Overview

A powerful debut collection exploring one family’s pursuit of the American Dream SebastiÁn H. PÁramo renders a semi-autobiographical collection, utilizing self-portraiture and memory to uncover how his Texan, working-class, Mexican American identity shapes his relationship to his stepbrother and to his family’s burning desire to become American. Portrait of Us Burning begins with the humble picture of an immigrant American family. This picture starts to disintegrate—and, ultimately, burns—with the need to understand an inciting event that haunts the family throughout the second half of the collection. As the poems gather force and the picture dissolves further, PÁramo asks us again and again: What does it mean to burn while becoming a part of a whole?

Full Product Details

Author:   Sebastián H Páramo
Publisher:   Northwestern University Press
Imprint:   Northwestern University Press
Weight:   0.272kg
ISBN:  

9780810146488

ISBN 10:   0810146487
Pages:   112
Publication Date:   31 October 2023
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Table of Contents Where Your Father Was I. Portrait of Us Portrait of My Father as a Failed Romantic Diego Rivera, the Flower Carrier, 1935 Self-Portrait as My Father, the Roofer Where Your Mother Was Portrait of a Firebird Self-Portrait of the First aBorn's Questions Footage of Us Playing Watching The Lion King with My Father Hibiscus Dear Father Self-Portrait as Half-Sibling Diptych: Days of the Latch-Key Siblings Portrait of Rivalry Portrait of a Reunion Self-Portrait While Holding My Mother’s Hand The Laundromat Saint Self-Portrait as My Mother’s Blood Portrait of What He Didn’t Want Unfaithful Father, Disobedient Son When Father Sings Portrait of a Boy Returning to Dirt Stepping Through a Door The Home Slaughter Self-Portrait with Thunder & Exhaustion, or, Self-Portrait as My Father Crossing Your Portrait in Smoke Portrait of Family I Footage of Me Tomorrow Not Pictured: II. Burning Portrait of the Unsaid Portrait of Vows Self-Portrait Looking Backwards My Mother’s Blessing Portrait of My Parents’ Desire Portrait of My Mother, as the Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego, and SeÑor Xolotl After El Hombre by Rufino Tamayo Big Tex Is on Fire! Lost Footage of Us Playing Studying Abroad in Mexico, Looking Up at Man of Fire by Jose Clemente Orozco Footage of My Father Telling a Story about Dirt When Father & I Speak Father’s Advice Footage from the Field Sobbing in a U-Haul Diptych: Dreams on Fire My Father Never Speaks about His Father Blood & Breath Footage of Me Yesterday Portrait of Us Burning Everything Is on Fire When My Mother’s Portrait Sings Portrait of Family as a Bag of Worms Portrait of Family II Cajeta Still Life with Salt on Fruit Watching the End of the Film Paris, Texas Forgive Me, Brother Distant Father The Ownership of the Night Acknowledgments

Reviews

Portrait of Us Burning wrestles with the deep, unknowable layers of familial history and the myriad possibilities of narrative a son imagines to better know from whom and from where he comes. For those interested in narratives of immigrant parents and experiences of first-generation children, this collection is lush with material. Traveling between geographical borderlands (crossing between Mexico and the United States) and the borderlands of memory (the synapses of memory that result from intergenerational trauma), these well-wrought and complex poems serve as exploration of lineage and testament to love of family even under the most difficult of circumstances. --Angel Garcia, author of Teeth Never Sleep

Author Information

SebastieÁn H. PÁramo has published poems in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He is the founding editor of The Boiler and serves as poetry editor for Deep Vellum. He lives in Texas.

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