Portrait of Us Burning

Download or read book Portrait of Us Burning written by Sebastián H Páramo and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-15 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful debut collection exploring one family’s pursuit of the American Dream Sebastián H. Páramo renders a semi-autobiographical collection, utilizing self-portraiture and memory to uncover how his Texan, working-class, Mexican American identity shapes his relationship to his stepbrother and to his family’s burning desire to become American. Portrait of Us Burning begins with the humble picture of an immigrant American family. This picture starts to disintegrate—and, ultimately, burns—with the need to understand an inciting event that haunts the family throughout the second half of the collection. As the poems gather force and the picture dissolves further, Páramo asks us again and again: What does it mean to burn while becoming a part of a whole?