Watcha

(Paperback)

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Description

Through free verse, personal photographs, and prosaic gestures, Watcha by Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal serves as a watching manifesto that unfolds, layering genres and media. The reader becomes a spectator of a gallery that curates Latinx, Afro-Latinx, and Indigenous art through ekphrastic poetry. On occasion, the viewer sees theoretical or anecdotal prose contextualizing art observation through introspection. With the codeswitching between English and Spanish as well as with the political implications of the artwork and personal history, the books trajectory charts a vast terrain that ranges from an artistic standpoint, to border crossing, to belonging, to portraiture, to self-portraiture, to abstraction, to death, to a call for action. Watcha invites inquiry, a space for sight, memory, and consciousness.

Author Bio

Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal sees, hears, feels, and communicates across mediums and cultures. Shes a deep-watching ekphrastic poet, a photographic flash essayist, a broad-stroke sketch artist, a sonic improv performer, a sound-sensitive literary translator, and an assistant professor of English. Her bilingualism stems from her 1.5-generation experience being both Mexican and Xicanx. Her poetry can be found in the Rio Grande Review, Texas Review, The Acentos Review, Defunkt Magazine, and elsewhere. Her published translations of poetry include Enigmas by Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz, Photograms of My Conceptual Heart Absolutely Blind by Minerva Reynosa, Kilimanjaro by Maricela Guerrero, and Postcards in Braille by Sergio Prez Torres. Stalina is the recipient of the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. Her visual poetryspanning queer erotica, interactive digital art, and video installationwas part of the Antena@Blaffer exhibit at University of Houstons Blaffer Art Museum. She is currently writing ekphrastic elegies about her interpretative drawings of portraits and a memoir about her photographs of naturerevealing her ability to look backward and within, to write new ways forward.