"i have lived long and short enough
to remember the homegirls who
danced non-stop until three a.m.
the moon a parabola to our party"
BOOKS & CHAPBOOKS
“Her language is spare and surprisingly direct given the ghostly subject, a deliberate refusal to invite a subsurface reading. Sapigao provides stark contrast through renderings of her father’s staccato words: “Make sure not to leave behind what I write (what you write). Because what we write is what we need to keep in order for it stay (so it doesn’t fly away, to keep it from flying with the wind, to have it so that it doesn’t become flight or wind,) so it doesn’t go far away from us.” Sapigao’s closing pages reveal the danger of investigating family; she uncovers her father’s secret other family and realizes that she is the last in her family to know. Though solid ground can be difficult to find, Sapigao’s “imperfect translation” is worth the work of the journey.”
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Janice often writes about family, community, language, and the emotional worlds of personal, community, and institutional injustices. Janice likes to ask and raise questions in her work.
like a solid to a shadow is a documentary poetry collection about grieving, fatherlessness, and the limitations of language. Sapigao finds her deceased father’s love ‘letters’ to her mother: cassette tapes recorded in Ilokano, a language of which she has imperfect knowledge. The book moves through Sapigao’s process of translating and transcribing the tapes; playing with, learning, and unlearning the Ilokano and English languages. This book then launches from the tapes to ask “what can we really know?” when it comes to family lineages and personal histories. Through family trees, photos, and mapping, Sapigao articulates, distorts, and heals her knowledge of the man who is is her deceased father.
like a solid to a shadow (Nightboat Books, 2022)
microchips for millions is Janice Lobo Sapigao's first poetry book! It is a documentary and exploratory poetry collection about the exploitation of immigrant women in the Silicon Valley and those who built it all – those like the author’s mother. Through the use of binary code, the Filipino language, Ilokano; personal observation, and scholarship, microchips for millions draws out the social layers of the microchip, which are central to the global economy. The book interrogates Silicon Valley as an ideal place of innovation, technological advancement, and a highly populated concentration of computer-based startups. What is not popularly known is that the Silicon Valley is also home to flagrant and covert injustice where toxic chemicals and “clean” energy risk the lives of workers. Published by Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA), Inc., copies will be available after November 16, 2016.
microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, 2016)
With spare verse, strong prose, pink, yellow, orange, and blue genogram charts, and a box full of love letter cassette tapes, Sapigao's You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know investigates identity, family, language, and all the ways they're tied up together: "'Janice’ means ‘Jane’ means ‘John’ means I come from my father whose name is not his own."
you don't know what you don't know (Mondo Bummer Press, 2017)
toxic city is part of a documentary and exploratory poetry collection, microchips for millions, about the exploitation of immigrant women in the Silicon Valley and those who built it all – those like the author’s mother. Through the use of binary code, the Filipino language, Ilokano; personal observation, and scholarship, microchips for millions draws out the social layers of the microchip, which are central to the global economy. The chapbook interrogates Silicon Valley as an ideal place of innovation, technological advancement, and a highly populated concentration of computer-based startups. What is not popularly known is that the Silicon Valley is also home to flagrant and covert injustice where toxic chemicals and “clean” energy risk the lives of workers.