WHEN DID YOU FIRST RECOGNIZE ME AS YOUR OWN?: A FOLIO OF UNDOCUPOETS FELLOWS

Episode 22: Undocupoets Part 2 — Javier Zamora, Marcelo Hernandez, and Janine Joseph

The editors of Quarterly West have invited us, undocumented and formerly undocumented writers and friends of Undocupoets, to share our work in this feature. Not to explain, but to explore, shake up, and unearth, for ourselves and for each other, what the parent, child, sister, and self become once we’ve arrived.

Thanks to Undocupoets, poets don’t need papers to be heard

Ed. by Aida Salazar & Alina Chau

The biographies include engineer and astronaut Anousheh Ansari; Paralympic athlete and entrepreneur Alejandro Albor; surgeon Ayub Khan Ommaya; jazz musician Candido Camero; dancer ConceiÁ§ao Damasceno; Sriracha inventor and businessman David Tran; basketball player Dikembe Mutombo; author Edwidge Danticat; politician Ilhan Omar; comic artist Jim Lee; environmental activist Juana Guttierez; cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and the Undocupoets, a group of undocumented poets.

Poem-A-Day Series: Greensickness by Laurel Chen

Let me be brave enough to live here. Let me be precise in my actions. Let me feel hurt. I know I can heal. Let me try again—again and again.

This feature celebrates the lives and the resistance of nine undocumented writers from an array of experiences and writing styles. Throughout this feature, there is a grappling with nationhood, assimilation, separation from home and family, love and tenderness and war, resistance and survival.