Strophe: Ode to Patriarchy

Strophe offers eight chapters of prose-poetry reflections about growing up mixed-race (Filipino/white) in a mixed family, and about the author's uncle who dies of HIV-related illness in 1997, which causes the author's father to break down into an alcoholic spiral. The section uses a “theory in the flesh” method to touch upon the author's suicidal ideation from having grown up queer and brown in a very white and Christian environment, and his journey to escape himself by traveling and living in Asia. The section begins and ends with the birth of his son and the anxieties of moving to Vancouver to become a professor of social justice.