What is Defacing the Monument?

A former journalist, Susan Briante started taking graduate students to the US-Mexico border in 2016 to research and write about migration issues. What began as essays documenting the crisis turned into a reflection on documentary poetics: the act of witnessing and writing about the suffering of others. Opening with the narration of an Operation Streamline hearing— a proceeding during which as many as 75 undocumented migrants were criminally prosecuted and sentenced en masse to serve jail time prior to deportation— Defacing the Monument shows what happens to those who do not hold the “correct” documents and highlights how the archive bears the marks of power. Part documentary, part lyric essay, part primer, Defacing the Monument is an exploration of the many ways we might tell stories and a guidebook for anyone who believes in what documentary poetics, and all art, can and should do in this moment of crisis.

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About Susan Briante...

Susan Briante is the author most recently of Defacing the Monument, a series of essays on immigration, archives, aesthetics and the state. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly calls the collection “a superb examination of the ethical issues facing artists who tell others’ stories” and a “dazzlingly inventive and searching text.” Briante is also the author of three books of poetry: Pioneers in the Study of Motion, Utopia Minus, and The Market Wonders all from Ahsahta Press. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona, where she also serves as co-coordinator of the Southwest Field Studies in Writing Program. The program brings MFA students to the US-Mexico border to engage in reciprocal research projects with community-based environmental and social justice groups.

About Giancarlo Huapaya...

Giancarlo Huapaya (Lima, Peru) has published three collections of poetry, most recently, Taller Sub Verso / Sub Verse Workshop. He is Founder and Editor of Cardboard House Press, a nonprofit publishing house for Latin American and Spanish literature in translation. As a curator of visual poetry, he has presented exhibits at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco and the University of Arizona Poetry Center in Tucson. He has translated into Spanish work by Muriel Rukeyser, C.D Wright, Susan Briante, Carmen Giménez Smith, and Alli Warren. He is currently an MFA student in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso. His work have been published in Periódico de Poesía de la UNAM, Tripwire, ANMLY, Poesía, Jacket2, Buenos Aires Poetry, Temporales, Erizo, and OOMPH!, among others.