Overview

Baby Back Bitch is a trauma mixtape that refuses to stay quiet-part confessional, part roast, part exorcism of inherited shame. Tian Sanchez-Ballado's debut chapbook detonates inherited silence, queer shame, and intergenerational trauma with surgical precision and theatrical fury. Structured in four acts that spiral from grief to rage to reluctant healing, this collection weaves Cuban-Puerto Rican family ghosts, toxic masculinity, sexual violence, and one spectacularly cursed Chili's breakup in the heart of a book that doesn't apologize-it reclaims. Here, poems flinch and side-eye, scream into the void, and somehow still find their way home. There's no neat redemption arc, no gentle closure-just lyric rage, ugly tenderness, and the sacred camp of surviving your own story. From childhood trauma through college assault to finding love that actually heals, this is a book that honors both the breaking and the blooming. This is not a delicate book. This is a fuck-you-and-also-bless-you book.

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Tian Sanchez-Ballado (he/him) is a queer Cuban-Puerto Rican double-doctoral scholar, educator, musician, and poet. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Cello Performance. He is completing a PhD in Music Education at Florida State University, where he teaches future music educators as agraduate teaching assistant and conducts for the Tallahassee Youth Orchestras. His research explores string pedagogy, cognition, and trauma-informed teaching-and so does his poetry. Tian's writing lives at the intersection of softness and survival, reverence and irreverence. His debut collection, Baby Back Bitch, is a trauma mixtape in four acts-part confessional, part comedy set, part literary exorcism. His poems have been called ""grief bangers with punchlines"" and ""softness with a spine."" When he's not writing, teaching, or spiraling in imposter syndrome, Tian is probably ugly-crying to Sufjan Stevens, contemplating the theology of Lady Gaga, or drafting his next book at a local indie bookstore. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his husband and a cat who judges him appropriately.

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