Year of the Dog: Poetry as Feminist Lament

This public lecture will include a reading from my forthcoming poetry book, YEAR OF THE DOG (Boa Editions 2020), a Latina chronicle of the Vietnam War era, and a discussion of the tradition and function of feminist elegy during times of disaster and atrocity.  Drawing from the mythic Greek figure of Hecuba, who committed herself so fully to her grief in response to the horrors of war that she was transformed into a howling dog, I explore how female and feminist figures have catalyzed transformations in the private and public realms as a result of their acts of lamentation.

Deborah Paredez is a poet and interdisciplinary performance scholar whose lectures and publications examine Black and Latina/o popular culture, poetry of war and witness, feminist elegy, cultural memory, and the role of divas in American culture. She is the author of the poetry collection, This Side of Skin (Wings Press 2002) and the award-winning critical study, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke 2009). She also serves as co-editor of the CantoMundo Poetry Series published by the University of Arkansas Press. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Poetry, Callaloo, Feminist Studies, and elsewhere. Her research and writing have been supported by the Hedgebrook Center for Women Writers, the American Association of University Women, and the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation. She received her PhD in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Performance at Northwestern University and her BA in English at Trinity University. Born and raised in San Antonio, she has lived on both coasts, endured a handful of Chicago winters, and taught American poetry in Paris, while remaining rooted in her Tejana love of Selena and the Spurs. She currently lives with her husband, historian Frank Guridy, and their daughter in New York City where she is a professor of creative writing and ethnic studies at Columbia University and the Co-Founder and Co-Director of CantoMundo, a national organization for Latina/o poets.

Book Orders:
Selenidad: Selena, Latinos and the Performance of Memory (Duke University Press)
This Side of Skin (Wings Press, 2002)