"Trans Poetics of Color & Resisting Definitions"

Christopher Soto is a queer Latinx poet and activist whose poetry centers around literature’s intersection with incarcerated, undocumented, and queer people of color communities. Soto is also an editor of Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color as well as the founder of the Undocupoets Campaign and the Campaign to End Queer Youth Homelessness.

This reading and lecture "Trans Poetics of Color & Resisting Definitions" will discuss the role that trans and gender-conforming poets (of color) have played in various social and literary movements throughout the past five decades of U.S. history. From Stonewall to the Compton Cafeteria Riots to the Black Lives Matter movement, there have always been trans and gender non conforming people speaking up and speaking out in the quest for liberation and self determination. Who are the trans and gender non-conforming poets that have been writing their freedom songs and what do we have to learn from reading trans and gender non-conforming poets? Is there a cohesive theme or literary aesthetic that can be found when analyzing the work of TGNC poets? If you are interested in being surrounded by and learning about trans and gender non-conforming social movements and art then this is the right place for you.