Barbara Jane Reyes's Blog

Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and it’s been a while since I’ve had free time to do things like blog. I’ve survived yet another semester of teaching in two different places while still working full time (at the mortgage paying job). This looks to be the pace at which I will continue [...]

I’ve been thinking about Camille Dungy’s wonderful posts at the Poetry Foundation blog. Yes, my credo of practicing generosity, having dialogue, being open and answering questions that young writers, emerging writers have about the process of writing, the process of finding publication, figuring out where to find publication. Who do we envision as our readers, audience, [...]

It’s been interesting, blogging and posting about teaching Pinay Lit, what materials we’re reading and discussing, what difficult subject matter we’re discussing. What is interesting is the interest out there, many people vocalizing their admiration for the existence of such a course in the first place. Not sure where else in this country such a [...]

But for the Lovers by Wilfrido Nolledo After three attempts at reading this book, I finally finished it this time, and I was motivated to finish it because I taught it in my Filipino American Literature class at SFSU. I told my students this was a challenging book, and asked them to share with us [...]

Hi all, so I am blogging again at the Poetry Foundation for National Poetry Month, and have decided to blog about teaching Pinay Lit, as this is the first semester I am teaching this course, and what's happening there is pretty amazing and revelatory. By blogging about it, I certainly hope to make more writers, [...]

Wow, lapses in blogging have become the norm for me. I told Oscar recently that I missed blogging, and feel I haven't had a substantial e-space to work out stuff needing working out. I am guilty of becoming the kind of social networking person I dislike — posting up quickie FB updates, oftentimes with minimal [...]

I'm thankful for the feedback I'm receiving in various places from folks. I hope this means the manuscript is headed in the right direction. I have been thinking about how to incorporate "less poetic" narratives in with the more easily identifiable poetic diction, because of what I'd previously written about similar stories being told in [...]

The layering or pairing of voices in this manuscript happened by accident or experiment, the "what if I do this," while moving stuff around the page, un-breaking and re-breaking lines, figuring out who was speaking where and when and to whom. Then it clicked, made sense to continue layering throughout, whether in dialogue or harmony, [...]

More on the Chorus manuscript. First, I am told that Saul Williams has a forthcoming anthology entitled, Chorus. Should this encourage me to find an alternate title to my tentatively titled manuscript? Now, in the comments section to my previous post, some interesting things –continuing on with my concern of piecing, stitching, "quilting," disparate narratives and [...]