Locus

by Jason Bayani

Life in a multicultural, multiethnic nation like the United States leads to complicated, sometimes fragmented experiences of our background and identity. In Locus, Jason Bayani’s poetry explores the experience of identity that haunts Pilipinx-Americans in the wake of the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act, a critical moment left out of most histories of Asian-American life in the United States. Bayani’s poetry seeks to recuperate this silenced experience, rendering the loss of memory migration entails and representing the fragments of cultural history that surface in a new national context. Drawing inspiration from the mixing and layering of musical fragments in DJ culture, Locus lays down tracks of memory to create a confident declaration of a distinctly Pilipinx-American voice, history, and artistic power. Indeed, his work reveals how these new creations often tie us to the most fundamental parts of ourselves: our families, our cultures, the vague memories passed down through generations.

In Locus, Bayani both renders the challenges of migration and captures an experience of selfhood and history, asserting a central place for migrant identity and experience in American culture.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2019

About the author

Jason Bayani is the author of "Amulet" (Write Bloody 2013) and Locus (Omnidawn 2019). A Saint Mary's MFA grad and Kundiman fellow, he's currently the Artistic Director for Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jason Bayani's gorgeous book of poetry draws on his heritage and cultural experience to delve into the fragmented identities of Pilipinx Americans. Blending memoir and lyricism and inspired by hip-hop and DJ culture, these poems do powerful work in recovering the voices of silenced communities, reflecting on the importance of family and community in tying us to ourselves.

"Poetry gave me back a way to find my culture, my history, a way to understand my parents better, a way to understand my people better — and I feel more whole because of it," said Bayani when I interviewed him for the New Books in Poetry podcast. You can listen to the entire moving interview here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was an article I read back in my second year in college in one of my Ethnic Studies classes that was a reading I didn’t really quite get (or maybe I’m mixing up two readings but if I’m remembering correctly) that talked about how there’s so much to be said within one song. In the pauses and in the beats and all those other musical terms. Reading this work felt like that. Exploring the cracks and crevices of a song fully. The decolonial cracks. It’s not linear because it’s limitless. The locus within boundless space.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our bodies are politicized and so will be everything our bodies make. Even in a love song you have no escape.