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Enjoy this audio recording of “alabo” by Sylvia Mercedes Beato from issue 30:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here.

Sylvia Beato-Davis is a writer and an educator. Her work revolves around the phenomenology of the body, the politics of linguistics, and post-colonial identity. Her current project attempts to dismantle narratives built from systems of knowledge acquisition, including the nation-state, formal institutions of learning, and cultural mythologies. She borrows from the tradition of documentary poetics to incorporate journalistic and visual texts in order to provoke, push against, and question concepts underlying truth. Her research interests focus on how youth use language to understand and navigate their position as first or second generation Americans. Centered primarily in Spanish-English bilingual spaces, she is committed to understanding ways in which culture shapes language use and change. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and their dog.