Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien

Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien brilliantly expands the conversation on undocumented migration by tracing the legacy of illegality. Claiming every crossing becomes mine Alan Pelaez Lopez as fugitive alien bravely takes on the task of traveling across galaxies to reach an elsewhere that is something more like a new holding. Against the failure of political language this book of multimedia poems becomes a verb an active imagining that takes the banality of papers and transforms it into poetry. This intergalactic traveling brings the Black NDN migrant touchingly back to their mothers arms and to her vision for life. If illegality is to be their legacy Alan reimagines that illegality as both disruptive of settler-futures and productive for black and indigenous futures. We should be immensely grateful for this vision.--Javier O. Huerta author of American Copia: An Immigrant Epic This is a stunning book. Its history its their story its an archive and a hard drive with a playful vibe. Its sense of humor girds and grounds and gallops around the gravity of law and belonging and erasure and choosing words and narratives and modes that were made without people like us in the room. It revels in colonial language as it tells that language to sit the f down. Theres a new b on the scene. Take note and pay your respects.--Tommy Pico author of Feed---- Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien is an experimental poetry collection that renders an intimate portrait of growing up undocumented in the United States. Through the use of collages photographs emails and immigration forms Alan Pelaez Lopez formulates theories of fugitivity that position the Trans*Atlantic slave trade and Indigenous dispossession as root causes of undocumented immigration. Although themes of isolation and unbelonging are at the forefront of the book the poet doesnt see belonging to U.S. society as a liberatory practice. Instead Pelaez Lopez urges readers to question their inheritance and acceptance of settler rage settler fear and settler citizenship so that they can actively address their participation in everyday violences that often go unnoticed. As the title invokes Intergalactic Travels breaks open a new galaxy where artists of color are the warriors that manifest the change that is needed not only to survive but thrive. -----Excerpts appear at: Pittsburgh Poetry ReviewVinyl PoetryGemstone ReadingsBozaltaA Quiet Courage