Date of Award

Spring 4-25-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

English

First Advisor

Ira Sukrungruang

Second Advisor

Piers Brown

Third Advisor

Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky

Abstract

THIS BODY A MIRROR OF ME is a reflection of queer immigrant desire and disillusionment. It is at once a love letter and also a visa application. Part fragment, part fiction, part memory, part dusk — I am personalizing and politicizing, I am feeling and bleeding. My manuscript is an encapsulation of where I am and what I love — and how these two facts echo and commingle to make you see me, the speaker, as I am. I speculate on romance, language, pain, and stitch threads in and out of my true history. Intersectionality is messy and embodied and it is what I practice (Ahmed). Queerimmigrant. Immigrantqueer. As a poet, I flutter in between trauma and invention. I revel in how inseparable selves can be.

Comments

A. Shaikh is a queer immigrant poet raised in the tangerine summers of Texas. They are the 2021 winner of THE BOILER PRIZE , an inaugural fellow of the Strange Tools Writer's Workshop, and an Aquarius who loves the color blue. Their Honors thesis, This Body A Mirror Of Me ,was awarded Highest Honors. After graduating cum laude with a B.A in English from Kenyon College, they are excited to keep writing as an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. You can find their poems in Underblong, Poets.org and elsewhere. Their internet thoughts reside @apricotpoet. When not online, A. Shaikh is probably daydreaming and/or giving their beautiful partner a kiss.

Rights Statement

All rights reserved. This copy is provided to the Kenyon Community solely for individual academic use. For any other use, please contact the copyright holder for permission.

Download

Share

COinS