Announcing the Final Examination of Dani Sarta for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.
Lotería is a hybrid poetry collection that follows the life of the speaker as a queer, Hispanic transracial adoptee raised by a conservative Catholic family in Central Florida, focusing on their struggle to fit into the binaries assigned to and expected of them across religion, race, gender, and sexuality. This collection is separated into three sections, each expanding on the one before as the speaker journeys through life, exploring their identity and their connection with the world around them. In the first section, poems such as “(Non)Binary Star” and “Size 6 Woman Size 18 Daughter” sift through the speaker’s conflict of being a queer, adopted child and feeling like an outsider in their own home, particularly in relation to their adopted mother, while also exploring the way religion was routinely used as a vehicle for shame and obedience. Poems like “Poet as Wolfdog” and “Wolfdog as Poet” in the second section explore the speaker’s relationship with themself as they learn to push against the boundaries of the binaries they’re familiar with and to become more comfortable in expressing their identity as an adoptee while leaning into more fantastical language and imagery. The final section steps outside of the home of the speaker and considers the relationship between them, their body, and the world at large, in poems like “The Cycle of Life in Skagaströnd,” which turn the act of traveling into a spiritual experience. The use of hybrid forms such as numbered lists, dictionary definitions, and elongated prose throughout Lotería serve as tangible examples of the body and soul of the speaker as they navigate their existence between and across forms, roles, and binaries.
Committee in Charge:
Dr. Rochelle Hurt
Dr. Jocelyn Bartkevicius
Prof. Terry A. Thaxton
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