Words from the Artist:

One of the most important steps, if not the most important, into making art is to be honest with yourself. I found this to be true when facing every blank page I’ve ever encountered. How I would sit there for hours without creating anything into fruition. But I found that the reason why I would do this was because I wasn’t being honest about my own limitations as an artist and also as a person. My imperfections would eat at me and my insecurities would let me down. Nonetheless, it was this realization that inspired me to write. To admit that imperfections were okay and to truly be myself in the face of an imagined judge gives me the courage to say that which cannot be said, as a mentor once defined poetry to me as. Because where would I be if my ancestors weren’t honest about their own limitations in this country—their limitations of language, of resources, of community? They persisted and what they gave me is a language to describe their lived history as I experienced them and our experiences of this country through poetic language.

Poems From a Mestizo is exactly that: an honest depiction of my upbringing as a Filipino-Mexican American and how this connects to the broader American experience through topics such as food, identity, and culture.