The University of Arizona Press
Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Time: 1:15 p.m.-3 p.m., PDT
Where: Creveling Lounge, Building CC, Pasadena City College, 1570 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA
Alan Pelaez Lopez, author of When Language Broke Open, is the keynote speaker for the “Black, Trans Migration: Lessons on Political and Community Resistance,” keynote at the 2025 Borders of Diversity Conference. Lopez is an Afro-Indigenous poet and installation and adornment artist from Oaxaca, Mexico. By combining visual poetry, paper collage, and interactive installments, their work examines the lived experiences of undocumented migrants in the United States, the potential for vibrant Black Latin American futures, and the kinship practices that trans* and nonbinary people develop to resist and reshape power.
This event will be held in the Creveling Lounge at Pasadena City College. It is free and open to the public.
About the book:
When Language Broke Open collects the creative offerings of forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent who use poetry, prose, and visual art to illustrate Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Telling stories of Black Latinidades, this anthology centers the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community.
The works collected in this anthology encompass a multitude of genres—including poetry, autobiography, short stories, diaries, visual art, and a graphic memoir—and feature the voices of established writers alongside emerging voices. Together, the contributors challenge everything we think we know about gender, sexuality, race, and what it means to experience a livable life.
