Phenomenology of Superhero by Jason Magabo Perez

Multi Genre
52 pages
7" x 7" single signature chapbook with hand sewn binding
Published March 2016

OUT OF PRINT

An eclectic and energizing collection of poems, essays, and experimental fiction, Jason Magabo Perez’s Phenomenology of Superhero explores the Filipino-American experience with a voracious intelligence and an indelible voice. Fiercely interdisciplinary, Perez’s work explores the relationship between power and otherness in American life, focusing here especially on the relationship between discipline and art, ultimately coming to an “anti-disciplinary” vision of creativity. Touching on such diverse enthusiasms as Michel Foucault, Wolverine of the X-Men, Jorge Luis Borges, Eazy-E, Sara Ahmed, and Buzz Lightyear, every reader is bound to find something to relate to and be challenged by in this brave chapbook.

What others are saying...

Jason Magabo Perez’s writing invites us to inhabit two time zones—the child’s world of immediacy, where everything is now and here, and the grown-up’s world of discipline, progress and punishment—and it powerfully reminds us of how much is at stake when we abandon the former for the latter.

- SARITA ECHAVEZ SEE, author of The Decolonized Eye: Filipino American Art and Performance, and Executive Director of the Center for Art and Thought

“We think, we body. We have come.” Jason Magabo Perez's Phenomenology of Superhero critiques the kindergarten coloring book of white hetero-normative heroisms. The iconic shapes of Buzz Lightyear, G.I. Joe and the Marvel universe are familiar skins, and Perez shades across their outlines, revealing the traces of discipline underneath language, colonization and power. This book witnesses Perez “lay the crayon on its ribs" and draw the spilt insides of the Filipina/o body in its own im/possible dance.

- JAI ARUN RAVINE, author of แล้ว and then entwine