persistence & rupture
CALARTS REEF RESIDENCY 2020-2021
We are selling two books, which can be purchased through this link:
a documentary poetry chapbook by Christine Imperial & Sarah Yanni
an anthology edited by Sarah & Christine, with work from Hari Alluri, Fía Benitez, Christiana Castillo, Rosa Evangelina (Beltrán), Sonya Lara, Alyssa Manansala, Jason Magabo Perez
We seek to investigate the persistence of cross-cultural friendships that operate within but also exceed a dominant, colonial presence. We consider our geographic origins – the Philippines and Mexico – and what it means for us, today, to find so much mutual ground in our cultural / familial histories. We plan to interrogate these two nations’ ongoing trade relationship, whose origins lie in the Spanish-controlled Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade, as well as the ways in which colonialism results in a shared sense of cultural loss. Finally, we seek to explore how the actualization of friendships between two past colonies protests its colonial origins through the formation of language and community foreign to the colonizer.
Christine Imperial (Critical Studies MFA 20) holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Ateneo de Manila University and an MFA in Creative Writing from CalArts with concentrations in Image + Text and Documentary Strategies. She was awarded the Emi Kuriyama Thesis Award in 2020. Her writing has appeared in several publications and attempts to enact a poetics of ambivalence through various modes of translation.
Sarah Sophia Yanni (Critical Studies MFA 20) is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. She holds a BA in Narrative Studies from the University of Southern California and completed her Creative Writing MFA at CalArts last year. A finalist for BOMB Magazine’s 2020 Poetry Contest, her writing interrogates religion, gender, and cultural hybridity.
persistence & rupture 