Manteca! an Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets by Melissa Castillo Planas

Registration for Zoom viewing available through Eventbrite. The readings will be streamed live to our facebook page and you may also register to watch directly on Zoom. To celebrate, Mario has invited a series of fabulous writers throughout April. Mario’s debut collection Receta is published by great weather for MEDIA on April 4, 2022. Guest hosted and curated by Mario José Pagán Morales. Melissa Castillo Planas to our Wednesday series of ten-minute live Zoom readings. She received her PhD in American Studies and African American Studies from Yale University in 2017, a Master’s in English and creative writing from Fordham University, and a Bachelor of Arts from New York University summa cum laude with a double major in Journalism and Latin American Studies.We are thrilled to welcome back Dr. Melissa has given lectures and poetry readings all over the world including Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India), Seoul National University, Harvard University, Syracuse University, SUNY Potsdam, Swarthmore University, University of Notre Dame, University of Chicago, and University of Long Island - BK, and Fordham University. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture, a publication for which she has also served as guest editor ('The Brazil Issue,' 2016).

Melissa’s short stories, articles, poetry and essays have been published in numerous collections such as Centering Borders: Explorations in South Asia and Latin America (Worldview, 2017), Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas (Palgrave, 2016), The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Popular Culture (Routledge, 2016) and diverse scholarly and media publications including Border – Lines, Lengua y Literature, Acentos Review, Hispanic Culture Review, El Diario/La Prensa, CNN.com The Bilingual Review, Women's Studies, and Words. This fall, she begins a position as Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York. Her current book project, forthcoming with Rutgers University Press’ new Global Race and Media series, A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture, examines the creative worlds and cultural productions of Mexican migrants in New York City within the context of a system of racial capitalism that marginalizes Mexican migrants via an exploitative labor market, criminalizing immigration policy, and racialized systems of surveillance.

She is the author of the poetry collection Coatlicue Eats the Apple, editor of the anthology, ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Poets, co-editor of La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades and co-author of the novel, Pure Bronx.

Melissa Castillo Planas is a Mexican- American writer, poet and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History.

Manteca! an Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets by Melissa Castillo Planas