Bilingual Autobiographical Collage

This workshop explores bilingual identity and memory through fragmented storytelling and cross-media writing practices. Participants will craft a hybrid writing by weaving together journal entries, archive materials, poetry, and photographs. Through intentional language switching, they will reflect on how different tongues shape emotions and perspectives. The session will include guided writing prompts, creative exploration of personal and/or public archives, and experimentation with visual and digital storytelling techniques. Participants will share their work in small groups, discussing how language and medium influence self-expression. By the end, participants will have a unique autobiographical piece that embodies the complexity of language, media, and reflective memory.

*This workshop is hosted by the Hispanic Studies Department and made possible through a Chancellor’s Grant for Addressing Bias and Bigotry, and the support of the HHDJ (Health Humanities and Disability Justice) Initiative.

Bio

Elena Cardona is a photographer, poet, scholar, and independent curator based in California, USA. She understands poetic creation as auto-theory, self-reflective and performative practice around memory, territory and experience. Her poetics is perhaps best depicted by Measures of the Distance, an artistic project related to her own experiences of mourning and migration, that combines collages, videos and poems. She holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from the University of California, Riverside, and currently is serving as Visiting Assistant Professor at Soka University of America.