Wildfire Reading Series Featuring Jasminne Mendez

Torch Literary Arts is proud to present an evening with Jasminne Mendez, author of and City Without AltarIslands Apart: Becoming Dominican American.

is a poetry collection and play in verse that explores what it means to live, love, heal and experience violence as a Black person in the world. The titular play in verse that sits at the center of the book seeks to amplify the voices and experiences of victims, survivors and living ancestors of the 1937 Haitian Massacre that occurred along the northwest Dominican/Haitian border during the Trujillo Era. Between the scenes of the play are “interludes” that explore a different kind of “cutting” and what it means to feel othered because of illness, disability and blackness. Ultimately, is a meditation on being/feeling “blacked out” by the archive, on the world stage and in one’s daily life.City Without AltarCity Without Altar

Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American

Jasminne Mendez…