Palabra Pura: Latinidad-Who are we? Latino Poets on Identity

For featured authors Diego Báez and Amy Sayre Baptista, violence inhabits their lives and what they write about. This is a violence that divides our culture and us; this is a colonization of our identity as a man, as a woman, and as a Latina/o. What does it mean to be Latina/o? These poets sing compelling stories about the lives of men and women navigating a changing landscape of language, culture, and the physical body. Their passion is for the experiences of the unheard, the misunderstood, and the undervalued. They manifest political, historical, and secret stories with vehement compassion and grace.

This month’s program is coordinated by Ruben Quesada.

All “mother” tongues are welcome! Arrive early to sign up for the open mic.

Palabra Pura is pay-what-you-can ($5 suggested donation). Audience contributions support honorariums for the curators and featured authors.

ABOUT OUR FEATURED AUTHORS

Diego Báez grew up in Bloomington, Illinois, and graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University – Newark. An inaugural fellow at CantoMundo in 2010, his poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared most recently at Ostrich, The Acentos Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Chicago and teaches at the City Colleges.

Amy Sayre Baptista’s writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, S’ouwester, LUSO American Voices, LUNA LUNA, and Chicago Noir. She is a 2013 CantoMundo fellow, a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee, and a 2011 scholarship recipient to the Disquiet Literary Festival in Lisbon, Portugal. She has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and lives in Chicago.

ABOUT THIS MONTH’S CURATOR

Ruben Quesada is the author of Next Extinct Mammal and Exiled from the Throne of Night. His writing appears in Guernica, BOAAT PRESS, Rattle, The California Journal of Poetics, American Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter @rubenquesada.