What do you learn from art. Why surround yourself with art, lyric, music.
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
3y ago
With the recent release of Letters to a Young Brown Girl, I have been fortunate to have a whole lot of conversations with different folks, which seem to come down to where art belongs in our lives, as we are growing up and learning that our world is about success and conformity and capitalism. For ..read more
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Brown Girl Mixtape
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
3y ago
This is such an experience, actually listening all the way through my Brown Girl Mixtape, which I confess I had not done previously. So this section of Letters to a Young Brown Girl is/was me, throwing a Hail Mary. Yes. It’s also, I think, the most “raw” section of the book. It was the last ..read more
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Poem in progress: The Book of Asking
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
4y ago
OK, so I wrote this poem because on Twitter, Erin Entrada Kelly asked, “What was your first word.” Here’s the first draft. What was your first word      today, ever, in your native tongue, in the tongue you were coerced into taking, Was your mother there to witness and document, and if not, where ..read more
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In 2020, Kapwa Over Po Biz
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
4y ago
Folks do and do not want to hear all of this Po Biz stuff. I mean, some do, because they want to know how thy may carve out a career for themselves. And then they don’t, because the work itself is tedious, incremental, repetitive; it requires a lot of failing and failing again, mired in ..read more
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Interview: On Intersections of Identity
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
4y ago
The following interview was conducted in March 2019, by a college student at a local literary journal. Publication of this interview has since gotten lost in the shuffle, as turnover between semesters and school years happen. The editors had contacted me, telling me they were inspired by the “intersections of identity” in my work. How ..read more
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In the Filipinx Diaspora, We Are Remaking Tradition, the Recipe Edition
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
4y ago
As you can see, I have made some amendments to my oldest Filipino cookbook, which I have had since the 1990s. No one ever really taught me to cook. I’ve been making kare kare for a few years now, for Christmas dinner with my mother’s side of the family. I now make kare kare once ..read more
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Pilipinx Kapwa Poetics and Manuscript Progress
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
4y ago
The following thoughts originally came from FB posts, which other folks — writers, authors, students, educators have engaged in dialogue with me about, and so here, I elaborate on these thoughts. I’m so conscious that I have not been writing. This shelter-in-place popular push for productivity — “Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine” — is ..read more
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Letters to a Young Brown Girl and the brown girls who read this
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
4y ago
What I wrote two years ago: May 25, 2018: Manuscript progress, re: ‘some brown girl.’ It’s looking more like “Letters to a Young Brown Girl.” And I think folks who read it and get it will be the folks who understand why brown girls need to be reminded again and again and again that it ..read more
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Some things about gender I’ve been thinking about what I want to write next
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
4y ago
Gender is hard. Expectations — from everyone — are shitty. You can’t be independent; you can’t make your own decisions. You can’t be ambitious. You can’t excel at anything but being accommodating, at placing everyone before you. You have to do everything everyone else asks you to do. You have to do this with a ..read more
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Teaching Pinay Lit Online
Barbara Jane Reyes | Personal Poetry Blog
by Barbara Jane Reyes
4y ago
Friends, yes, in a time of global pandemic, teaching must go on. I am glad we are moving online; social distancing, remote working and learning are ways of containing and mitigating infection, and therefore not overwhelming the healthcare system. This makes well-grounded sense. So, Pinay Lit is going online. I am also glad for this ..read more
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