Purplish: Poetry Anger Publics (PB) (2025)

José Felipe Alvergue examines anger in American poetry, while reflecting on the permissible/policed cultural affects of our time. By way of BIPOC and QTPOC poets engaging with negativity--frustration, anger, distress--Alvergue argues that affects that reflect a counternarrative to benevolence challenge the colonial underpinnings of "American publics" as a concept of democratic participation and practice of community. Purple politics play out daily within spaces we rely on for shared comfort and belonging, namely neighborhoods, dinner tables, school board meetings, and social media. Purplish America describes the uncertain terrain of potential violence, potential conflict, distrust, and post-factualism upon which language and soma are still expected to thrive.
purplish challenges the idea of an objective or unbiased cultural rationale to purple regions in America by historicizing how anger has been systemically cleansed from the collective sentiments regarding nation-building throughout key moments of our national heritage.