ASU Book Group: 'Now in Color' by Jacqueline Balderrama

The ASU Book Group's September 2022 reading selection is "Now in Color" by Jacqueline Balderrama. The book group is open to all in the ASU community and meets monthly from noon–1 p.m. with two different options for attendance: either in-person at the Piper Writers House or virtually on Zoom (registration required for online attendance). In-person attendees are invited to join the author for lunch after at the University Club, no-host.

Haven't read the book? Come anyway! Authors are always present.

Synopsis:

"Now In Color" explores the multigenerational immigrant experience of Mexican Americans who have escaped violence, faced pressures to assimilate and are now seeking to reconnect to a fragmented past. These poems illuminate the fluidity of language and of perception through both small hypocrisies and real atrocities.

One of Balderrama’s strategies is to use the development of motion pictures and Technicolor as a lens through which to examine personal and cultural histories and stereotypes. She also considers bilingual expectations through an innovative series of Spanish definition poems. Balderrama documents pieces of her family’s oral tradition and draws connections to ongoing injustices experienced by current migrant families, offering a living picture of a present inevitably tied to and colored by its past.

The book is available on amazon.com.

Jacqueline Balderrama is the 2022-2023 Piper Center Fellow in Residence and an alum of the Department of English, having earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing in 2016.

About the book group:

The ASU Book Group meetings and selections for 2022-2023 are:

• Sep. 28: "Now in Color" by Jacqueline Balderrama
• Oct. 26: “Manifesting Justice" by Valena Beety
• Nov. 30: “Dear Diaspora” by Susan Nguyen
• Dec. 14: “To Live and Die in El Valle” by Oscar Mancinas
• Jan. 25: “Fat in Four Cultures” by Cindi SturtzSreetharan, Alexandra Brewis, and Amber Wutich
• Feb. 22: “Desert Divide” by Kelli Donley
• Mar. 29: "A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman” by Lindy Elkins-Tanton
• Apr. 26: “Animal Revolution” by Ron Broglio

The ASU Book Group is sponsored as a community outreach initiative by the Department of English and organized in partnership with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.