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ESL Or You Weren't Here
ESL or You Weren't Here tells the story of a queer Pinoy who immigrates to New York in the 1990s in order to be reunited with their parents. What follows is the poet's awakening to the legacy of American imperialism & colonialism in the Philippines, and to the experience of living between languages, cultures, temporalities, and genders--untranslatable. ESL asks the reader to bear witness to embodied histories of forced immigration, separation and abandonment rooted in patriarchal racism.
106 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 21, 2025
Incredible. One of my faves of this year. Will most likely reread and update this review.
April 13, 2022
A 3.75?
A short but thought-provoking collection, Valdez presents a kind of story of a queer Pinoy (as they call themself) who immigrates to the United States to reunite with their parents. Being from the Philippines plays a powerful part in this collection, as Valdez explores their queer immigrant body with care and tenderness to draw attention to a complex in-betweenness found in their experiences with Tagalog and English, being in the Philippines and the US (and the impact of colonialism), as well as the gender binary.
From what I learned, Valdez is a visual artist, and it clearly shows in their poems with how words are shaped to draw your attention to the whole piece (a good example is “Crossing”). The words become a collage of sorts, especially with this interplay of Tagalog and English occurring throughout this collection.
With that said, I wasn’t particularly taken to all of the poems, but I appreciated Valdez’s quiet musings and look forward to reading more of their works in the future. If there is one poem that you should read from this collection, I would recommend the final one, “Shuffled Slides of a Changing Painting.”
Some favorites: “During a brownout,” “Crossing,” “fall / pall,” “Memory,” and “Shuffled Slides of a Changing Painting”
A short but thought-provoking collection, Valdez presents a kind of story of a queer Pinoy (as they call themself) who immigrates to the United States to reunite with their parents. Being from the Philippines plays a powerful part in this collection, as Valdez explores their queer immigrant body with care and tenderness to draw attention to a complex in-betweenness found in their experiences with Tagalog and English, being in the Philippines and the US (and the impact of colonialism), as well as the gender binary.
From what I learned, Valdez is a visual artist, and it clearly shows in their poems with how words are shaped to draw your attention to the whole piece (a good example is “Crossing”). The words become a collage of sorts, especially with this interplay of Tagalog and English occurring throughout this collection.
With that said, I wasn’t particularly taken to all of the poems, but I appreciated Valdez’s quiet musings and look forward to reading more of their works in the future. If there is one poem that you should read from this collection, I would recommend the final one, “Shuffled Slides of a Changing Painting.”
Some favorites: “During a brownout,” “Crossing,” “fall / pall,” “Memory,” and “Shuffled Slides of a Changing Painting”
April 29, 2020
This book is longing & yearning, memory, nostalgia, diaspora, remembering and forgetting, tenderness, love, our Nanays and our Mamas, and the oceans between them. Thank you for sharing yourself with us in this beautiful book, Aldreen. 💕
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews