Join Luya Poetry founder Christian Aldana and friends for a community pop-up to celebrate the release of Christian’s debut poetry collection! We’re excited to bring people together to participate in our open mice, experience amazing poetry performances, witness live music from Las Mariquitas, and connect with the wonderful artists, makers, and community organizations who will be tabling throughout the afternoon.
Christian Aldana’s debut poetry collection, The Water We Swim In, is an ode to radical care. Through community organizing and deeply held love, Aldana follows in the footsteps of Grace Lee Boggs against a carceral state, questioning the broken system and reaching across diasporic distances for the future within our grasp. Empowering, mobilizing, and unrelenting, The Water We Swim In is a poetic revolution, a manifesto for all who believe in fighting for more.
Christian’s poetry is a safe space for wicked and sinister femmes who hate imperialism. They are a queer, Filipinx, artist, educator and community organizer based in Chicago. Though she has a soft spot for the Midwest, part of her will always be in South East Asia (Cebu and Saigon) where she grew up. She is the founder and Creative Director of Luya, a poetry organization that centers the stories and experiences of people of color. Alongside their comrades at The Digital Sala, Christian is dreaming up alternative visions of what radically flexible, community-centered, revolutionary writing spaces can be.
