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Desgraciado:
A collection of epistolary poems that exorcises and explores the material violence and generational trauma of colonization and systemic racism stored within queer Latinx memory.
In Desgraciado, Angel Dominguez navigates language and memory to illuminate the ongoing traumas of misremembered and missing histories and their lasting impacts. Dominguez unravels a critical and tender language of lived experience in letters addressed to their ancestral oppressor, Diego de Landa, (a Spanish friar who attempted to destroy the written Maya language in Mani Yucatán, on July 12th 1562), to articulate an old rage, dreaming of a futurity beyond the wreckage and ruin of the colonial imaginary. This collection doesn't seek to heal the incurable wound of colonization so much as attempt to re-articulate a language towards recuperation.
In Desgraciado, Angel Dominguez navigates language and memory to illuminate the ongoing traumas of misremembered and missing histories and their lasting impacts. Dominguez unravels a critical and tender language of lived experience in letters addressed to their ancestral oppressor, Diego de Landa, (a Spanish friar who attempted to destroy the written Maya language in Mani Yucatán, on July 12th 1562), to articulate an old rage, dreaming of a futurity beyond the wreckage and ruin of the colonial imaginary. This collection doesn't seek to heal the incurable wound of colonization so much as attempt to re-articulate a language towards recuperation.
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 18, 2022
About the author
Angel Dominguez
5 books8 followersAngel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Maya descent, born in Hollywood and raised in Van Nuys, CA by their immigrant family. They're the author of RoseSunWater (Operating System, 2020) and Black Lavender Milk (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015). Their third book, DESGRACIADO (the collected letters) is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2021. You can find Angel's work online and in print in various publications. Angel lives in Bonny Doon, CA.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 11, 2022
Excerpts:
Tired of the gaze. The way these colonizers look at me, demanding that I fit their insecurities. Demanding everything of me and having the nerve to ask me why I’m so tired. I’m tired of being tired. Tired of smashing these memories of ancestry and death and displacement against my face. Tired of my face. Tired of the discourse. Tired of the talking. Tired of the fires. Tired of death. I’m tired of dying. I am tired of many things, and yet, fighting is not one of them, Diego. I don’t care if I can’t win. I don’t care if I won’t see it myself. I am what lies beyond oblivion. And I am forever.
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I vomit Pyrocumulus clouds across the continent in search of my name. Waging migraine auras against reality, trying to be free of this Western way of seeing. Every doctor I’ve ever seen tells me that I don’t actually understand my pain. Ibuprofen again. Co-pay again. We don’t want you endangering the community with a sense of liberation; who knows what you would do with actual relief. You might learn to be free of the constant pain. You might demand to be free of all suffering. You might put 2 & 2 together and realize the colonies and your pain are 4 nothing more than the expansion of misery so that the ruling class can hop on rocket ships while they wither our planet into oblivion. You might figure out how to pronounce yourself clearly.
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You know I think you’re a coward? I don’t even mean that insultingly, you know: I get it. I’m a coward too sometimes. I don’t write or call or text when I should and that anxiety eats me alive for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and years. It builds ulcers in my stomach or stones in the soil of the orchard.
Tired of the gaze. The way these colonizers look at me, demanding that I fit their insecurities. Demanding everything of me and having the nerve to ask me why I’m so tired. I’m tired of being tired. Tired of smashing these memories of ancestry and death and displacement against my face. Tired of my face. Tired of the discourse. Tired of the talking. Tired of the fires. Tired of death. I’m tired of dying. I am tired of many things, and yet, fighting is not one of them, Diego. I don’t care if I can’t win. I don’t care if I won’t see it myself. I am what lies beyond oblivion. And I am forever.
-
I vomit Pyrocumulus clouds across the continent in search of my name. Waging migraine auras against reality, trying to be free of this Western way of seeing. Every doctor I’ve ever seen tells me that I don’t actually understand my pain. Ibuprofen again. Co-pay again. We don’t want you endangering the community with a sense of liberation; who knows what you would do with actual relief. You might learn to be free of the constant pain. You might demand to be free of all suffering. You might put 2 & 2 together and realize the colonies and your pain are 4 nothing more than the expansion of misery so that the ruling class can hop on rocket ships while they wither our planet into oblivion. You might figure out how to pronounce yourself clearly.
-
You know I think you’re a coward? I don’t even mean that insultingly, you know: I get it. I’m a coward too sometimes. I don’t write or call or text when I should and that anxiety eats me alive for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and years. It builds ulcers in my stomach or stones in the soil of the orchard.
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April 12, 2022I loved this book!
July 6, 2023
finished reading it on the july 4th (the “independence” day). coincidence? i think not.
such a beautiful, moving, and vulnerable piece about decolonization. the highs [healing] and the lows [colonizers].
one of my favorite reads in my lifetime so far. highly recommended!
such a beautiful, moving, and vulnerable piece about decolonization. the highs [healing] and the lows [colonizers].
one of my favorite reads in my lifetime so far. highly recommended!
May 2, 2023
One of the best books I have read in my entire life. I took my time with this one because there was so much to take in, but my god, what a work. Angel Dominguez is one of the greatest poets of our generation.
June 5, 2022
This is less of a book than a pyre. Its imagery sears in memory, from the imagined writings of the author, who grapples with history and identity and beauty and violence. Through a series of "love letters to their worst enemy", these letters seek a balance between vengeance and forgiveness--a bloodletting to offer back the damage of the wound as much as to heal it. There are ghosts in this book, but they do not haunt, they burn.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews