Primates from an Archipelago: Poems, Paperback

In this cinematic collection of poetry, Irene Suico Soriano unravels threads of silence and oppression. Primates from an Archipelago traces lineages on geographic and personal islands where memories and dreams are synonymous. Balanced with official documentation such as passports, birth and death certificates, and membership cards, the poems also speak the languages of uncertainties and multiple truths. The collection travels from homeland exile and loss in the Philippines, to the author's origin story in Zamboanga, on to sites where experience and education have shaped her world view, and finally to Los Angeles, the city of settlement and fractured pasts. Mythical and intimate, Primates from an Archipelago illustrates the sad beauty that lies in the gaps.

About author(s):Irene Suico Soriano was born in Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines, in 1969. At eleven years of age, she and her mother immigrated to Los Angeles, California. Her childhood was spent soaking in the neighborhoods of pre-gentrified Downtown LA, East Hollywood, Rampart/Temple, Melrose, and the Wilshire/Vermont corridor. She obtained a BA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry and a minor in Playwriting from Loyola Marymount University. A PEN Center USA Emerging Voices fellow, her poems have appeared in Philippines Free Press; Solidarity Journal; LA Times; Flippin': Filipinos on America (Asian American Writers' Workshop); Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers (Aunt Lute); Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry (Rattapallax Press); and Disorient Journalzine, which published, as part of their Emerging Writers Chapbook Series, her first collection of poetry, Safehouses. She founded and coordinated the Southern California reading series, "Wrestling Tigers: Asian Pacific American Writers Speak" at the Japanese American National Museum and was literary curator for the Los Angeles Festival of Philippine Arts & Culture (FPAC). She was featured in the Los Angeles Times for her curatorial participation in the ground-breaking NEA-funded World Beyond Poetry Festival that featured over 100 poets from the diverse communities of LA, and co-produced, as part of the LA Enkanto Art Collective, the CD In Our Blood: Filipina/o American Poetry & Spoken Word from Los Angeles. She is the founder of Bark & Purr Alliance Fund, which makes available resources to aid the rescue of geriatric and terminally ill dogs and cats that enter LA's city and county shelter system. She participates in local and international anti-vivisection efforts and believes in the fundamental rights of non-human animals to live and be free from harm, pain, exploitation, and captivity. Irene lives in the San Fernando Valley with her two rescued dogs, Papoo and Maxon, and her significant human, Evan.