About Me

Scholar-Critic-Artist bio:

Dr. Alan Pelaez Lopez (AfroZapotec) is a scholar, creative writer , cultural critic, and visual artist from Oaxaca, México.

Their academic scholarship attends to the quotidian realities of undocumented migrants in the United States, Black resistance in Mexico’s Costa Grande & Costa Chica, and the intimate kinship units that trans* and nonbinary people build in the face of judicial violence.

Their debut visual poetry collection, Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien (The Operating System, 2020), was a finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Award. They are also the author of the chapbook to love and mourn in the age of displacement (Nomadic Press, 2020), and the editor of When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent (University of Arizona Press, 2023).

In their collages, installations, and intervention art, they excavate erased histories of African and African diasporic resistance in Latin America, massacres and disappearances of Indigenous communities in Mexico and Central America, and alternative futures where Black Latin Americans leave with ease, abundance, and rest.

Alan’s cultural criticism appears in The Architecture Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Teen Vogue, Refinery29, The Nation, and more.

Dre. Alan Pelaez Lopez (afrozapoteca) es une académice, escritore, crítice cultural y artista visual de Oaxaca, México. Su investigación académica atiende a las realidades cotidianas de los inmigrantes indocumentados en los Estados Unidos, la resistencia afrodiaspórica en la Costa Grande y Costa Chica de México, y las unidades de parentesco íntimo que las personas trans* y no binarias construyen frente a la violencia judicial.

Su primera colección de poesía visual, Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien [Viajes intergalácticos: poemas de un extraterrestre fugitivo] (The Operating System, 2020), fue finalista del premio internacional del libro latino. También es autore del cordel to love and mourn in the age of displacement [amar y llorar en la era del desplazamiento] (Nomadic Press, 2020) y editore de When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent [Cuando el lenguaje se abrió: una antología de escritores negros queer y trans de ascendencia latinoamericana] (University of Arizona Press, 2023).

En sus collages, instalaciones y arte de intervención, excavan historias borradas de resistencia africana y de la diáspora africana en América Latina, masacres y desapariciones de comunidades indígenas en México y América Central, y futuros alternativos donde les latinoamericanes negros viven con facilidad, abundancia y descanso.

La crítica cultural de Dre. Pelaez Lopez aparece en The Architecture Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Teen Vogue, Refinery29, The Nation y más.

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THE REST OF THE TEA:

Alan Pelaez Lopez, Ph.D., was born in Mexico and constantly migrated between the state of Mexico, Mexico City, and Oaxaca’s Costa Chica. At five, Pelaez Lopez migrated alone to the United States, undocumented. As a minor, Pelaez Lopez began to make jewelry as a source of income, which is where they found their passion for art.

In 2010, Pelaez Lopez became artistically, socially, and politically involved in the immigrant rights movement as DREAM Act votes were about to take place. In 2011, after the legislation failed, Pelaez Lopez helped organize an 11-night and 12-day action on the steps of the Massachusetts State House to denounce and testify against the criminalization of immigrants in the state. Later, they took on leadership positions with the Student Immigrant Movement and shortly after, with the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project.

As a young organizer, Pelaez Lopez was mentored by undocumented Black migrants from the Caribbean and South America, which is what led them to develop an unapologetically Black and queer feminist vision for liberation. Through community organizing and strategizing, Pelaez Lopez has facilitated roundtable discussions with U.S. Senators and Representatives; protested detention centers in CA, TX, NY, and MA; and led political and popular education workshops in Washington DC, NY, MA, VT, CA, GA, TX, IL, PA, and CT.

In 2013, Pelaez Lopez was named a recipient of the National Youth Courage Award for their commitment to uplifting the voices of LGBTQIA+ undocumented immigrants in the United States. They accepted the award in New York City and were an honored guest at NYC Pride. In 2014, they moved to Los Angeles to complete a fellowship at the UCLA Labor Center where they launched their first visual storytelling project and have since worked in the field of public and digital narrative(s).

Pelaez Lopez is a former steering committee member and co-founder of both Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement and the Black LGBT Migrant Project (BLMP).

They earned a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

At the moment, Pelaez Lopez lives between the San Francisco Bay Area and Mexico City. They are currently undertaking two manuscripts: Chambalés, a trilingual choreopoem about AfroIndigenous (Zapotec, Mixtec, and Chatino) children who shape-shift into dragonflies to avoid settler-violence which has received support from the Museum of the African Diaspora, Submittable, and Brown University; and trans*imagination, a theoretical poetry collection that thinks through detention centers, federal prisons, and plantations as geographies invested in sequestering and dominating the imaginations of those deemed ungovernable.

They are also in development for Alien Enemy/ Enemy Friend (co-written with artist and filmmaker Jess X. Snow):

• • Drama/Fantasy/Period | North America | English/Mandarin/Spanish | 90 min

• • In a San Francisco restaurant, the young lives of Grace an undocumented Chinese kitchen worker, and Itzel, a Black server, become irreversibly entwined when they discover they have time-traveling abilities they cannot yet control.