Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Like a Solid to a Shadow
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.janicewrites.com/
CITY: San Jose
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
http://www.janicewrites.com/blog/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in San Jose, CA.
EDUCATION:UC San Diego, B.A. (with honors); CalArts, M.F.A.; Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, poet, and educator. San José City College, English teacher. TAYO Literary Magazine, associate editor. Sunday Jump, co-founder. Sunday Jump open mic co-founder.
AVOCATIONS:Playing with stuffed animals, running races, and frequenting local coffee shops.
AWARDS:VONA/Voices Fellow; Manuel G. Flores Prize; PAWA Scholarship to the Kundiman Poetry Retreat; Katipunan Poetry Slam finalist; KQED Arts’ San Francisco Bay Area’s 2017 Women to Watch.
WRITINGS
Contributor to numerous periodicals, including KQED Arts, The Offing, Jacket2, AngryAsianMan.com, and Action, Yes! Contributor to anthologies Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipina/o America, 2014; and Namjai: An Intergenerational Tribute Anthology of Bay Area Asian Pacific Islander Poets, 2013.
SIDELIGHTS
Janice Lobo Sapigao is a writer, poet, and educator. Born in San Jose, California, Sapigao’s parents were Filipino immigrants. Sapigao began journaling at age six, the same time that her father passed away, a practice she has maintained all her life. She recalls the origins of story creation began for her when she was young and would watch soap operas with her mom. She says she would watch an episode, and then come up with the next plot progression in her head. Sapigao began writing seriously when she was eighteen. Through age twenty, she immersed herself in spoken word poetry, and at age twenty-one she co-wrote a play for a Pilipino Cultural Celebration.
Sapigao attended college at U.C. San Diego, where she studied ethnic studies. She received her M.F.A. from CalArts and attended Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. In Los Angeles, Sapigao co-founded an open mid night called the Sunday Jump. Sapigao teaches English at San José City College and is an associate editor at TAYO Literary Magazine. She lives in San Jose, CA.
A contributor to Publishers Weekly described Sapigao’s Like a Solid to a Shadow as an “intriguing project of translation as a means of reckoning with identity and trauma.” The poetry collection is about communication and grief, inspired by Sapigao’s own relationship to her father and to his death. Sapigao’s father, who passed away when Sapigao was a child, spoke letters of love and affection to Sapigao’s mother into a cassette player during their courting days, sending the cassettes to Sapigao’s mother to listen to. Her father also sent recorded letters to his parents, Sapigao’s grandparents. Like a Solid to a Shadow opens with Sapigao attempting to translate these oral letters. The letters were recorded in the Filipino language Ilokano, a language which Sapigao only slightly understands. This barrier introduces a theme repeated throughout the book; that of difficulty in the translation and understanding of various forms of communication.
Sapigao’s poems then move to other various forms of communication, including her own handwritten notes about learning Ilokano, a reflection on family trees, and a section about Facebook messages. Through these various forms of communication, Sapigao explores the nature of translation, trauma processing, and understanding.
Eileen Tabios in Galatea Resurrects 2018 (A Poetry Engagement) website wrote: “What’s admirable about Sapigao’s project are, among others, its many layers of complexity, including its address of translation,” while the contributor to Publishers Weekly pointed out Sapigao’s “deliberate refusal to invite a subsurface reading.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, November 20, 2017, review of Like a Solid to a Shadow, p. 73.
ONLINE
Galatea Resurrects 2018 (A Poetry Engagement), https://galatearesurrects2018.blogspot.com/ (January 21, 2018), Eileen Tabios, review of Like a Solid to a Shadow.
Ploughshares, http://blog.pshares.org/ (October 30, 2017), Yasmin Majeed, review of Microchips for Millions.
Janice Lobo Sapigao is a writer, poet, and educator. She is a VONA/Voices Fellow and was awarded a Manuel G. Flores Prize, PAWA Scholarship to the Kundiman Poetry Retreat. She is the Associate Editor of TAYO Literary Magazine, and a co-founder of Sunday Jump, an open mic in Los Angeles’s Historic Filipinotown. Her work has also been published in numerous publications including KQED Arts, The Offing, Jacket2, AngryAsianMan.com, and Action, Yes!as well anthologies such as Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipina/o America (Cognella Academic Publishing, 2014) and Namjai: An Intergenerational Tribute Anthology of Bay Area Asian Pacific Islander Poets(The ReWrite, 2013). She earned her M.F.A. in Writing from CalArts, and she has a B.A. in Ethnic Studies with Honors from UC San Diego. Janice loves playing with stuffed animals, runs races occasionally, and frequents local, small mom + pop coffee shops.
Writing as a Mirror: Janice Sapigao on Her Upcoming Book, microchips for millions
Liz Gonzalez, Quynh-Mai Nguyen • Interview • November 12, 2016
0
Janice Sapigao is the daughter of Filipina/o immigrants. Preparing for the launch of her first book, microchips for millions, we sat down to find out more about the San Jose born poet, writer and educator and what's behind the poetry book that highlights the toxic work of Silicon Valley.
What is the inspiration behind microchips for millions?
microchips for millions came out of a political urgency with emotional expediency to get the story out. I have a tendency to write under the impression that I have to write or else I would die. A lot of that comes from my dad, grief and injustice have a similar effect in my body; they live in the same place. microchips for millions came out of wanting to write against injustice, but it also came out of grieving the way my mom lost her job every so often when I was growing up. Not having a job, or losing one can feel like a death. That's where I started writing the book.
What can writing do that isn't like anything else?
Writing can literally change someone's world. I really believe in writing as a mirror, some kind of reflection that tells people about themselves and their world.
That kind of magic or power is actually inside you, as the reader and as the writer. It’s very physical, it’s very spiritual, and also really transformative in that way, but writing too often gets a bad rap. People seldom see it operate in a way that allows them to re-discover anything about themselves or their world.
How did you start storytelling?
This is going to sound really weird, but when I was younger I used to watch soap operas with my mom. In one show where the scene ended suddenly I made up the rest in my head. I find myself doing that now; I create my own stories in my head before I go to bed, and I’ve kept a journal ever since I was six years old. That’s also when my father passed away. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, and I don’t take it lightly that I sought out a diary when one of my parents passed away.
I started seriously writing when I was 18. I listened to spoken word poetry religiously through age 20. At 21, I wrote a play for a Pilipino Cultural Celebration with my friends Jet Antonio and Ed De Los Reyes. This one-year project of writing a play, and infusing poetry and performance into it, made me want to go through the transformative process of writing and pursue an MFA in Writing.
What was one of the first stories you wrote?
In the early 1990s, I watched The Disney Channel and I was hella excited when Disney promoted a competition for young writers to submit their stories to be turned into a short animated film. I hand-wrote a freewrite of my story, and my mom asked, “Why don’t you type it?” even though we didn’t have a computer. An auntie had a typewriter, though, so she typed out the story for me, and I sent it to Disney with hella typos and all.
The story that won was about a young, white boy taming a dragon and making the dragon his friend. The story I submitted was about two young girls, one Pinay and one African American, who were getting their first jobs. The girls discussed their happiness at having a job, keeping the job, sharing the amount of money they’d made on their paychecks, and deciding to save it instead of spend it on clothes. So, of course I lost that competition. Disney didn’t understand young brown and black girl joy back then. I even tried writing a story about a young white boy named Trévor who slayed monsters that my brother drew, but I don’t think I ever sent it out for the following year’s competition.
Has your mom read the book?
She has not read the book. She has read the chapbook version, which came out from tender tender press in December 2015. She may read it when it comes out. She went to a reading of mine before, and she told me she felt embarrassed because she thought people were looking at her. I wrote the book so that she could understand it. I wrote it so that younger readers and poets can see the different ways we could be visual with poetry.
This question reminds me of Lysley Tenorio, who wrote a dope ass short story collection called Monstress, and he once said in an interview that he loved the fact that his mom loved a book he wrote that she technically couldn’t read. I feel that way about my mom and how proud I hope she is. I have the same hopes with my mom – to love the book anyway even if she can’t or doesn’t read it.
How did you become aware of the toxic effects of the work in Silicon Valley?
The first time I learned about the toxic Silicon Valley was back in college at UC San Diego when Professor David Pellow taught a class in his area of expertise, Environmental Racism, which talked a lot about the Silicon Valley. There’s a poem about it in my book.
Do you think folks in SV are aware of how toxic this work is?
I don't even think the workers really know, especially if the workers are mostly immigrants, or if English is their second or third language. Even if they've been doing the work for a really long time, I think that Silicon Valley, like many industries, has a lot of workers who didn't know when they signed up what they would be doing. I read an article about immigrant workers who did not know, and I wrote a poem about. It went something like, “You have to remember that these were just people who are looking for a job,” and so that tells me a lot about the high demand for people to do the job, and it also tells me about the complete disregard for their work. If people knew that this would be cancer-causing work, I think they could remain healthy and choose not to do this kind of fatal work.
I also think that people who work in software companies don't know, just as I'm pretty sure that a lot of them do not know that their work cannot exist without these women who make the microchips.
When it comes to Silicon Valley and the microchip industry, how does it affect culture and equity?
The poetry in the book references how the microchip industry, like many industries, depends on immigrant labor. Because the Silicon Valley has systematically employed entire families, entire neighborhoods, and then because these families potentially become dependent on a single company’s employment, it allows that company to take advantage of the workers by creating familial pressure to go to work, do well at work, keep the job. It creates a culture of hard work and loyalty, but the company leverages it against the families. The loyalty disappears once the company closes, and it creates a disparity, largely for people of color who take on these jobs.
I hope that the book will get people to act, think critically, be powerfully kind, and I hope that they choose to give a f*** about people who experience injustice. I also hope that people buy the book and will get their folks to buy the book.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I want to say thank you to a lot of community bases that have helped raise me when I was a teenager, or when I was in college, grad school, and even now. If I didn't have a lot of people pushing, or checking and asking about my writing, then this book would not exist. I think that I wouldn't know how to live if it wasn't for the writing.
A Cipher Grows in San Bruno: Hip-Hop’s Poetic Education with Janice Sapigao
By Michelle Threadgould
September 29, 2016
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“I really like the phrasing ‘an imperfect English.’ I like it, and at the same time I think that there are so many types of English and it’s going to be innately imperfect depending on the person, you know what I mean? I like that it presents this tension,” says Janice Sapigao, a second-generation, Filipina American poet and educator who teaches hip hop education at Skyline College in San Bruno.
“And I think that’s the opening, it’s the opening for when students think about: how do you use English in a hip-hop classroom?”
Janice grew up in Northside San Jose with what can be described as ‘an imperfect English,’ and yet she is mindful of that phrase, because the English is imperfect to whom? Is grammatically correct, fluent English the language of the free, or of the oppressed? Must we strive for ‘perfect English,’ or can we break it down to suit our evolving needs?
Growing up as a second-generation American, you become familiar with the cuts, jumps, false starts, and flow of speaking a language that isn’t your mother’s tongue, nor panders to the paternalism of whiteness. Instead, your language and how you speak is entirely your own: and it mirrors exactly why hip-hop came to be.
Janice Sapigao and CIPHER Counselor Kimberly Davalos at Skyline College. (CJ Raygoza)
When speaking about her CIPHER class that she teaches at Skyline, Janice says, “I always teach and start with Kanye, and I start with The College Dropout Kanye because students today know him and because I really like to use Kanye to illustrate poetry, and the way that music is poetry, and I talk about poetic devices that rappers use like caesura, rhyme scheme, meter, stress and unstress.”
If you look at a Kardashian-clad Kanye today, it can be challenging to remember him as someone whose existence was once inherently political. From stating that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on live TV to rapping about economic and racial inequality in the South Side of Chicago, Kanye was once a symbol for working-class black people. And yet his rhymes and way of using language still hold their weight and can be used in the classroom to help students learn to cultivate a voice that is distinctly their own.
Janice, 29, knows directly what it is like to grow up with ‘an imperfect English,’ and her reality is the reality of her students. The demographics of her community college are largely second-generation Filipino and Latino students whose immigrant parents work and live in the shadow of Silicon Valley. Their parents’ jobs are largely in manual labor, or in factories like her mother. Each of her students carries the weight of the dreams of their families on their shoulders; and yet for many of them, their parents’ dreams are not their own.
“ma is always on the frontline
of the silicon valley’s shadow
one of thousands of women
whose nimble fingers and
silenced grumbling spin
microchips for millions
powering laptops and
cell phones that she herself
does not find intuitive enough to use”
—Assembly Line, Janice Sapigao
In her latest chapbook toxic city, Janice remembers what it was like to have a mother who worked 14-hour days, and whose coworkers died of cancer from making microchips out of toxic materials. And yet the microchip itself is a symbol of Silicon Valley, a symbol that was made on the backs of underpaid minority workers who now face displacement in the very cities whose wealth they helped create. Meanwhile, for every student who struggles to meet their ends and has parents whom they never get the privilege to see, their narrative is lost amongst the onslaught of hateful headlines:
What Would it Take for Trump to Deport 11 Million
How Much Would Building a Wall Cost?
A Call for a Muslim Ban in America
It is against the backdrop of these headlines and anti-immigrant sentiments that Janice works to (un)teach, (un)cover, and (un)brainwash the minds of students of color and immigrant communities who have been taught to metabolize hate, and to never see themselves reflected in their history books. In her classes, Janice teaches books like Questlove’s Mo’ Beta Mo’ Blues alongside albums like Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. An essay on Black Lives Matter is deconstructed and analyzed in the same way as “You Got Me” by the Roots featuring Erykah Badu and Eve. And in so doing, Janice’s students learn to value English in all of its imperfect forms, and to find the courage to experiment with their own voice.
Janice Sapigao and student at Skyline College. (CJ Raygoza)
“It [hip-hop] helped me create my English, it helped me create a proper structure for my grammar and know how to speak correctly because of the flow that it had,” says Alejandro Carbajal, a 21-year-old Mexican-American student who grew up in Daly City and now goes to Skyline. “It didn’t just help develop me into who I am, but it also really helped me with my education. I wasn’t always the best student when it come to subjects because my parents didn’t know that much English.”
As Alejandro speaks about his experiences in CIPHER, he discusses how for the first time in his education, he could relate to the material. “I was able to study something I’m already interested in,” he says. “It helped me understand the material, it wasn’t just about regurgitating the information I learned.”
Instead of rote memorization, CIPHER gave Alejandro the tools to think critically and make up his own mind, and it’s done the same for many of Janice’s students.
“I feel like CIPHER helps us connect to stories, and what we study,” says CIPHER student Shannen Vergara. “It’s not just about your basic English [material], it’s about gentrification, what’s happening right now in SF, the Black Lives Matter movement, and things like that.
“Another thing with CIPHER is that you have a safe space where you have the freedom to express yourself, and I feel like that’s hard to find in a classroom,” Vergara adds. “A lot of students are afraid to speak up, because they’re afraid that they’ll be wrong, whereas in CIPHER you can’t be wrong, and it’s about how you feel about something, and our community actually matters.”
At CIPHER, students are given the opportunity and space to find their words, explore their identities, and for the first time, have license to connect with others about their harsh realities through hip-hop. To hear students tell it, the class gives them a way to communicate feelings that they didn’t know they had the license to feel.
“I wonder if you have ever… cried.
If your two pendulums for left and right arms
get tired of swinging sometimes.
I want to ask you:
“Manny, how does it feel to carry a country on one
side
and its future in another?”
—Re-Imagining Manny Pacquiao, Janice Sapigao
I read this poem and I think of how I and the other children of immigrant families feel. Like we could all be Manny Pacquiao, and must match his strength and spirit and generosity.
Or we are ungrateful. Unworthy. Unamerican.
If we do not spin gold out of our circumstance, we should go back to where we come from — our mother’s native land. Where we speak our native tongue as broken as our English.
Janice Sapigao at Skyline College. (CJ Raygoza)
Janice is not spinning gold but, like Spinderella, she uses records and words and beats to decolonize her students’ minds.
When I read Janice’s poems, I think of them as raps that
travel the page
and don’t quite fit in
with what we think good writing should look or sound like.
In her
line
breaks
you can hear a Fela Kuti rhythm a Lauryn Hill sway
and we are not bound by 2Pac and Kendrick and Compton
but instead
we hear a quiet voice that asks questions
and though soft at first builds like the CIPHER
that she has grown.
“Everyday I war with being an English teacher — and being a writer, and trying to figure out what exactly am I teaching,” says Janice. “Like, am I teaching students to be a part of or to create, or know, or be aware of, or to fight against a master narrative or multiple master narratives?”
“I just want to help students find and write out their voice so that it reflects what they think and how they sound and I want them to make strength and make meaning out of their own voice. I don’t want them to make it out of what I think it should be, or what other teachers think it should be. I want them [my students] to be able to write down and reflect and recreate their best self through their writings and through their words.”
For Janice, she hopes that her CIPHER class gives her student the confidence to find their voice, to make strength and meaning in it. To make space for their imperfect English. To embrace their own narrative.
Or, as Sapigao says: “To write down and reflect and recreate their best self.”
Janice Sapigao is a Filipino poet and educator living in San Jose, CA. Her chapbook, Toxic City, expanded into a full-length book of poetry called Microchips for Millions, which was released in October 2016 by the Philippine Writers and Artists Association (PAWA). In the book, Sapigao addresses working conditions in factories that produce hardware for tech companies in Silicon Valley, where Sapigao’s mother has worked for decades as a “fabrications operator.” Through her mother’s experience, Spaigao explores the personal and cultural trauma endured by the largely Filipino workforce. After pouring through her manuscript, I chatted over Skype with Sapigao from her Bay Area office to discuss the book and how writing can be a form of healing.
TOXIC LEGACY:
AN INTERVIEW WITH POET JANICE LOBO SAPIGAO ON FILIPINO FACTORY WORKERS IN SILICON VALLEY
Interview By Clay Kerrigan
Featuring Janice Lobo Sapigao
Clay Kerrigan (CY): Thank you for this opportunity. In your book, you get into the physical reality of what it means to be a ‘fab operator’: getting up at 4:00 a.m., the sweat that pours down her body, the orthopedic shoes that she’s required to wear, using her fingers all day, and the exhaustion after work. So, what is a fab operator, exactly?
Janice Lobo Sapigao (JLS): It’s a nickname for a fabrications operator, which is essentially an assembly line worker. She works with other fab operators in one large room, where each person has a designated station that represents a different step in creating a microchip.
CY: In the text, your mom uses the word ‘fab operator’ as a kind of euphemism for an assembly line worker—‘fab’ nearly implying the word fabulous, as if she’s saying, “What I do is important. I’m an operator.” And then you follow it up with the line, “My mother is an assembly line worker.”
JLS: I was thinking about when things are given long names in academia or science. It takes us further away from what it actually is. Like ‘gentrification’—such a long word.
CK: Can you talk a little bit about the impetus behind this project, where it came from, and how it grew?
JLS: The book started in a class I took at CalArts called Documentary Poetics. Back then, it was just a measly, eight-page chapbook. I wanted to write about my mom’s job and the immigrant women in Silicon Valley who make microchips. Now, I feel more of a political urgency—there’s so much more at stake, especially since I moved back to the Bay Area. It’s so undeniable to see the influence and takeover of tech culture.
Excerpt from microchips for millions
CY: Many of us have this vision of Silicon Valley as a place of possibility—a bright, shining beacon of what the future could be—but in the past few years, there’s been so much exposure of the seamy underbelly. You talk about how major hardware and software manufacturing companies actively stand against unionization in a lot of these places. We hear about children digging for the precious metals that are in our phones. We often think of those children as being in Africa or third world countries that we’re exploiting, but your book brings it back here, at home.
JLS: I do sometimes wonder about contributing to the naming of—or limiting the scope of this problem, to Silicon Valley, because in many ways, this is also San Jose, or this is Palo Alto, this is Mountain View—this is not Silicon Valley. Whatever it is or whoever thinks that they’re a part of it, I’ve never heard anybody say, “I’m from Silicon Valley.”
WHEN THINGS ARE GIVEN LONG NAMES IN ACADEMIA OR SCIENCE. IT TAKES US FURTHER AWAY FROM WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS.
Growing up, many of my classmates in my catechism classes also had parents who worked at various microchip companies. My mom would always say, “Oh, this person’s mom works at Solyndra,” which no longer exists, or “This person’s mom works at Intel.” You can’t have all of these software companies without the places that create the hardware. And the hardware companies are not as popular or well-known, but they employ a lot of people.
I’ve met the poet laureate of Santa Clara County, Arlene Biala, who’s also Filipino, and in one of her books, she has a couple of poems about her mom who did the same work. There’s a poem here and a poem there by various writers, but there’s never been a whole collection.
CY: One thing that strikes me in the opening pages is your mention of Native Americans: “Any history of the present day Silicon Valley region of California must begin with a consideration of First Nations.” What does this statement mean to you?
JLS: A lot of the topics I’m exploring are about this land and what is done on this land, and I had really gone back to figure out who the marginalized peoples were who have been affected here. One of the guiding texts that I used as I was researching and writing the book was The Silicon Valley of Dreams. The book got me thinking: “There’s a problem with where I’m from. There’s a problem with the work that has supported my livelihood and my family’s livelihood.” The book begins with a discussion of Ohlone land and how, historically, when Americans were conquering the land, they also imparted submissive roles onto Ohlone women. That subjugation of women is a legacy of Silicon Valley.
CY: And it’s a continuing legacy of exploitation. Your text opens with a moment of silence. You say, “Let the poetry of this page serve as a moment of recognition for the native peoples, the Muwekma Ohlone tribe whose lands we inhabit,” and then there’s a page of binary code—something you frequently do throughout the text. Sometimes there’s binary code in place of words, sometimes above words, mirroring words. Does this code translate as anything?
JLS: When translated, the binary text states the history that I found on the Muwekma Ohlone website. I cited the text that I used in the book, which tells their exact history, and I filtered it through binary translation software.
Excerpt from microchips for millions
CY: The visual aspect of your text is so strong. You also change colors and color tones—microchip colors are the brightest greens, blues, oranges, and reds, which is inviting. But those are also the colors of toxic, poisonous things. You write, “The industrial garden is abundant and fecund in infinity.” And I thought, “So is a rainforest, beautiful and deadly.” The focus of your book is the effect of these factories and products on the labor force of Filipinos in Silicon Valley. Can you talk about that a little bit?
JLS: I wanted to highlight or make visible ways that Filipino families are tied to this industry, much like when I think of Cambodian immigrants and doughnut shops, or Vietnamese families and nail salons. And in all of the Asian American history classes I’ve ever taken, there’s always a war with invisibility, or being forgotten. That forgetting made me want to write.
CY: I found a report of the U.S. Department of Labor on an electronics manufacturer who imported Filipino workers and paid them the same wages in the U.S. that they were making in the Philippines—$1.66 an hour with no overtime pay for 57 hours a week. They were ordered to pay $80,000 in back pay to these workers, which, to an electronics company, is toilet paper.
You give us this quote: “By the early 1980’s Filipinos are one of the largest ethnic groups among Asian workers at National Semiconductor Corporation in San Jose, California.” You take the reader from an explanation of poor labor practices to the invisible exploitation of an entire race, guiding an understanding that metastasizes. It’s like a tumor that starts to grow.
JLS: I borrowed another quote that explains the practice of hiring entire families, which is just another way to control everybody. A lot of my friends work in tech and love it. They’re given things like a lot of snacks, and there are theme parks on campus and slides. And all of these things are, to me, ways to keep people quiet. “Let me construct fun for you, and then you won’t see that your shuttle bus driver lives in the bus.” These are just different ways to cover up injustices.
CY: The culture of fun that exists in these startup offices versus the culture of fear that you talk about in your book is horrifying—that they encourage hiring families because it keeps troublemakers in control. To them, trouble makers would be voices of dissent, people that would talk back to authority.
JLS: Yes, it was definitely very strategic as to why they picked Filipinos for these roles. A lot of these immigrants came to the U.S. during a period of martial law in the Philippines, and they were accustomed to a culture of fear and obedience. In the late 1970s, former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was the dictator of the Philippines. He was responsible for governmental nepotism. He made women the number one export while he was in office. Talking back to authority in the Philippines could mean life or death, your family’s or your wife’s, your son’s—it could be anybody’s.
CY: That goes back to what we mentioned before about prior trauma being exploited. Your writing about a person as a contaminant in these factories really highlights the opinion that the powers that be have of their labor force: “A clean environment is designed to reduce the contamination of processes and materials. This is accomplished by removing or reducing contamination sources.” You list the contamination sources and the largest one, by a huge margin, is “people” at 75 percent.
JLS: Yes, factory management knows that people are the contaminants and therefore are putting them in these toxic situations anyway.
CY: You write: “Machines subject silicon wafers to incredibly intense vacuums, caustic chemical baths, high energy plasmas, intense ultraviolet light, and more, taking the wafers to the hundreds of discrete manufacturing steps required to turn them into CPUs, memory chips, and graphics processors.” The unspoken thing there is that there’s a person there for every one of these moments. Toxicity and contamination go both ways.
You go on to a page devoted to the health risks, “Maybe arthritis, maybe gout, maybe lymphoma, maybe brain cancer, maybe a tumor, high blood pressure, maybe death.” Do you know of people that have endured these conditions after working in these factories?
JLS: Arthritis for sure, yes. That’s something my mom has. The other ones are from articles I’ve read in local Bay Area news outlets. My mom had cancer scares, and several of her coworkers have had cancer scares.
CY: What was it like talking to your mother about these experiences?
JLS: She thought that I was making fun of her. She said, “I don’t want you to do this. Why is everybody laughing at me?” And I was like, “Nobody’s laughing.” I don’t think it was until the chapbook came out that she was actually excited and proud, and she kept asking for more copies to give to her co-workers.
CY: Does she think of these factories as places of trauma?
JLS: I think she sees it as painful, but I don’t think she sees the work as wrong. She can feel the pain; she has arthritis, she can’t walk for long periods of time. When we go to the mall, we can’t even walk around for too long. These things that we can and can’t do for each other anymore are, to me, a direct result of the very physical work she does.
She doesn’t think things are wrong until I affirm that they are. There was a massive layoff, and she said, “I think I’m next. What do you think I should do?” I told her, “I think you guys should fight for your jobs.” And she asked, “Oh, are you sure? Are you sure?”
CY: Is putting this kind of work into the world a form of healing from these kinds of traumas, physical and emotional and cultural?
JLS: The making of this text has helped me to heal from memories that I had from when I was younger when my mom would go to work in the middle of the night. I understand now—or at least the adult speaker in the text understands—why that was so necessary.
CY: There’s also a future healing that happens. Knowledge is power. Putting this kind of work into the world empowers the next person who’s like you or someone who works under these conditions, especially when it is being printed by a Filipino press. It’s much more likely to get into the hands of a worker, someone who might not have thought about the conditions of their workplace. And future labor forces might make use of something like this. You are changing the legacy of trauma, helping to form a legacy of healing, as I see it.
JLS: Thank you. I think the parts that I have been able to heal from this text are those memories that I had from when I was younger… I feel like the speaker grows up, you know? I think those memories are always very traumatic and sad. My mom would go to work in the middle of the night, right when we were cuddling. I understand now, or at least the adult speaker in the text, I think, understands why that was so necessary.
THE MAKING OF THIS TEXT HAS HELPED ME TO HEAL FROM MEMORIES THAT I HAD FROM WHEN I WAS YOUNGER
The publisher who published the chapbook version of the book, Toxic City, is based in Wisconsin, and for me, it was really important to take that opportunity to have it published there. Wisconsin has a labor history that I think is seminal, though problematic. I think they’ve made a lot of strides with justice. I wanted someone from the Midwest, who happened to be Filipino, to also blurb the book. I’m trying to be very intentional.
CY: By the end of the book, you reveal that your mother is eventually laid off. What is she doing now?
JLS: Working as a fab operator, in a different place other than where she was working when I was writing. But she has worked for this company before.
Janice Lobo Sapigao (Poetry) | San José, CA
Booking Fee:
Negotiable
Will Travel:
Anywhere
Contact:
janicesapigaoalum.calarts.edu
Website:
http://janicewrites.com/
Janice Lobo Sapigao is a Pinay poet, writer, and educator from San José, CA. She is the author of two books of poetry: microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016) and Like a Solid to a Shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2017). She is also the author of the chapbook toxic city (tinder tender press, 2015). She is a VONA/Voices Fellow and was awarded a Manuel G. Flores Prize, PAWA Scholarship to the Kundiman Poetry Retreat. She is the Associate Editor of TAYO Literary Magazine. Her work is also published in online publications such as The Offing, KQED Arts, CCM-Entropy, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, and AngryAsianMan.com, among others. She was a reviewer for The Volta Blog and Jacket2.
She earned her B.A. in Ethnic Studies with Honors and she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar at UC San Diego. She earned her M.F.A. in Critical Studies/Writing at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). She co-founded an open mic in Los Angeles called the Sunday Jump and was a Finalist in the Katipunan Poetry Slam. She is an alumna of Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. She enjoys playing with stuffed animals, listening to hip hop, and running. She teaches English at two community colleges in the Bay Area.
As a Pinay poet and writer, her work–which ranges from poetry to fiction to a beautiful miasma of the two–slices and reveals larger truths about herself, her community, and identity as a whole. Seamlessly, she folds pop culture, history, and defiance into her writing; her language startles and soothes… The passion she has for her students and teaching is only rivaled by the passion she has for writing and storytelling. – Bel Poblador
Short Biography:
Janice Lobo Sapigao is a daughter of Filipina/o immigrants. She is the author of two books of poetry: Like a Solid to a Shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2017) and microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016) and two other chapbooks. She is a VONA/Voices and Kundiman Fellow, and the Associate Editor of TAYO Literary Magazine. She co-founded Sunday Jump open mic in L.A. She earned her M.F.A. in Writing from CalArts, and she has a B.A. in Ethnic Studies with Honors from UC San Diego.
Extended Biography:
Janice Lobo Sapigao is a Pinay poet, writer, and educator from San José, CA. She was named one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s 2017 Women to Watch by KQED Arts.She is the author of two books of poetry: Like a Solid to a Shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2017) and microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016) and two other chapbooks: you don’t know what you don’t know (Mondo Bummer Books, 2017) and toxic city (tinder tender press, 2015). She is a VONA/Voices Fellow and was awarded a Manuel G. Flores Prize, PAWA Scholarship to the Kundiman Poetry Retreat. She is the Associate Editor of TAYO Literary Magazine. Her work is also published or forthcoming in online publications such as The Offing, NBC Asian America, Waxwing, Luna Luna Magazine,CCM-Entropy, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, and AngryAsianMan.com, among others. She has reviews on The Volta Blog and Jacket2.
She earned her B.A. in Ethnic Studies with Honors and she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar at UC San Diego. She earned her M.F.A. in Critical Studies/Writing at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). She co-founded an open mic in Los Angeles called the Sunday Jump and was a Finalist in the Katipunan Poetry Slam. She is an alumna of Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. She teaches English at San José City College.
You can reach her at janicesapigao[at]alum[dot]calarts[dot]edu
Oblivious meets Janice Sapigao
9/30/2015
0 Comments
October is Filipino American History Month. Oblivious Interviews will feature Filipino-Americans doing kick ass things. This interview is with Janice Sapigao. I met Janice when she was organizing with Justice for Filipino American Veterans. Mike had been a part of the JFAV Steering Committee that planned the annual Veteran's Day Rally/Parade through Historic-Filipinotown. Janice was a part of the new leadership that continued to do the important advocacy work for Filipino American Veterans.
Throughout her time in Los Angeles, Janice founded Sunday Jump, a monthly community open mic series in Historic-Filipinotown. Sunday Jump takes place at Kapistahan Grill (1925 W Temple St, Los Angeles, CA 90026). Sunday Jump is a space for storytelling, good food, and good vibes. Thank you for the Sunday Jump family for this Oblivious Interview!
Oblivious meets Janice Sapigao
Affiliations (arts org, fun things you do, etc) :
I work at Skyline College/San Jose City College. I co-advise the Filipino Student Union, teach in a hip hop learning community, and co-coordinate the Puente program. My community organizing is in and out of the classroom now. I'm also an editor for TAYO Literary Magazine (buy our mag at Barnes & Noble!). Oh, and I write things.
What's the one word you are guilty of using too much?
Uhhhh...
How did you end up doing what you are doing now?
Hard work and luck. Timing and goal-setting. Hyper-empathy and love. Community and writing. For real. All of these things found their ways into some formula that allowed me to teach, write, and read.
Which member of the Wu-Tang Clan best describes your personality?
Probs RZA. He has books and bars!
Dogs or Cats, who wins? Why?
Cats! They're spiritual and live forever beyond their nine lives with us.
What is the best part of any given day for you?
I can't choose between these two kinds of glorious times: 1) When the streets are dark and I'm inside my apartment, and the whole world has finally come to a standstill that allows me to sleep, or, 2) When I get home from a long ass day of work and can finally kick off my heels, unbutton my collar shirt, and take off/unzip my pants.
In a zombie apocalypse who would you want on your survival team?
Fuckin' Eddy. He would probably sacrifice himself so that the rest of us can live. He'd also document everything so that we can celebrate and honor his life as a result.
What is the last thing you searched for on google?
"How to cite rap songs in paragraphs." Thank you, Purdue Online Writing Lab, for the answer to my students' questions.
If you could talk to your high school self, what would you say?
Thank you. I wrote about this on a recent blog post. I'd say, "She helped me get here. Her bravery and choice to love and move away from home to appreciate, sacrifice, and struggle through its distance makes me myself."
What is the best thing or meal you ever ate?
Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings from Pok Pok in Portland, OR.
What is a memorable project that you are working on or have worked on?
I'm working on what will hopefully be my life's work, a book about my father who passed away when I was six. The manuscript is tentatively titled you don't know what you don't know.
Janice Lobo Sapigao
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2100 Moorpark Avenue
San Jose City College; ATTN: Janice Sapigao, English Instructor
San Jose, CA 95128
Phone:
4082883136
E-mail:
janicesapigao@alum.calarts.edu
Website:
janicewrites.com
Author's Bio
Janice Lobo Sapigao is a daughter of immigrants from the Philippines. She is the author of two books of poetry: Like a Solid to a Shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2017) and microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016). She is also the author of two chapbooks: you don’t know what you don’t know (Mondo Bummer Books, 2017) and toxic city (tinder tender press, 2015). She is a VONA/Voices Fellow and was awarded a Manuel G. Flores Prize, PAWA Scholarship to the Kundiman Poetry Retreat. She is the Associate Editor of TAYO Literary Magazine. Her website is janicewrites.com
Publications and Prizes
Books:
like a solid to a shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2016)
Anthologies:
Talking Back and Moving Forward: An Education Revolution in Poetry and Prose (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)
Journals:
Angel City Review, Eleven Eleven, Fanzine, Luna Luna Magazine, TAYO Literary Magazine, The Offing, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Waxwing Literary Journal
Chapbook:
toxic city (Woodland Pattern Book Center, 2015)
Personal Favorites
What I'm Reading Now:
All They Will Call You by Tim Z. Hernandez, Look by Solmaz Sharif, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
Reviews, Recordings, and Interviews
First Book: microchips for millions
Second Book: like a solid to a shadow
Women to Watch: Janice Sapigao
Janice Sapigao's Shadowy Musings 'Like a Solid to a Shadow' explores the power, mystery of language
Disrupting Silicon Valley in Janice Lobo Sapigao’s microchips for millions
More Information
Listed as:
Poet
Gives readings:
Yes
Travels for readings:
Yes
Identifies as:
Asian American, Feminist, Filipino American
Prefers to work with:
Any
Fluent in:
English
Born in:
San Jose, CA
Raised in:
San Jose, CA
work_excerpt:
I write extensively, privately, publicly on what happened when my father passed away twenty years ago. I was six years old. This meant that I was so young that I didn’t know what was going on. Could you imagine a little girl smiling at her father’s funeral? My second book, Like a Solid to a Shadow, was incited by the memory of taking this photo. There are pictures as proof in my family photo albums from that year. My brother remembers running away from the burial site as he saw our father being lowered into the ground, our oldest cousin chasing after him. I remember my mother’s guttural bawls, calling back for my father in Ilokano. I remember remaining silent, everyone looking at me, their eyes just above the ground where I stood because I thought that was what I was supposed to do for my family at that time. Can you imagine a little girl not saying anything at her father’s funeral? Now, I cry, remember, bury and uncover my feelings when his death anniversary comes. My father dies every time I tell someone new that I am fatherless this way. He lives every time I think about him. I write to respectfully remember, but also to resurrect his stories.
Like a Solid to a Shadow
Publishers Weekly. 264.47 (Nov. 20, 2017): p73.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Like a Solid to a Shadow
Janice Lobo Sapigao. Timeless, Infinite Light, $25 trade paper (104p) ISBN 978-1-937421-24-3
Sapigao (Microchips for Millions) dedicates her second collection to an intriguing project of translation as a means of reckoning with identity and trauma. Her father, who died when she was six, had recorded spoken love letters in the Filipino language Ilokano to her mother and grandparents. Sapigao begins by detailing her process of translating these recordings. But the ensuing work dances away from cohesion, incorporating handwritten notes on learning Ilokano, family trees, Facebook messages, and more. Her language is spare and surprisingly direct given the ghostly subject, a deliberate refusal to invite a subsurface reading. Sapigao provides stark contrast through renderings of her father's staccato words: "Make sure not to leave behind what I write (what you write). Because what we write is what we need to keep in order for it stay (so it doesn't fly away, to keep it from flying with the wind, to have it so that it doesn't become flight or wind,) so it doesn't go far away from us." Sapigao's closing pages reveal the danger of investigating family; she uncovers her father's secret other family and realizes that she is the last in her family to know. Though solid ground can be difficult to find, Sapigao's "imperfect translation" is worth the work of the journey. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Like a Solid to a Shadow." Publishers Weekly, 20 Nov. 2017, p. 73. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517262081/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=02f6accb. Accessed 20 Feb. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A517262081
Sunday, January 21, 2018
LIKE A SOLID TO A SHADOW by JANICE LOBO SAPIGAO
EILEEN TABIOS Engages
like a solid to a shadow by Janice Lobo Sapigao
(Timeless, Infinite Light, Oakland, 2017)
Before my father Filamore Tabios, Sr. died on April 11, 2006, I had spent the few weeks by his bedside. Because we knew ahead of time that by his bedside meant by his deathbed, I grieved his death even while he was alive. His (impending) death was so painful that I wrote and wrote and wrote trying to—and as if I could—write the grief out of my body. I wrote and wrote and wrote trying to write the impossible.
Those writings came to form the core of a book released just a year later, THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES: Our Autobiography (New York. Marsh Hawk Press, 2007). It’s also a book that I was never comfortable promoting (though I felt I had to market it in fairness to its publisher). I wrote it in a fever. I published it in a fever. When the fever would come to abate (something that didn’t begin abating for over a year after my father died), I came to second-guess my decisions about the book. I second-guessed it even as I couldn’t read it for a long time. I wrote it, published it, but found it too difficult to read it from beginning to end.
Its readers would tell me things like it was their favorite book among those I’d written. One paid it the highest compliment of how it helped her come to terms with her own father’s death. It received several positive reviews. But it was difficult for me to read it.
I could go on. But this article is not supposed to be about my book. It’s supposed to be about another book: Janice Lobo Sapigao’s like a solid to a shadow. I apologize now for first taking up time about my book—but such is the power of like a solid to a shadow that it turned me towards a book whose existence I’d actually tried to ignore for nearly a decade. My first act after finishing my first read of Sapigao’s book was to go to the basement, find the box where I’d kept my copies, and bring out several copies of the book I wrote for my father. In a ceremony witnessed only by my dog Ajax, I brought that book out into the light. I now know I shall read it again, acknowledge my grief but also acknowledge my love for my father. As of the day I read like a solid to a shadow, my own book about my father thrives on my bookshelf rather than in a closed box in a dim basement. Thank you, Janice Lobo Sapigao.
like a solid to a shadow also is about grieving a father’s death as well as grieving a father. Sapigao’s father died when she was six years old. Part of the impetus for Sapigao’s project was transcribing cassette tapes of love letters sent by her father to her mother during their courting days. Complicating the project was how her father spoke in Ilokano and Sapigao's lack of fluency in this language.
What’s admirable about Sapigao’s project are, among others, its many layers of complexity, including its address of translation. Translation is a fitting layer since the entire poetic project, if as also as means to “find” her father, is translation. Specifically, it is “ultratanslation” which can be described in this quote from Antena that Sapigao highlights as one of the epigraphs in the book:
“Ultratranslation—an awareness or hum or breath … moments within translation, a part of translation parting it to expose the irreducible gaps.”
Thus, does poetry arises.
And the poems are evocative, e.g.
ragsak
happy
difficult to come by
definitive feeling
enjoyed its closed experience
and
rugi
begin
the line you drag across the paper
fumbles over itself; from a cloak somewhere
and nowhere at the same time
I know enough Ilokano to know the words “ragsak” and “rugi” and appreciate Sapigao’s witty redefinitions. Sapigao’s poems also befit its theme if the title can be a theme. Here’s an example that deftly generates reader empathy as it moves from abstraction ("to go left") to something concrete (no pun intended):
katigid
to go left
stand at the edge of the cliff
move forward a bit
use your tippy toes
til you feel a string of concrete
on the balls of your feet
“katigid” is another one of the poems that begin with an Ilokano word which Sapigao then poetically defines, and defines within the stated concerns of her book which presents an archaeological search for her father.
“Poetically define,” I say, and yet what I’m talking about again is translation. As Sapigao notes in her poem “Where My Name Is From,”
My last name Sapigao means ‘wait until you’re 24 to do enough research, to ask questions, to wait and find out that it only means ‘nuts.’ ‘Nuts of the bird.’ Sapigao means ‘pretend it means seeds, seeds of a bird.’ Then poeticize the bird, let it fly. Then poeticize the seeds, ‘I am the seed of a bird that flies.’ My dad flies. My dad is the bird. I carry his name far. I fly.
As the matter at hand is translation—including its impossibilities—it also makes sense that some poems are literally presented slant (click on all images to enlarge):
Somehow, that slanted quatrain ("i wonder if he calls / lola, lola, and marlene to watch / earthen events / like graduations, weddings / and when i write") is more … bludgeoning … because it’s at a slant. The form manifests its impossibility. For the father who died when the poet was six years old, there is no “he” (or who is the “he”) who witnesses graduations, weddings, “and when I write.”
And here’s another layer—the hierarchy between Tagalog versus the approximately 175 other languages that exist in the ancestral land, the Philippines (Tagalog, by being the language spoken in Manila and the capital Quezon City, also represents those who’ve had more power among the Filipinos):
So there are politicized moments in the book, and yet its power also remains from the personal. This example below also presents another of the book’s strengths: how the visual enhances (meta imagism is the phrase that came to mind as I read/saw this page) as the words fade toward the end of the page:
Politics cannot exist without history and the book also abounds with it – making it not just a personal narrative but an educational text:
Last but not least, the poetry collection can read like a novel. There is a story in here that the poet did not know existed before she embarked on her “research.” I was astonished by it, and so don’t want to be a spoiler by revealing it, except to say that it relates to
*
What I learned about being Ilokano: stubbornness, perseverance. Stubborn Sapigao persevered and, in the process, created poetry as well as displayed courage. This book has an impact, such as the one I described for me. Its impact will be different, of course, for each reader. But, for me, the impact was powerful. I’ll end by sharing a photo of my father from my book—I actually had been challenged by a reader for sharing this image (as if it was a form of obscenity instead of a poet’s faltering/imperfect but determined attempt to hold on to her father):
I shared the above image because of the ending—the last image—in Sapigao’s book:
As a daughter who experienced her father’s death, I found affirmation in like a solid to a shadow—an affirmation such that I brought out from a basement’s shadows the book I wrote after and for my own father. It’s a response—and empathy—I (and no doubt other authors) would hope my (our) books generate in others. Sapigao saw me. And I, in this book, see her … and the family she moves me now to call mine. Such is the power of her poetry.
Agyamanac unay, Janice. Dios ti agngina.
*****
Eileen Tabios is the editor of Galatea Resurrects. She loves books and has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Her 2018 poetry collections include HIRAETH: Tercets From the Last Archipelago and MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: A Poetry Generator. She is the inventor of the poetry form “hay(na)ku” which will be the focus of a 15-year anniversary celebration at the San Francisco Public Library in 2018. Translated into eight languages, she also has edited, co-edited or conceptualized 13 anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays as well as served as editor or guest editor for various literary journals. Her writing and editing works have received recognition through awards, grants and residencies. More information is available at http://eileenrtabios.com
Disrupting Silicon Valley in Janice Lobo Sapigao’s microchips for millions
Author: Yasmin Majeed |
Oct
30
2017
Posted in Reading
Disruption is the word in Silicon Valley. Almost every startup promises it: Uber with ride-sharing, TaskRabbit with odd jobs, Bodega with…bodegas. In corporate conversations, “disruption” means innovation, groundbreaking change, a better, cleaner future. It is valued above all else. Which is why there’s a violence to disruption, too—the rapid gentrification of the Bay Area by tech companies, the toxic chemicals contained in phones, the exploitative labor practices that keep corporations afloat. In her debut poetry collection microchips for millions, Janice Lobo Sapigao disrupts Silicon Valley itself, revealing the structural violence that is encoded into it.
In microchips for millions, Sapigao mixes personal memoir with the history of the Bay Area, drawing parallels between colonial and contemporary exploitation. The book opens with a page-long acknowledgement of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe who first lived in the Bay. The “moment of recognition” is followed by a page of binary code, the language composed of zeroes and ones that is used by computer processors, and then ends with another recognition, “Let these pages allow empathy for the immigrant women and their families whose livelihoods are always, always at stake.” The exploitation of immigrant workers, and the gentrification of the Bay Area, are part of a lineage of trauma and theft that have occurred through the years on the land where Silicon Valley is now.
The poems in microchips for millions are multilingual: Sapigao includes English alongside binary code and Ilokano, the language of her Filipino family. She juxtaposes modes of communication, breaking down the meanings of words. In “the clean room” she lists the rigid uniform guidelines that factory workers like her mother must follow whenever they enter the workplace in parallel to quotes from conversations with her mother about work.“1. / hairnet / 2. / shoe covers / 3. / gloves,” is juxtaposed with, “‘they don’t like you / to wear sneakers. / they like you wear / the shoes they give you. / my feet is hurt.’ // ‘it’s hard to breathe, / sometimes. oh my god.’” This is a poetry of political refusal, the voice of immigrant women workers is the one that speaks most loudly, most vividly in this book. The corporate voice of Silicon Valley is left sterile, stripping the farce of its labor practices to their base cruelty: the workers don’t matter, but the microchips they make do. Sapigao quotes official sources, “A clean environment is designed to reduce / the contamination of processes and / materials. This is accomplished by / removing or reducing contamination / sources,” then adds, personally, painfully, “my mother is contaminated.” Behind the wealth, the technological innovation, is the terrible precarity of immigrant women workers—the labor exploitation, the fear of being fired without benefits, of being caught organizing a union.
One poem, “the start-up,” is structured in the shape of the 101, the freeway that traverses the entire state of California. Two black lines in the center of the page filled with binary code mark the freeway, which is lined on either side with boxes filled with text that represent buildings. One side of the freeway chronicles a reality show about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and the other shares the history of East Palo Alto, a city left behind by the tech boom. In the corner of the page there is a small note: “map not drawn to cartographic or traumatic scale.” It’s impossible for the page to hold the many histories of trauma that have happened on this land, but Sapigao draws the map anyway.
The whole of Silicon is contaminated, by the tech companies and the toxic fumes that emit from their factories. Sapigao documents this in screenshots of Google maps of the Bay Area that appear in intervals throughout the collection. The maps are layered—one pictures San Jose, the map marked with purple oblongs and dots that indicate chemical plumes. Overlaid in white text, Sapigao has written, “strange leftovers.” Sapigao won’t let Silicon Valley’s leftovers go unmapped. Near the end of the book she asks, “what do we do with / a map?” One answer might be, turn it into a poem. Gather the leftovers, the marginalized stories, and erased voices that have been left off the map, and write them down in a new language.