Graduate Student Directory
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Biography, Education and Training
Rico is a Santa Cruz Native who received his BA in Literature with an emphasis on creative writing and poetry from UCSC in June of 2024. He is obtaining an MA in Native and International Rap and Dominant Structures, studying both the American and European genocides and how they compare through the lens of rap music, specifically German and Native American rap. He has published in magazines Interrobang and Porter Gulch Review, and one of his recent essays is featured on the 2024 UCSC Literature Undergrad Colloquium page. He has been a featured live reader and performer at UCSC's Stevenson College Open Mic, Indigifest, Y2KLoopFest, On Salon, and a regular featured guest on the KSQUID radio show The Sunday Dinner. His research focuses primarily on fostering both his German and Native American identities through an understanding of the effect of genocides and cultural marginalization as it is expressed through music, and using rap's tool of self expression by studying how rap can be used to echo the emotions of those affected by our colonial world, and what Jack Forbes calls the "wetiko" disease.
