Small Axe presents a reading and conversation to celebrate the launch of a bilingual edition of Boat People (Cardboard House Press, April 2021) by Mayra Santos-Febres, on Thursday, April 22, 2021, from 7:00 to 8:15pm (EST). The event, moderated by Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, will include the participation of the author, Santos-Febres, and the translator, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario.

Registration Required: tinyurl.com/boatpeople-22april

Description: In Boat People (2005), Mayra Santos-Febres chronicles undocumented migration in the Caribbean, challenging the invisibility of migrants, memorializing the disappeared, and offering insights into human making and unmaking. The twenty poems that make up the collection ask us to consider structural inequality and social injustice in the region, while offering counternarratives to sensationalized violence and criminalized representations of undocumented migrants. Whereas much negative attention has been focused on the U.S.–Mexico border, these poems direct our attention to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Sea as another U.S. border zone. 

For more information, see https://www.facebook.com/smallaxeproject

Also see https://cardboardhousepress.org/Boat-People-by-Mayra-Santos-Febres