Description
Book SynopsisA powerful debut collection exploring one family's pursuit of the American Dream. Sebastian Paramo 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.
Trade ReviewPortrait 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." - Ángel GarcÍa, author of
Teeth Never SleepTable 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
