Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza (born December 17, 1987)^[1] is an American poet from Riverside, California.^[2] On September 16, 2014, she published her first full-length poetry book, i'm alive / it hurts / i love it, with Boost House, a small Maine press. In this book, she covers topics like mental illness, coming out as a transgender woman, as well as more traditional subjects like love, anger, and beauty.^[3] Espinoza is also known for her use of artistic image macros,^[4] a form of art in which text is overlaid over an image that is usually a composite of one or more web-based images.^[5] In many of these macros, Espinoza attempts to challenge conservative viewpoints of gender and sex by using phrases such as "female bodied" in her macros to assert the differences between gender and sex assignment.^[5]

In other macros, Espinoza has discussed similar viewpoints on gender, gender-based violence, and transmisogyny.^[4] She critically examines the ways our society systematically promotes violence, especially against women and against transgender people. She simultaneously challenges traditional images of women and of femininity in art, an image which is largely created and policed by "(cisgender, heterosexual) white men."^[4]

Espinoza's works have been published by many online publishers, such as Shabby Doll House,^[6] Electric Cereal,^[7] and Voicemail Poems.^[8] Her work has also been published in ebook form, such as in Trans Planet, published by Alexandra Naughton through Be About It press.^[9] Her work has also been published in print, most notably i'm alive / it hurts / i love it, which was published by Boost House, and in The YOLO Pages, a collection of poems edited by Steve Roggenbuck, E. E. Scott, and Rachel Younghans.^[1] Both her poems and videos have been reviewed by Alt Lit reviewer and author Beach Sloth.^[10][11]

In August 2016 her second collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms.^[12]

References