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A Thousand Birds Chirping out of Nowhere: A Memoir

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Abstract

A book-length braided essay-like collection of poetry and nonfiction pieces addressing the author’s coming out experience as a gay man living in Mexico and then crossing into the United States. It offers a review of the moments in the life of the lyrical voice growing up as a gay middle class Mexican man who at an early age was required to learn English as a second language. It is a story about family and community relationships examined under the scope of sexuality, class, and nationality. The narrative is enabling a comparison between the authors romantic life while living in Mexico as opposed to the experience of sexuality in the United States. Furthermore, it is a mapping of a community from the year of coming of age and what it meant to come out during the decade of the nineties in a third world country such as Mexico. The braided essay structure responds to he need to intermingle these experiences of the world; it is an attempt to describe how different parts of the concept of identity come are suddenly bound through these stories and poems under the same book-length collection. As the author’s awareness shifts focus by crossing the border between the United States and Mexico, in the post-NAFTA, post-911 era. The text offers a reflection on how the power dynamics of culture, globalization, and social justice intersect and affect queer bodies of color in a transnational landscape.

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This item is under embargo until June 16, 2027.