RSVP HERE: https://alienatedmajestybooks.com/events/654320240906
Friday Sep 6th, 2024, 6:00 PM-8:00 PM @ Alienated Majesty Books (Austin, TX)
Join us in celebrating the release of Occupy Whiteness by Joaquín Zihuatanejo. Joaquín will be joined in reading & conversation by local poet KB Brookins.
✦✦✦ ABOUT THE BOOK ✦✦✦
Occupy Whiteness is a collection of hybrid erasure poems from inaugural Dallas Poet Laureate and multi-world slam competition winner Joaquín Zihuatanejo. Starting from long-form works of literature by straight, white men, Joaquín Zihuatanejo occupies their pages, erasing words and sections, leaving only his poetry behind — the white space that remains becoming colonized Brown verse. Occupy Whiteness is an act of rebellion that reclaims spaces and highlights a history of erasure of Brown life.
An unflinching look at the present day, the collection is haunted and blessed by the image of ancestors who braved the river and desert to travel into border states for the opportunity of freedom. These are poems meant to agitate and create unease, to make the reader realize that neither their author nor the immigrant children he describes are Other. Through poems and interspersed photography from the border, Zihuatanejo poignantly depicts this equally beautiful and brutal place we call home.
✦✦✦ ABOUT THE GUESTS ✦✦✦
Joaquín Zihuatanejo was recently named the inaugural Dallas Poet Laureate for 2022-2024. Hailed as “The People’s Poet” by The Dallas Morning News, Joaquín credits his Abuelo, who was the first person to place a book in his hands and challenge him to read aloud, as his first teacher and the source of his poetic inspiration. He received his MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work has been published in Poets.org, Southwestern American Literature, Yellow Medicine Review, Sonora Review, among other journals and anthologies. His poetry has been featured on HBO, NBC, and on NPR in Historias and The National Teacher’s Initiative. His new collection of poetry, Occupy Whiteness, is out now from Deep Vellum Publishing. Joaquín was recently named a Poet Laureate Fellow by the Academy of American Poets and received a $50,000 prize in honor of the good work he has done in Dallas as their first poet laureate. Joaquín has two passions in his life, his partner Aída and poetry. Always in that order.
KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer, cultural worker, and visual artist from Texas. Their writing is featured in Poets.org, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Poetry Society of America, Oxford American, and elsewhere. KB’s poetry chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their debut poetry collection Freedom House, described as “urgent and timely” by Vogue, won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for the Best First Book of Poetry. KB adapted Freedom House into a solo art exhibit, which debuted at Prizer Arts and Letters in April 2024. Their debut memoir Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf) released on May 28, 2024.
