Keana Aguila Labra
ISBN: 978-1965439012
Cover Art: Maria Bolaños
Book Design: Kelly Ritter
Paper | 6 x 9 | 114 Pages
Publication Date: February 26, 2025
Distributors: Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Price: $20
Synopsis
The Language of Unbreaking by Keana Aguila Labra is her fourth poetry collection, offering a deeply personal exploration of the author’s memories, ranging from reflections on family and self to broader themes of connection. Through the seamless blend of Cebuano and Tagalog, Labra crafts poems that weave together vibrant, delicate recollections, sometimes anchoring them in physical artifacts that hold profound emotional weight. The words themselves feel like they unravel the very fabric of memory, pulling readers into intense emotional capsules. Labra’s deep love for family, home, and community resonates throughout the book, offering a powerful and heartfelt expression of belonging. There are moments of loss that can break the reader’s spirit, yet these same poems provide a sense of catharsis, as if the reader is finally receiving the balm they’ve longed for. Labra’s physicality is present in the poems, with some exploring the raw autopsies of pain and suffering, while others celebrate the joys of the body and life. The interplay of Tagalog and Cebuano echoes the natural world’s reclaiming of urban spaces, infusing the poems with a sense of renewal. The Language of Unbreaking is a collection that functions as both a prayer for healing and a powerful litany of hope, dissolution, and redemption.
Advance Praise
“Keana Aguila Labra’s The Language of Unbreaking is a lyrical odyssey through the labyrinth of identity and heritage, where every verse is a stepping stone on the path to reclaiming self. This collection is necessary and is a dance between the past and the present, a conversation between the known and the unknown.”
—Tshaka Campbell, Santa Clara County Poet Laureate 2022-2023
“Keana Aguila Labra razes language and rebuilds it as her speaker moves in an arc through generations and lineages. With Tagalog and Cebuano phrases, the poet braids memory and talk stories taut with ache and wonder. The Language of Unbreaking brilliantly presents an autoethnography of grief and place, inviting us to explore love as landscape, and what ultimately holds a family together.”
—Aileen Cassinetto, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow
“Through the seamless blend of Cebuano and Tagalog, Keana Aguila Labra crafts poems that weave together vibrant, delicate recollections, sometimes anchoring them in physical artifacts that hold profound emotional weight. The words themselves feel like they unravel the very fabric of memory, pulling readers into intense emotional capsules. Aguila Labra’s deep love for family, home, and community resonates throughout the book, offering a powerful and heartfelt expression of belonging.”
—Belana Labra, Sampaguita Press Editor
Keana Aguila Labra (they/them/she/her) is a queer Cebuana Tagalog Filipinx genre- and gender-fluid/non-binary poet, editor, and writer-in-diaspora residing on stolen Ohlone Tamyen land. She works to provide a safe literary space for underserved and underrepresented communities as co-Editor-in-Chief of Marías at Sampaguitas and co-Founder of the BIPOC/LGBTQIA+ focused independent publishing house, Sampaguita Press. Outside of MAS & SAM, they are the co-Director of the Santa Clara County Youth Poet Laureate Program alongside Janice Lobo Sapigao and Karla Reyes-Santiago. She served as one of the Honorary Santa Clara County Poets Laureate in Oct. ’21 alongside Lorenz Mazon Dumuk. Her poetry was nominated for Best of Net in 2019 and 2020. They worked to bring jazz education to the students of the Franklin-McKinley District with nonprofit San José Jazz for the 2022-2023 school year. They are the current SVCreates SVLaureate & Content Emerging Artist for 2023. She is a proud recipient of the Lucas Artists Residency Program Fellowship through Montalvo Arts Center and the So-Youn Kim Creative in Residence Fellowship through the Ruby. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, No Saints (Lazy Adventurer Publishing, 2020) and Mohilak (Fahmidan Co. & Publishing, 2021) and Kanunay (Self-Published, 2022).