A companion book to the film Birthmark by Lester Alfonso (Producer, Director, Writer, and Editor) featuring excerpts from the original journal sources of the voice-over narration with a collection of photographs taken for the film.

“It’s not only about the marks we are born with but the marks we imagine for ourselves.”

Inspired by a flashback about his birthmark, filmmaker Lester Alfonso is convinced that making a film will help confront a distant trauma rooted in cultural superstition. A follow-up to his award-winning film Twelve (2009), BIRTHMARK is a wry, sensitive, and candidly confessional exercise in creative anthropology. Soliciting fellow mark-bearers to add their testimonies to his own, Lester documents his journey to find peace and forgiveness, and to quiet the voice in his head.