What is
your most recent book?
My first
collection of poetry entitled peminology (Paloma Press, San Rafael, 2018).
When was
it released?
March 8,
2018—International Women’s Day!--with Paloma Press.
What has
been the response/what has surprised you about the response?
Folks who
know my academic work didn’t know I also wrote poetry so that was a surprise
for some. I am also a classical musician so it was a surprise to my music
friends that I am also a poet. Always keep them guessing, I say!
In terms of
response to my work, I remain awed by the power of the poetic form itself. What
would have taken me 20 pages to write for an academic journal that few might
actually read could be distilled into something more accessible and with so
much more bite/punch than would be possible in a traditional essay. The
immediacy and impact of the poem, especially during a reading, is really
satisfying to me as both a scholar and a performer. I was aiming for a melding
of personal and political poetry and I think I hit my mark.
Tell me
something not obvious or known about the book.
There are
poems in peminology that I wrote in high school or began in high school
and finished just last year. And I used some of the poems in peminology as the
basis for a series of mixed media sculptures.
What are
you working on now?
I am gearing
up for PINAY POWER II: Celebrating Peminisms in Diaspora, the first-ever
Canadian Filipina feminist conference that I’m hosting at McGill University,
April 17-19, 2019 as part of my sabbatical research. It’s going to be amazing
so please consider attending! See pinaypower.ca for more info. I’m also
prepping a short course in contemporary Filipina American lit that I’ll be
teaching at McGill this spring.
*****
Melinda Luisa de Jesús is Associate Professor and former Chair of
Diversity Studies at California
College of the Arts. She
writes and teaches about Filipinx/American cultural production, girl
culture, monsters, and
race/ethnicity in the United States.
She edited Pinay
Power: Peminist Critical Theory, the first anthology of Filipina/American
Feminisms (Routledge
2005). Her writing has appeared in Mothering in East Asian
Communities:
Politics and Practices; Completely Mixed Up: Mixed
Heritage Asian North American Writing and Art; Approaches to Teaching
Multicultural Comics; Ethnic Literary Traditions in Children’s Literature; Challenging Homophobia; Radical
Teacher; The Lion and the Unicorn; Ano Ba Magazine; Rigorous; Konch Magazine; Rabbit and Rose;
MELUS; Meridians; The Journal of Asian American Studies, and Delinquents and Debutantes:
Twentieth-Century American Girls’ Cultures.
She is also a poet and her
chapbooks, Humpty Drumpfty and Other Poems, Petty
Poetry for
SCROTUS Girls’ with poems for
Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama, Defying Trumplandia, Adios
Trumplandia, James Brown’s Wig and
Other Poems, and Vagenda
of Manicide and Other Poems
were published by Locofo
Chaps in 2017. Her first collection of poetry, peminology,
was published by Paloma
Press (March 2018).
In Spring 2019 Melinda
will be Muriel Gold Senior Visiting Professor at the Institute for Gender,
Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada where
she will be convening the Pinay Power II: Celebrating Peminisms in the
Diaspora conference. See pinaypower.ca
for more info.
She is a mezzo-soprano, a
mom, an Aquarian, and admits an obsession with Hello Kitty.
More info: http://peminist.com
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