Jason Magabo Perez

b. 1981

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Jason Magabo Perez is the author of Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016) and This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017). Perez has also written and performed three live multimedia works—The Passion of El Hulk Hogancito (Kularts, 2009); You Will Gonna Go Crazy (Kularts, 2011); and Blue Bin Improvisations: Performing Yonie’s Archive (MexiCali Biennial, 2018). Blending poetry, prose, performance, film/video, and oral history, Perez’s body of work investigates the historical presence of colonization and state violence. A National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Grant awardee, formerly a featured artist at New Americans Museum and community scholar-in-residence at San Diego Public Library, Perez has performed at notable venues such as National Asian American Theatre Festival, International Conference of the Philippines, La Jolla Playhouse, Asian Art Museum SF, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Perez is an alumnus of the VONA writing workshops for writers of color and holds an MFA in Writing and Consciousness from New College of California and a dual PhD in Ethnic Studies and Communication from University of California, San Diego. Currently, Perez lives in San Diego, California and serves as Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at California State University San Marcos.

Tweeting @Jason Magabo Perez.

Photograph by Blake Schilling/CSUSM.

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Blending poetry, prose, performance, film/video, ethnography, and oral history, Perez relentlessly interrogates and experiments with art forms and practices while critically commenting on issues of race, gender, class, state violence, colonization, immigration, memory, and intimacy. Of central but not sole concern in Perez’s body of work is the haunting of U.S. v. Narciso and Perez (1977), a court case in which two Filipina migrant nurses, one of whom happens to be Perez’s mother, were framed by the FBI for murder, poisoning, and conspiracy. Exploring this and many other personal and political narratives, Perez’s interdisciplinary and multimedia body of work, indebted to all things hip hop and deeply influenced by the best and worst of U.S. popular culture, serves as a humble invitation to students, families, and local communities to reclaim and share their own stories. Presently, Perez continues to conceptualize, experiment with, and develop a methodology called “critical race poetics.”