Christina Lux
Christina Lux is a poet and scholar who was born in Pasadena, California, and lived in Planada, California for several years before moving to Texas, then Québec, followed by 5 years in Cameroon, where she lived in both Bui and Yaoundé and then returned to the U.S. for university studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from the University of Oregon and a Certificate in Conflict Resolution from Cornell University. She is the author of War Bonds (2024). Her poetry has appeared in National Public Radio, the Houston Chronicle, and in textbooks by Oxford University Press. Bilingual in English and French, she also understands Pidgin and Spanish. She is on the Fulbright Specialist Roster until 2025 and able to work on short-term projects internationally.
War Bonds is a book of poems about survival in the face of conflict, from Iraq and Afghanistan, to #BlackLivesMatter, the war in Ambazonia and Cameroon, and gang violence in California's Central Valley. The book jumps back in time 100 years to the archive of a Chicago pianist and painter, Edna Cookingham, who worked with the YMCA in France to entertain the troops at the end of WWI.
Her letters, telegrams, diary, photographs, and war papers serve as source material for these poems. While Europe may have experienced demobilization and a peace process in 1919, the echoes of that conflict continue to be felt around the world, binding us still. The book explores how we move forward – bound together – after conflict, violence, terror, or mass trauma.