker discusses this connection across these essays.

Performance and the weight of words are central to You Get What You Pay For, as well as the intersection of humor and pain. What we spend words on, what we perform matters. How successful we are in performing. How performance leads to acceptance. And, like most things in this country, how much acceptance costs.

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

I adored Olga Dies Dreaming, and Xochitl Gonzalez’s second novel more than lived up to my excitement. Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a braided narrative about two Latinas, an artist in the 1980s and an art history student in the late 1990s, navigating the super white, super classist art world.

Anita de Monte, the artist, dies mysteriously, but her art, her spirit, outlast the shitty men and institutions who want her to disappear.

Raquel Toro, a first-gen ivy league student entangled in the elite art world, fights to not lose herself in it.

The narrative is full of twists and magical realist spins, and I don’t want to give too much of it away, but Gonzalez’s takes on race and gender are as sharp and salient as ever. Who gets to leave a legacy? How do you uncover the ones that have been lost?

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I also recently finished Cavar’s Failure to Comply and am currently reading Country of Under by Brooke Shaffner. More on these titles to come in future newsletters. I’d also love to hear what everyone else is reading right now.

So on to the usual links and opportunities:

Solidarity with Palestine:

• If you’re in the usa, keep calling your reps. Flood biden’s phone lines every Tuesday and Thursday. USCPR is a great resource for getting started.

• Keep boycotting, disrupting, etc. Check out the BDS site for more info.

• Another PEN America update, because they simply cannot accept accountability for anything

  • If you want to support those who have turned down PEN nominations, check out this Bookshop list

• Purchase and read A Gaza of Siege and Genocide by Yahya Ashour

  • In solidarity with Ashour’s nineteen family members who must escape the dire situation in Gaza, Mizna is supporting Yahya Ashour to fund their evacuation through the sale of this e-book.

• Read Passages Through Genocide

  • We collect, translate and publish texts from Palestinian writers confronting the genocide in Gaza, to lift up their words.
    We urge you to share, print, publish and distribute these texts by all possible means, in support of Palestinian liberation.

Opportunities:

• LittlePuss Press

  • We are currently considering original manuscripts of fiction and non-fiction (including works-in-progress). We are also considering reprint proposals of literary/historical works of significance by transgender authors.

• Printed Matter is seeking artists books, zines, etc on Decolonization, Resistance & Solidarity

• Roots. Wounds. Words. Retreat for Storytellers of Color - closes TOMORROW 4/21

• Jasper Joyner is teaching Writer's Block Isn't Real: A Class About Embracing Stillness with GrubStreet - 4/26

• Abode Press Virtual Summer Retreat - poetry, fiction, nonfiction; free to apply - closes 4/30

• Nicolas Gogan Foundation - microgrants for trans+ community members in need - closes 4/30

• FIYAH - DISABILITIES issue - open to speculative fiction from Black writers - closes 4/30

• Hayden’s Ferry Review Futurism as Resistance issue - closes 4/30

• Foglifter - open to all genres from LGBTQ+ writers - closes 5/1

• Pride Magazine - articles & poetry written by queer writers in Canada - theme of Infinite Horizons - closes 5/3

• Haunted Words Press - Bleeding Hearts Beat Still - LGBTQ writing for middle grade and young adult audiences - closes 5/4

• Sistas Uprising Fund - 7 $200 grants to US & Canada-based women of color and femme-expressing visual artists of color - closes 5/5

• SUNHOUSE - 2 $100 microgrants for BIPOC &/or LGBTQ+ writers - closes 5/15

• fourteen poems - poetry for next issue from LGBTQ+ poets - closes 5/15

• Twin Cities Collage Collective Materials Scholarship - closes 5/31

• Sinister Wisdom - Mad Dykes, Queer Worlds - closes 6/30

• Diode Editions - Full-length & Chapbook contests - closes 7/15

From around the internet:

• “From the River to the Sea” by Samer Abu Hawwash, tr. Huda Fakhreddine in Lit Hub

• “The Legacy of Cecilia Gentili: Artist, Mother, and Saint of Trans Liberation” by Quispe López in them

• Poems by K. Iver in the Rumpus National Poetry Month series

• “What can I say to you in four breaths?” by KB Brookins in The Ex-Puritan

• “Habibi Yamma” by Fady Joudah in Protean

• “The Centaur” by Miller Oberman

• “I Made 13 Cents an Hour as a Prison Janitor. Here’s Why I Donated My Wages to Gaza Relief” by Hamzah Jihad Furqaani as told to Aala Abdullahi in The Marshall Project

  • Donating my wages wasn’t a matter of sympathy; you can sympathize with someone and do nothing about it. Rather, it was empathy. When you empathize with someone, you place yourself in their shoes. You do your best to relate to their suffering in hopes you will be spurred into action.

• “i think i should try therapy again” by N.L. Rivera in Zero Readers

• “Ode to My Preposterous Tiny Moustache’s First International Flight” by Dylan McNulty-Holmes in the new Split Lip Magazine issue

• “A Return to Queering The Map” by Aeon Ginsberg in like a field

  I don’t write poetry to be neutral

  because poetry is never neutral.

  My poems are an incantation against oppression.

• Mordecai Martin translates William Gropper in the new issue of ANMLY

• “Sunrise Over Neo-Tokyo” by Lae Astra

• “Driving to Fish Creek Falls in August” and a prompt by Kit Steitz in Moist Poetry Journal

Upcoming Events:

• TONIGHT 5pm at Pecantown in Seguin, TX — catch me reading poetry with Sara Bawany and Kale Hensley

• Boston friends: I’ll be facilitating my Writing Queer & Trans Joy workshop at the Muse & The Marketplace conference May 10th

• I’ll be reading for the Poets in Pajamas virtual reading series on May 26th

• Of course I’ve also been preparing for the Abode Virtual Retreat !! Come talk about poems with me!

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In sickness & more sickness,

<3

Thank you for reading this far down. Trans poetica will always be free, but tips are greatly appreciated! I have three pay-what-you-want zines available here. I am available for editing, readings, workshops, and more through my site.

If you have an opportunity for trans, BIPOC, disabled, otherwise marginalized writers or artists you’d like me to include, please let me know. If I’m platforming an institution that is doing wrong by our communities, please let me know that, too.