Wanna Peek Into My Notebook? Notes on Pinay Liminality

Wanna Peek Into My Notebook? rigorously explores diasporic Pinay poetics and its reclaimed spaces, where the author firmly situates her work within a new literary genre of immigrant literature. Dr. Jean Vengua, mixed media artist and writer, notes, “What I admire most in Barbara Jane Reyes’ writing is her insistent, critical inquiry into the nature of the Pinay experience and writing. Wanna Peek into My Notebook? Notes on Pinay Liminality invites you into the author’s process, her willingness to “write through the ugliness and horror,” to examine and disrupt perceived notions about Pinays and WOC—whether in family, society, world literature, even in language itself. We learn about the contexts and history, the influence of family and community on her poetry. Reyes’ literary explorations have always ventured along multiple routes, yet she has developed a consistent path of questioning that becomes the writing itself—which, by the way, is not always in the form of poems, but also blog posts, memes, spoken word, journal excerpts, and essays. One somehow becomes a participant in her journey—one of struggle and joy, and complexity. This process has created a significant body of multifaceted work addressing the times, lives, and struggles of Pinays in the diaspora…”