Praise & Awards

performance:

“Aimee Suzara’s performance work is more than just good spoken word performance, she’s a keen social analyst as well.  Aimee is bringing themes to light that beg to be handled – race and gender, the complexities of immigration and colonization, queer lives and how we navigate our human complexities in the everyday world.  By opening dialogue on these themes using poetry, performance and storytelling, Aimee makes a vital contribution. Audience members begin to see themselves in her stories and to feel the blend of anger and compassion that must arise in order for us to re-craft a more just world.”  – Kimberly Dark, performer/educator

“Aimee Suzara embodies her poems with every word, phrase, nuance of emotion, meaning and beat. She mesmerizes you with the sound and music of her voice and her passionate delivery, which you hear even without her there. From the yearning for home in her elegiac “Dahil sa iyo. . .” and painful memories of Pilipinas dying of cancer near a U.S. military dumpsite, to her erotic salsa of sexual triumph, Aimee pulls us into her world of pain and beauty and we are held captive.” – Genny Lim, poet and playwright

“Aimee is a prolific artist whose Pagbabalik Project has challenged me to reflect upon and explore the roles of culture, memory, migration and “home” in my own work more deeply. Her work is thought-provoking and evocative!” – Kenji Liu, Freelance Writer

“This show is what Fil-Ams need to begin to dialogue about our experiences as visitors in our homeland and the similarities other immigrants in the U.S. share.” – Audience Member, Pagbabalik (Return)

“There are artists who people remember as speaking to a generation. And I think that’s what Aimee’s becoming. She represents a generation of young people searching for their roots.” – Jennifer Soriano, cultural worker

writing:

“Whether it’s a lychee tree or a fake Rolex, a science experiment or erasure, the poems in this collection act as findings, the bearer of family secrets; they perform myth and memory on the page.  Broken, the voices are put together in an assortment of lyric and document, call and response.  Historical time is in motion, frozen, revised, projected and Suzara is there to catch the sound of ‘left-behind time;’ it whispers and then it sings; it suggests and then it declares.  Above all, it truly witnesses.” – Willie Perdomo, author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime and Smoking Lovely (winner of the PEN Open Book Award)

“What is a testimonio but a body full of prayer. What is evidence but the salt left behind and the words left to record them. These poems – brimming with the skins and undersurfaces of histories – are gifts sung forth by Aimee Suzara, to listen and to honor both our dead and our unborn, our own blood family and those who we have never met except as fragments and footnotes. What is this chapbook – Finding the Bones – but a reminder to us to suture together our layers into paths to swallow whole.”  – Ching-in Chen, poet, author of The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi Books)

“the space between is a deeply felt, artful book. In the poems that comprise this collection, Aimee Suzara skillfully evokes memory, family, political life and the life of the body. ” – Laura Moriarty, Deputy Director, Small Press Distributions

“Pagbabalik searches beneath the veneer of identity to explore the hidden pains and passions of a past embedded not only in name and family, but in the skin, the terrain.” - Elmaz Abinader, award-winning author and Professor of English

“This exciting new voice examines the ever-changing states of the body, vision, generations of women and their relationships to concepts of home. Aimee Suzara reveals her gifts as poetic witness, detached yet simultaneously present, often longing for proximity, be it through dancing the salsa or kindling memories where “kundimans crooned.” When Suzara writes “maybe I am crazy but I will always catch a piece of you when we grace hands,” I remember why I admire these poems so much – indeed, they are treasures of questions and grace.” – Lee Herrick, author of This Many Miles from Desire

teaching / arts education:

“Aimee is a performer… I mean that she brings her authenticity and connection as a performer with her even as she is transferring that knowledge and experience to her students. Always embodying her art – I think this is what makes her a strong, vibrant instructor.” – workshop participant

“Aimee Suzara is an incredible teacher, mentor, and performer. Through this class, she shared her knowledge in writing, capturing, describing, and telling stories that moved me to write and perform in ways I had never done before. I highly recommend taking a class with her, regardless of one’s level of training. Aimee worked with me 1-on-1, given my limited experience with writing skills, and allowed the writer in me to emerge.” – workshop participant

“My skills in writing and performing changed for the best. I have more confidence in myself as a writer and performer; and the warm up exercises in particular were great because they helped me relax and get focused both during the workshop sessions and final performance.” – workshop participant