Clearance

"'Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien' brilliantly expands the conversation on undocumented migration by tracing the legacy of illegality. Claiming 'every crossing becomes mine, ' Alan Pelaez Lopez, as fugitive alien, bravely takes on the task of traveling across galaxies to reach an elsewhere that is something more like a new holding. Against the failure of political language, this book of multimedia poems becomes a verb, an active imagining that takes the banality of papers and transforms it into poetry. This intergalactic traveling brings the 'Black NDN' migrant touchingly back to their mother's arms, and to her vision for life. If illegality is to be their legacy, Alan reimagines that illegality as both disruptive of settler-futures and productive for black and indigenous futures. We should be immensely grateful for this vision."

--Javier O. Huerta, author of 'American Copia: An Immigrant Epic'

"This is a stunning book. It's history, it's their story, it's an archive and a hard drive with a playful vibe. Its sense of humor girds and grounds and gallops around the gravity of law and belonging and erasure and choosing words and narratives and modes that were made without people like us in the room. It revels in colonial language as it tells that language to sit the f down. There's a new b on the scene. Take note and pay your respects."

--Tommy Pico, author of 'Feed'

----

Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien is an experimental poetry collection that renders an intimate portrait of growing up undocumented in the United States. Through the use of collages, photographs, emails, and immigration forms, Alan Pelaez Lopez formulates theories of fugitivity that position the Trans*Atlantic slave trade and Indigenous dispossession as root causes of undocumented immigration. Although themes of isolation and unbelonging are at the forefront of the book, the poet doesn't see belonging to U.S. society as a liberatory practice. Instead, Pelaez Lopez urges readers to question their inheritance and acceptance of "settler rage, settler fear, and settler citizenship," so that they can actively address their participation in everyday violences that often go unnoticed. As the title invokes, Intergalactic Travels breaks open a new galaxy where artists of color are the warriors that manifest the change that is needed not only to survive, but thrive.

-----

Excerpts appear at:

Pittsburgh Poetry Review

Vinyl Poetry

Gemstone Readings

Bozalta

A Quiet Courage

Ironic Freedom asserts that freedom from governmental interference may make people vulnerable to other sources of coercion; these affects vary by gender, race, and class. Increasing negative freedoms may reinforce existing asymmetrical power relationships within society.

The first sustained critical examination of the work of Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz, this interdisciplinary collection considers how Díaz's writing illuminates the world of Latino cultural expression and trans-American and diasporic literary history. Interested in conceptualizing Díaz's decolonial imagination and his radically re-envisioned world, the contributors show how his aesthetic and activist practice reflect a significant shift in American letters toward a hemispheric and planetary culture. They examine the intersections of race, Afro-Latinidad, gender, sexuality, disability, poverty, and power in Díaz's work. Essays in the volume explore issues of narration, language, and humor in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the racialized constructions of gender and sexuality in Drown and This Is How You Lose Her, and the role of the zombie in the short story "Monstro." Collectively, they situate Díaz's writing in relation to American and Latin American literary practices and reveal the author's activist investments. The volume concludes with Paula Moya's interview with Díaz.
Contributors: Glenda R. Carpio, Arlene Dávila, Lyn Di Iorio, Junot Díaz, Monica Hanna, Jennifer Harford Vargas, Ylce Irizarry, Claudia Milian, Julie Avril Minich, Paula M. L. Moya, Sarah Quesada, José David Saldívar, Ramón Saldívar, Silvio Torres-Saillant, Deborah R. Vargas

What is knowledge? How does it differ from mere belief? Do you need to be able to justify a claim in order to count as knowing it? How can we know that the outer world is real and not a dream?

Questions like these are ancient ones, and the branch of philosophy dedicated to answering them - epistemology - has been active for thousands of years. In this thought-provoking Very Short Introduction, Jennifer Nagel considers these classic questions alongside new puzzles arising from recent discoveries about humanity, language, and the mind. Nagel explains the formation of major historical theories of knowledge, and shows how contemporary philosophers have developed new ways of understanding knowledge, using ideas from logic, linguistics, and psychology. Covering topics ranging from relativism and the problem of scepticism to the trustworthiness of internet sources, Nagel examines how progress has been made in understanding knowledge, using everyday examples to explain the key issues and debates

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.