Poems of Diasporic Joy

The gate at City of Asylum’s Alphabet Reading Garden bears poet Toi Derricotte’s audacious words: “joy is an act of resistance.” This program features four poets whose work explores the intersection of grief, loss, and the diaspora experience—reframed to focus not on “the trauma of it all,” but on the ways art depicting this experience can shed the labels of “trauma-porn” or “diaspora-porn” and instead turn into “diaspora-joy” and “diaspora-community.” These featured poets are Arthur Kayzakian, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Joy Priest, and Gaia Rajan.