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Poetry, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features.
does sonhood hear me when i bite my tongue
does boyhood see me
made spectacle someplace called “home”
can they ever forgive me
kuya is a chapbook about coming to terms with transgender identity. This collection untangles the feeling of hiding before you ever get the chance to show yourself, as well as the beauty and terror of welcoming yourself back home. kuya engages with the author’s experience in all of its facets, from finding corners of acceptance in a Filipino family, to presenting themselves in professional spaces, to nights spent alone with a name unspoken.
These poems were written across four years of coming out, giving up, and then coming out again, dating as far back as the author’s high school days and as recently as this year. They have been ordered not in line with when they were written, but to reflect the journey of finding yourself (sometimes many times over) when you least expect it.
Sorin Bell is a Filipino-American university student based in NYC. They are pursuing a BA in Political Science. They live for coffee, botanical imagery, the smell of recent rain, summer nights, and their chosen family. Poetry, to them, is the shedding of light on unknown things. Their writing has been featured in the Live Poets Society of NJ’s Out Like A Lamb anthology, the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, and the Fordham Philosopher Society’s –phage journal series. More of his work can be found under @sleepy-penmarks on Tumblr, and they can be contacted by emailing soringnbell@gmail.com.