Brandon Som is a Chicano and Chinese American poet who interrogates his cultural and personal history through meticulous interrogations of language. His most recent collection—Tripas—won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and has been described as “a collection that deeply engages with the complexities of the poet’s dual Mexican and Chinese heritage, highlighting the dignity of his family’s working lives, creating community rather than conflict.” Som writes poetry that listens to the memories of his family and interrogates language as a site of both cultural difference and communal understanding. His poems are as playful as they are poignant, “telephoning” across Chinese, Spanish and English. Rigoberto González describes Som’s work as forging a “cultural partnership that’s existed in the Americas for generations, though seldomly encountered in poetry.” While Som tells his own personal story, he also articulates the wider history of immigration, working class labor, and cross-cultural identity.
Som is also the author of The Tribute Horse (Nightboat Books), which won the 2015 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He lives in San Diego, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation and teaches literature and creative writing at UCSD.
Som’s reading will be followed by conversation with Yona Harvey in Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, February 10 at 7 p.m. Free & open to the public. Books will be sold and a signing will follow. Livestream also available on the BDPC YouTube page.
