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NEW FROM DR. CASTILLO PLANAS:
Scholars in COVID Times documents the new and innovative forms of scholarship, community collaboration, and teaching brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this volume, Melissa Castillo Planas and Debra A. Castillo bring together a diverse range of texts, from research-based studies to self-reflective essays, to reexamine what it means to be a publicly engaged scholar in the era of COVID.
Between social distancing, masking, and remote teaching—along with the devastating physical and emotional tolls on individuals and families—the disruption of COVID-19 in academia has given motivated scholars an opportunity (or necessitated them) to reconsider how they interact with and inspire students, conduct research, and continue collaborative projects. Addressing a broad range of factors, from anti-Asian racism to pedagogies of resilience and escapism, digital pen pals to international performance, the essays are connected by a flexible, creative approach to community engagement as a core aspect of research and teaching. Timely and urgent, but with long-term implications and applications, Scholars in COVID Times offers a heterogeneous vision of scholarly and pedagogical innovation in an era of contestation and crisis. |
CHINGONA RULES IS A GOLD MEDALIST
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Powerful women have a chingona in them, and Castillo Planas compels the reader to appreciate this, in all the defiant tenderness of self- affirmation. Beautifully written in an English bilinguals are welcome to enter, this poetry showcases the complex, nuanced voice of women in today’s America. Bravo!
–Dr. Liliana Trevizán, Professor, Modern Languages, SUNY Potsdam
In Chingona Rules, the word Chingona is synonymous with home. Sometimes home is found within the pages of history books or the love of Brown men, or in the resistance of her code switch. When home is a morbid memory the mind finds solace in the assurance of her identity, the comfort of a psych ward, the unburden of forgetting, and in the autonomy of legacy planning. Chingona Rules is at its core a love story, a manifesto of survival, and a reconciliation of mind, body, and spirit.
–Elisabet Velasquez, Poet
Chingona Rules is a handbook for resiliency and a radical love letter to unapologetic bodies that know “healing starts at the wound.” Melissa Castillo Planas proves we don’t have to bleed out in our poems in order to be heard, but if we choose to, we suture the wound and wear the scar proudly. She invites us to dream boundlessly, despite the dystopian society she calls her American home of “fantasias imposibles” and rather than paint a perfect picture, Castillo Planas proudly points to her tattoos, with the smirk of satisfaction, self-acceptance, and ancestral knowledge that declares Chingonas like her “will not be contained.”
–Peggy Robles- Alvarado, poet
A MEXICAN STATE OF MIND IS HERE
ORDER YOUR COPY!
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“A Mexican State of Mind presents a A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture explores the cultural and creative lives of the largely young undocumented Mexican population in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001. Inspired by a dialogue between the landmark works of Paul Gilroy and Gloria Anzaldúa, it develops a new analytic framework, the Atlantic Borderlands, which bridges Mexican diasporic experiences in New York City and the black diaspora, not as a comparison but in recognition that colonialism, interracial and interethnic contact through trade, migration, and slavery are connected via capitalist economies and technological developments. This book is based on ten years of fieldwork in New York City, with members of a vibrant community of young Mexican migrants who coexist and interact with people from all over the world. It focuses on youth culture including hip hop, graffiti, muralism, labor activism, arts entrepreneurship and collective making.
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POET. SCHOLAR. NOVELIST. WRITER. EDITOR.
Books by Dr. Melissa Castillo Planas:
COATLICUE EATS THE APPLE
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ORDER MANTECA!
¡MANTECA!: AN ANTHOLOGY OF AFRO-LATINO POETRYBringing together some of the biggest names in Latino poetry with talented newcomers, this Anthology is a celebration of a long history of Afro-Latinidad in the United States. It represents three generations of Afro-Latino poetics from across the country and is published by Arte Público Press as well as available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
“A welcome addition to the cornucopia of books sharing the poetic voices of the Americas. ¡Manteca!, like its English translation, ‘butter,’ will melt delectably in the mind, creating flavors and nuances to ponder again and again.” — Booklist |
Available NOW!
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