Central American Counterpoetics

"Central American Counterpoetics delineates the interconnections of love, defiance, and healing for Central American diasporas bridged to the isthmus. Intersecting cultural memory and production, Karina Alma advances an expanded meaning of rememorar. Rememory signals the (re)embodiments that continuously cross the heart. She posits that continuity of a sense of cultural belonging is vital for the survival and transmission of knowledge among generations. Alma proposes that continuity remains present in the personal-community body through feelings, sensations, and cultural knowing shared by persecuted groups to ensure social survival. Show of life overrides social death that denies history, knowledge, and presence for marginalized people. U.S. Central Americans realize their right to build positive social identities that acknowledges past and ongoing social traumas without these being ontologized onto their personhood. Hence, Alma dispels the stereotypical view of Central Americans as either victims, criminals, or perpetually traumatized people. By employing primary sources of image and word, interviews of creatives, and a critical self-reflection as a Salvadoran immigrant woman in academia, Alma's research breaks ground in subject matter and methods. The diverse creatives included evidence critical perspectives on topics such as immigration, forcible assimilation, maternal love, gender violence, community arts, decolonial languaging, and feminisms in their visuals, sonics, and literatures"--