A powerful debut collection exploring one family’s pursuit of the American Dream
Sebastián H. Páramo renders a semi-autobiographical collection, utilizing self-portraiture and memory to uncover how his Texan, working-class, Mexican American identity shapes his relationship to his half brother and to his family’s burning desire to become American.
Portrait of Us Burning begins with the humble picture of an immigrant American family. This picture starts to disintegrate—and, ultimately, burns—with the need to understand an inciting event that haunts the family throughout the second half of the collection. As the poems gather force and the picture dissolves further, Páramo asks us again and again: What does it mean to burn while becoming a part of a whole?
Table of Contents
Where Your Father Was
I. Portrait of Us
Portrait of My Father as a Failed Romantic
Diego Rivera, the Flower Carrier, 1935
Self-Portrait as My Father, the Roofer
Where Your Mother Was
Portrait of a Firebird
Self-Portrait of the First Born's Questions
Footage of Us Playing
Watching The Lion King with My Father
Hibiscus
Dear Father
Self-Portrait as Half-Sibling
Diptych: Days of the Latch-Key Siblings
Portrait of Rivalry
Portrait of a Reunion
Self-Portrait While Holding My Mother’s Hand
The Laundromat Saint
Self-Portrait as My Mother’s Blood
Portrait of What He Didn’t Want
Unfaithful Father, Disobedient Son
When Father Sings
Portrait of a Boy Returning to Dirt
Stepping Through a Door
The Home Slaughter
Self-Portrait with Thunder & Exhaustion, or, Self-Portrait as My Father Crossing
Your Portrait in Smoke
Portrait of Family I
Footage of Me Tomorrow
Not Pictured:
II. Burning
Portrait of the Unsaid
Portrait of Vows
Self-Portrait Looking Backwards
My Mother’s Blessing
Portrait of My Parents’ Desire
Portrait of My Mother, as the Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego, and Señor Xolotl
After El Hombre by Rufino Tamayo
Big Tex Is on Fire!
Lost Footage of Us Playing
Studying Abroad in Mexico, Looking Up at Man of Fire by Jose Clemente Orozco
Footage of My Father Telling a Story about Dirt
When Father & I Speak
Father’s Advice
Footage from the Field
Sobbing in a U-Haul
Diptych: Dreams on Fire
My Father Never Speaks about His Father
Blood & Breath
Footage of Me Yesterday
Portrait of Us Burning
Everything Is on Fire
When My Mother’s Portrait Sings
Portrait of Family as a Bag of Worms
Portrait of Family II
Cajeta
Still Life with Salt on Fruit
Watching the End of the Film Paris, Texas
Forgive Me, Brother
Distant Father
The Ownership of the Night
Acknowledgments
