NADA MÁS QUE DECIR

The following dissertation is made up of a collection of poems concerning Mexican-American labor, socioeconomic distress and transnationality. While the work in this dissertation attempts to understand ‘brownness’ through the lens of migration and marginalization, it aims to present the contemporary realities of Mexican-American peoples. Through a combination of ‘traditional poetics’ (what the author dubs as left-hand margin poems) and ‘VisPo,’ the collection attempts to understand the complexity of intergenerational and multicultural relationships in Hispanic communities. The collected poetry is intended to be hyper-regional, concerned with violence that occurs in urban Los Angeles—violence that is sexual, corporeal, and emotional in nature. The author is concerned with how race and culture is constructed (and reacted towards) through poetry. This work includes photographs from the author’s family members in hopes to better understand the obstacles of immigrant experience.