Janice L. Sapigao

b. 1987

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Janice L. Sapigao is a Pinay poet born and raised in San Jose, CA. Her work has been published in Quaint Magazine, Jacket2, AngryAsianMan.com and the anthology Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipina/o America (Cognella Academic Publishing, 2014), among others. She earned her M.F.A. in Critical Studies/Writing at CalArts. She co-founded an open mic in Los Angeles called the Sunday Jump. She now lives in the Bay Area where she teaches at Skyline College and San Jose City College.  She enjoys drinking green tea, running, and playing with stuffed animals. She is at work on a poetry collection about immigrant women who build the Silicon Valley, microchips for millions. Please visit her website for more reflections: janicewrites.com

I meditate on a Pinayist documentary poetics: an active pursuit of how my lens, my reality of my experience growing up Filipina American is undoubtedly truthful, rich and implicated in how I experience the world, my family, justice, love and sociopolitical events. I call for: women of color experiences, ones that are validating from the start, one that recognizes the difficulty in speaking, sharing, loving self and others, healing, teaching ourselves and owning up to it in ways that reflect growth, pain and self-love (pinayism). A Pinay documentary poetics allows the Pinay to trust herself, to place her grief, silence, and hurt as moments that shape and construct larger narratives towards gaining consciousness of herself and her community. I think that a Pinay documentary poetics allows a reflexivity that we discover ourselves, one that puts self in and out of social context, one that is an act towards freedom. It might be to take the fragments and create story, to take loss and misunderstanding and give them voice and material, to take hearsay and rightfully flip, subvert and launch into something humanizing, intuitive, weird, joyful, crazy and precise.

An Invocation After Haiyan in News Reports

Janice L. Sapigao

Jan 2014 Poem Courtesy of Eileen Tabios of Meritage Press

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Janice L. Sapigao

b. 1987
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Janice L. Sapigao is a Pinay poet born and raised in San Jose, CA. Her work has been published in Quaint Magazine, Jacket2, AngryAsianMan.com and the anthology Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipina/o America (Cognella Academic Publishing, 2014), among others. She earned her M.F.A. in Critical Studies/Writing at CalArts. She co-founded an open mic in Los Angeles called the Sunday Jump. She now lives in the Bay Area where she teaches at Skyline College and San Jose City College.  She enjoys drinking green tea, running, and playing with stuffed animals. She is at work on a poetry collection about immigrant women who build the Silicon Valley, microchips for millions. Please visit her website for more reflections: janicewrites.com

I meditate on a Pinayist documentary poetics: an active pursuit of how my lens, my reality of my experience growing up Filipina American is undoubtedly truthful, rich and implicated in how I experience the world, my family, justice, love and sociopolitical events. I call for: women of color experiences, ones that are validating from the start, one that recognizes the difficulty in speaking, sharing, loving self and others, healing, teaching ourselves and owning up to it in ways that reflect growth, pain and self-love (pinayism). A Pinay documentary poetics allows the Pinay to trust herself, to place her grief, silence, and hurt as moments that shape and construct larger narratives towards gaining consciousness of herself and her community. I think that a Pinay documentary poetics allows a reflexivity that we discover ourselves, one that puts self in and out of social context, one that is an act towards freedom. It might be to take the fragments and create story, to take loss and misunderstanding and give them voice and material, to take hearsay and rightfully flip, subvert and launch into something humanizing, intuitive, weird, joyful, crazy and precise.

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  • Born: San Jose, CA, USA
  • Based: San Jose, CA, USA

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