Hispanic Heritage Month: Virtual Book Display

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020 1872. The pampas of Argentina. China is a young woman eking out an existence in a remote gaucho encampment. After her no-good husband is conscripted into the army, China bolts for freedom, setting off on a wagon journey through the pampas in the company of her new-found friend Liz, a settler from Scotland. While Liz provides China with a sentimental education and schools her in the nefarious ways of the British Empire, their eyes are opened to the wonders of Argentina's richly diverse flora and fauna, cultures and languages, as well as to the ruthless violence involved in nation-building. This subversive retelling of Argentina's foundational gaucho epic Martín Fierro is a celebration of the colour and movement of the living world, the open road, love and sex, and the dream of lasting freedom. With humour and sophistication, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara has created a joyful, hallucinatory novel that is also an incisive critique of national myths.

Sebastian lived a childhood of privilege in Mexico City. Now in his twenties, he has a degree from Yale, an American girlfriend, and a slot in the University of Iowa's MFA program. But Sebastian's life is shaken by the Trump administration's restrictions on immigrants, his mother's terminal cancer, the cracks in his relationship, and his father's forced resignation at the hands of Mexico's new president. As he struggles through the Trump and Lopez Obrador years, Sebastian must confront his father's role in the Mexican drug war and navigate his whiteness in Mexican contexts even as he is often perceived as a person of color in the US. As he does so, the novel moves through centuries of Mexican literary history, from the 17th century letters of a peevishly polymathic Spanish colonizer to the contemporary packaging of Mexican writers for a US audience. Split between the US and Mexico, this stunning debut explores whiteness, power, immigration, and the history of Mexican literature, to wrestle with the contradictory relationship between two countries bound by geography and torn apart by politics.

Author of International Booker Finalist Not a River Internationally acclaimed author of Not a River , Selva Almada tackles the issue of gender violence in this hybrid work that follows in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood or John Hersey's Hiroshima .Evoking with intimate first-hand knowledge the heat and dust of provincial Argentina, with all its secrets and conflicting loyalties, Almada tells the stories of three young women murdered in the early 1980s, as the country was celebrating its return to democracy. Three deaths that were never brought to justice and occurred long before the term 'femicide' became widely known: nineteen-year-old Andrea Danne, stabbed in her own bed; fifteen-year-old María Luisa Quevedo, raped, strangled, and dumped in wasteland; and twenty-year-old Sarita Mundín, whose disfigured body washed up on a river bank. In this brutal yet deeply important book, Selva Almada weaves these and other cases of violence against women into a clear-eyed, multi-faceted portrait that has global resonance.This is not a police chronicle, although there is an investigation. This is not a thriller, although there is mystery and suspense. Hard-hitting and lyrical, Almada blazes a new trail in journalistic fiction.

Ariel del Mar is one of the most famous singers in the world. She and her sisters--together, known as the band Siren Seven--have been a pop culture phenomenon since they were kids. On stage, wearing her iconic red wig and sequined costumes, staring out at a sea of fans, is where she shines. Anyone would think she's the girl who has everything.  But lately, she wants more. Siren Seven is wrapping up their farewell tour, and Ariel can't wait to spend the summer just living a normal life--part of a world she's only ever seen from the outside. But her father, the head of Atlantica Records, has other plans: begin her breakout solo career immediately, starting with a splashy announcement on a morning talk show.  The night before, Ariel and her sisters sneak out of their Manhattan penthouse for a night of incognito fun at a rock concert in Brooklyn. It's there that Ariel crosses paths with Eric Reyes, dreamy lead singer of an up-and-coming band. Unaware of her true identity, Eric spontaneously invites her on the road for the summer. And for the first time in her life, Ariel disobeys her father--and goes with him.  Caught between the world she longs for and the one she's left behind, can Ariel follow her dreams, fall in love, and, somehow, find her own voice?

Iris Prince is starting over. After years of drifting apart, she and her husband are going through a surprisingly drama-free divorce. She's moved to a new house in a new neighborhood, and has plans for gardening, coffee clubs, and spending more time with her nine-year-old daughter Melanie. It feels like her life is finally exactly what she wants it to be. Then, one beautiful morning, she looks outside her kitchen window--and sees that a wall has appeared in her front yard overnight. Where did it come from? What does it mean? And why does it seem to keep growing? Meanwhile, a Silicon Valley startup has launched a high-tech wrist wearable called "the Band." Pitched as a convenient, eco-friendly tool to help track local utilities and replace driver's licenses and IDs, the Band is available only to those who can prove parental citizenship. Suddenly, Iris, a proud second-generation Mexican American, is now of "unverifiable origin," unable to prove who she is, or where she, and her undocumented loved ones, belong. Amid a climate of fear and hate-fueled violence, Iris must confront how far she'll go to protect what matters to her most. "Part social commentary and part thoughtful consideration of themes that include family, identity, transitions, perspectives, and hope" (Shelf Awareness), My Name Is Iris is an all-too-possible story that offers a brilliant and timely look at one woman's journey to discover who she can't--and can--be.

The Other Side of the Sea, the first novel by this major Haitian author to be translated into English, is riveted on the other shore--whether it is the ancestral Africa that still haunts Haitians, the America to which so many have emigrated, or even that final shore, the uncertain afterlife awaiting us all. With a grandmother and her grandson sharing the narration, this rich and concise tale covers an impressive span of Haitian history and emotion. Too old to leave her veranda, Noubòt reflects on her past, touching on the 1937 Parsley Massacre, in which thousands of Haitians died at the hands of Dominican soldiers, and laments the exodus of so many young people from Haiti, although, ironically, she dreamed of making the trip herself (her name means New Boat in Creole). Her story is juxtaposed with that of her grandson, Jonas, as he suffers the abandonment of friends--including his lover--who emigrated during the Duvalier dictatorships, even feeling an urge to join them. Perhaps most striking is the addition of a third voice--that of an anonymous passenger in steerage recounting a slave ship?s progress to the New World from Africa. This voice from long ago provides a powerful depiction of the sights, sounds, and smells of the Middle Passage and a fascinating counterpoint to the evocations of modern Haiti. CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht--the night his family loses everything. As her child's safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin. Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Durán, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita's mother. Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers--and never stop dreaming.

By studying multiple cultural expressions of Blackness throughout different regions of the Americas, the chapters of this book consider the relationship that social and historical processes such as sovereignty and colonialism have on cultural productions made by and about Black Latina women.

The image of biologically male people dancing while dressed in the traditional, colorful attire of Zapotec, Juchiteca, females stands in sharp contrast to the prevailing view of Mexico as the land of charros, machismo, and unbridled ranchero masculinity. These indigenous people are called los muxes, and they are neither man nor woman, but rather a hybrid third gender. After seeing a video of a muxe vela, or festival, sociologist Alfredo Mirandé was intrigued by the contradiction between Mexico's patriarchal reputation and its warm acceptance of los muxes. Seeking to get past traditional Mexican masculinity, he presents us with Behind the Mask, which combines historical analysis, ethnographic field research, and interviews conducted with los muxes of Juchitán over a period of seven years. Mirandé observed community events, attended muxe velas, and interviewed both muxes and other Juchitán residents. Prefaced by an overview of the study methods and sample, the book challenges the ideology of a male-dominated Mexican society driven by the cult of machismo, featuring photos alongside four appendixes. Delving into many aspects of their lives and culture, the author discusses how the muxes are perceived by others, how the muxes perceive themselves, and the acceptance of a third gender status among various North American indigenous groups. Mirandé compares traditional Mexicano/Latino conceptions of gender and sexuality to modern or Western object choice configurations. He concludes by proposing a new hybrid model for rethinking these seemingly contradictory and conflicting gender systems.

Cemís are both portable artifacts and embodiments of persons or spirit, which the Taínos and other natives of the Greater Antilles (ca. AD 1000-1550) regarded as numinous beings with supernatural or magic powers. This volume takes a close look at the relationship between humans and other (non-human) beings that are imbued with cemí power, specifically within the Taíno inter-island cultural sphere encompassing Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. The relationships address the important questions of identity and personhood of the cemí icons and their human ?owners? and the implications of cemí gift-giving and gift-taking that sustains a complex web of relationships between caciques (chiefs) of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola.   Oliver provides a careful analysis of the four major forms of cemís'three-pointed stones, large stone heads, stone collars, and elbow stones'as well as face masks, which provide an interesting contrast to the stone heads. He finds evidence for his interpretation of human and cemí interactions from a critical review of 16th-century Spanish ethnohistoric documents, especially the Relación Acerca de las Antigüedades de los Indios written by Friar Ramón Pané in 1497?1498 under orders from Christopher Columbus. Buttressed by examples of native resistance and syncretism, the volume discusses the iconoclastic conflicts and the relationship between the icons and the human beings. Focusing on this and on the various contexts in which the relationships were enacted, Oliver reveals how the cemís were central to the exercise of native political power. Such cemís were considered a direct threat to the hegemony of the Spanish conquerors, as these potent objects were seen as allies in the native resistance to the onslaught of Christendom with its icons of saints and virgins.  

Postcolonial theory has developed mainly in the U.S. academy, and it has focused chiefly on nineteenth-century and twentieth-century colonization and decolonization processes in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. Colonialism in Latin America originated centuries earlier, in the transoceanic adventures from which European modernity itself was born. Coloniality at Large brings together classic and new reflections on the theoretical implications of colonialism in Latin America. By pointing out its particular characteristics, the contributors highlight some of the philosophical and ideological blind spots of contemporary postcolonial theory as they offer a thorough analysis of that theory's applicability to Latin America's past and present. Written by internationally renowned scholars based in Latin America, the United States, and Europe, the essays reflect multiple disciplinary and ideological perspectives. Some are translated into English for the first time. The collection includes theoretical reflections, literary criticism, and historical and ethnographic case studies focused on Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, the Andes, and the Caribbean. Contributors examine the relation of Marxist thought, dependency theory, and liberation theology to Latin Americans' experience of and resistance to coloniality, and they emphasize the critique of Occidentalism and modernity as central to any understanding of the colonial project. Analyzing the many ways that Latin Americans have resisted imperialism and sought emancipation and sovereignty over several centuries, they delve into topics including violence, identity, otherness, memory, heterogeneity, and language. Contributors also explore Latin American intellectuals' ambivalence about, or objections to, the "post" in postcolonial; to many, globalization and neoliberalism are the contemporary guises of colonialism in Latin America. Contributors: Arturo Arias, Gordon Brotherston, Santiago Castro-Gómez, Sara Castro-Klaren, Amaryll Chanady, Fernando Coronil, Román de la Campa, Enrique Dussel, Ramón Grosfoguel, Russell G. Hamilton, Peter Hulme, Carlos A. Jáuregui, Michael Löwy, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, José Antonio Mazzotti, Eduardo Mendieta, Walter D. Mignolo, Mario Roberto Morales, Mabel Moraña, Mary Louise Pratt, Aníbal Quijano, José Rabasa, Elzbieta Sklodowska, Catherine E. Walsh

By sharing the collective experiences of Latinas in Higher Education, this book provides a diverse range of empowering testimonios from Chingonas living on their own terms, who are defining professionalism for themselves. Chingona means "badass" and is a term that has been reappropriated by Latinas as an expression of empowerment both inside and outside of education. This anthology is a collection of twelve voices, representative of the experiences of empowered Chingonas across various roles in higher education who identify as Latinas. This volume shares the knowledge of Chingona Latina women, including their thoughts around authenticity, identity, and the disruption of dominant cultural experiences within the institution. It also seeks to help other Latinas realize that they are not alone in their experiences with higher education. This book includes questions for reflection and writing prompts, allowing readers to consider their own lived experiences and envision change. This collection will be important reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in education-related programs, including Higher Education Studies and Educational Leadership, as well as courses in Ethnic Studies, Chicana/o/x Studies, Latinx/a/o Studies and Women's Studies. It also offers an invaluable learning opportunity for higher education professionals, leaders, and administrators, especially within student affairs.

Indigenous Materials in Libraries and the Curriculum: Latin American and Latinx Sources argues for a decolonial engagement with Indigenous peoples' creative work to build awareness of divergent epistemologies and foster healing in the learning community. This book explores how faculty and librarians can collaborate to develop inclusive library collections and curricula by supporting Indigenous peoples' reclamation of lands and languages. The authors present practices to build and disseminate collections that showcase the work of Indigenous creators from Latin America and compensate for historical erasure and misrepresentation. Consideration is also given to developing a non-hegemonic curriculum in Indigenous languages and cultures for faculty and students from multicultural backgrounds, particularly Latinx students of Indigenous descent. Above all, the book aspires to facilitate the participation of Indigenous peoples in the scholarly conversation to counteract epistemic and material extractivism and transform the scaffolding of higher education in the current global climate crisis. Indigenous Materials in Libraries and the Curriculum is inspired by a transhemispheric vision to elicit conversation between Indigenous peoples from Latin America (Abiayala) and North America (Turtle Island). The book will appeal to academics, librarians, students, and activists interested in Indigenous languages and cultures, decolonization, DEI initiatives, and library collection development policies that prioritize non-hegemonic narratives.

In 2008, In the Heights, a new musical from up-and-coming young artists, electrified Broadway. The show's vibrant mix of Latin music and hip-hop captured life in Washington Heights, the Latino neighborhood in upper Manhattan. It won four Tony Awards and became an international hit, delighting audiences around the world. For the film version, director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) brought the story home, filming its spectacular dance numbers on location in Washington Heights. That's where Usnavi, Nina, and their neighbors chase their dreams and ask a universal question: Where do I belong?   In the Heights: Finding Home reunites Miranda with Jeremy McCarter, co-author of Hamilton: The Revolution, and Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist of the Broadway musical and screenwriter of the film. They do more than trace the making of an unlikely Broadway smash and a major motion picture: They give readers an intimate look at the decades-long creative life of In the Heights.   Like Hamilton: The Revolution, the book offers untold stories, perceptive essays, and the lyrics to Miranda's songs--complete with his funny, heartfelt annotations. It also features newly commissioned portraits and never-before-seen photos from backstage, the movie set, and productions around the world.   This is the story of characters who search for a home--and the artists who created one.

Puerto Rico has been an "unincorporated territory" of the United States for over a century. For much of that time, the archipelago has been mostly invisible to US residents and neglected by the government. However, a series of crises in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, from outsized debt to climate fueled disasters, have led to massive protests and brought Puerto Rico greater visibility. Monica A. Jimenez argues that to fully understand how and why Puerto Rico finds itself in this current moment of precarity, we must look to a larger history of US settler colonialism and racial exclusion in law. The federal policies and jurisprudence that created Puerto Rico exist within a larger pantheon of exclusionary, race-based laws and policies that have carved out "states of exception" for racial undesirables: Native Americans, African Americans, and the inhabitants of the insular territories. This legal regime has allowed the federal government plenary or complete power over these groups. Jimenez brings these histories together to demonstrate that despite Puerto Rico's unique position as a twenty-first-century colony, its path to that place was not exceptional.

This volume introduces teaching methodologies for improving and incorporating representation, inclusion and social justice perspectives in the world language curriculum. Chapters present state-of-the-art research and cover many different language contexts, including French, Spanish, Mandarin, and Portuguese. Authors discuss difficult and hot topics, such as Critical Language Awareness, Critical Race Theory, non-binary language use in gendered languages, culturally sustaining curriculum, teaching heritage language speakers, and more. Ideal for graduate courses, students, and scholars in world language education, the volume offers new pathways and strategies for promoting diversity and equity in the classroom.

A estas alturas de la Historia de la Cultura y, en particular, de la Historia de la Literatura, resulta innegable que en el pasado a las mujeres se les intentó sustraer al festín del goce lector y, en consecuencia, también a la escritura. Siempre con viento adverso, siempre contracorriente, a codazos tuvieron que abrirse paso hacia esos placeres del intelecto como si de un preciado grial se tratara. Esas valientes mujeres lidiaron contra los prejuicios de su época y muchas de ellas escribieron sin contar con el beneplácito de sus familias; por no hablar de las que lo hicieron bajo un pseudónimo masculino e incluso a la sombra de sus maridos, es decir, en lugar de estos. De las poetas de la Grecia clásica a las novelistas decimonónicas, pasando por la eclosión mística medieval, el suyo fue un largo peregrinaje que tuvo mucho de travesía por el desierto. Pero el talento femenino acabó por imponerse, alumbrando una literatura de gran riqueza, que hoy se despliega a lo largo y ancho de la geografía en multitud de lenguas. Ahora, en pleno siglo XXI, todavía lejos de la paridad en el mundo de las letras, mientras el patriarcado aún se resiste a admitir sus culpas y así pues a enmendar el canon, este ensayo quiere ser una invitación a la reflexión y, ante todo, un ameno paseo por los caminos que llevaron a la literatura escrita "en femenino".

Las reivindicaciones de los pueblos indígenas de América Latina no fueron debidamente atendidas y resueltas por el liberalismo decimonónico, que defendía la igualdad jurídica formal, ni con las políticas indigenistas de los Estados en el siglo xx y el actual, ya que no iban a la raíz del problema, que es el colonialismo interno que sufren las comunidades y pueblos indígenas. La solución para el permanente conflicto entre los Estado y el indigenismo reside en el reconocimiento de los pueblos y comunidades indígenas como sujetos colectivos de derecho y en la refundación constitucional de Estados interculturales en América latina (no meramente pluriculturales o multiculturales), que exige el reconocimiento en un plano de igualdad de las culturas que forman parte de los Estados.Como esta refundación no ha tenido lugar y no forma parte de las agendas de los Estados, muchos pueblos y comunidades indígenas, cansados de esperar, han tomado cartas en el asunto construyendo ellos mismos sus Gobiernos autónomos, desarrollando otro tipo de ciudadanía y de ejercicio del poder y ensayando nuevas formas de entender el derecho y la política.La revolución zapatista de Chiapas es un ejemplo meridiano de cómo pueblos y comunidades indígenas están culminando su lucha con la propia construcción de su autonomía política ante los ojos de un Estado extraño, que controla y vigila, cuando no realiza maniobras directas o indirectas de hostigamiento.El libro, que el lector tiene en sus manos, consta de una parte general dedicada a cuestiones comunes y relevantes de los pueblos y las comunidades indígenas de América Latina y otra parte especial destinada a cuestiones ya más concretas de las comunidades indígenas del Estado mexicano de Chiapas, que presentan el interés de ir a la cabeza de las comunidades y pueblos nativos latinoamericanos en la conquista de su autonomía política y de sus derechos tradicionales.

"I tell you, God could care less about the poor. Tell me, why must we live here like this? What have we done to deserve this? You're so good and yet you suffer so much," a young boy tells his mother in Tom Rivera's classic novel about the migrant worker experience. Outside the chicken coop that is their home, his father wails in pain from the unbearable cramps brought on by sunstroke after working in the hot fields. The young boy can't understand his parents' faith in a god that would impose such horrible suffering, poverty and injustice on innocent people.Adapted into the award-winning film ...and the earth did not swallow him and recipient of the first award for Chicano literature, the Premio Quinto Sol, in 1970, Rivera's masterpiece recounts the experiences of a Mexican-American community through the eyes of a young boy. Forced to leave their home in search of work, the migrants are exploited by farmers, shopkeepers, even other Mexican Americans, and the boy must forge his identity in the face of exploitation, death and disease, constant moving and conflicts with school officials.In this new edition of a powerful novel comprised of short vignettes, Rivera writes hauntingly about alienation, love and betrayal, man and nature, death and resurrection and the search for community

Una vez más la música como hilo conductor. Cuarenta canciones son el pretexto, la columna vertebral, para esbozar los trazos y urdir la trama de una historia que se entreteje como cuando se hila un tapiz. Manolo tiene una ruta andada, sabe por dónde quiere seguir y por cuáles escaleras no quiere volver a bajar, tampoco a subir; porque al final el éxito, como decía Dylan, es una extraña manera de fracasar. Elisa, que podía seguir siendo la misma persona toda la vida, tendrá que descubrir qué puede hacer consigo misma después de esta casualidad que le permitirá no solo atestiguar la reinvención de un ser humano, sino la suya propia. Si la letra de una canción constituye el cincuenta por ciento de la misma o más, esta historia consigue el maridaje perfecto entre la letra y la música de una partitura en la cual dos destinos quedan acompasados por los mismos ritmos.

In this collection of over 100 poems, Richard Blanco has carefully selected poems from his previous books that represent his evolution as a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define "home," and bookended them with new poems that address those issues from a fresh, more mature perspective, allowing him to approach surrendering the pain and urgency of his past explorations. Pausing at this pivotal moment in mid-career, Blanco reexamines his life-long quest to find his proverbial home and all that it encompasses- love, family, identity and ultimately art itself. In the closing section of the volume, he has come to understand and internalize the idea that "home" is not one place, not one thing, and lives both inside him and inside his art. The poems range in form, voice, and setting, showcasing his command of craft, but in essence they are one continuous reflection on the existential question at the core of all of Blanco's poetry- how can we find our place in the world. All are characterized by his keen eye, deep sensibility, and polished craft, without pretense. This volume is a gift to Blanco's many readers but even more to those who have yet to discover that they can understand, and fall in love with poetry, that a poet can speak to them about his own and their own lives so profoundly, and that this poet, as Barack Obama discovered, can speak for all of us. Richard Blanco has been justly celebrated for his poetic gifts and his command of the many forms poetry can take, from the finely structured to the prose poem formats. His previous volumes have been praised by Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Alexander, and many others. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and dozens of other publications.

A timely and moving collection from the renowned inaugural poet on issues facing our country and people-immigration, gun violence, racism, LGBTQ issues, and more. Through an oracular yet intimate and accessible voice, Richard Blanco addresses the complexities and contradictions of our nationhood and the unresolved sociopolitical matters that affect us all. Blanco digs deep into the very marrow of our nation through poems that interrogate our past and present, grieve our injustices, and note our flaws, but also remember to celebrate our ideals and cling to our hopes. Charged with the utopian idea that no single narrative is more important than another, this book asserts that America could and ought someday to be a country where all narratives converge into one, a country we can all be proud to love and where we can all truly thrive. The poems form a mosaic of seemingly varied topics- the Pulse nightclub massacre; an unexpected encounter on a visit to Cuba; the forced exile of 8,500 Navajos in 1868; a lynching in Alabama; the arrival of a young Chinese woman at Angel Island in 1938; the incarceration of a gifted writer; and the poet's abiding love for his partner, who he is finally allowed to wed as a gay man. But despite each poem's unique concern or occasion, all are fundamentally struggling with the overwhelming question of how to love this country.

A story of separation and displacement in two fictionalized voices: a person who has migrated, without papers, to the United States for work, and their partner who waits at home. Nostalgia Doesn't Flow Away Like Riverwater / Xilase qui rié di' sicasi rié nisa guiigu' / La Nostalgia no se marcha como el agua de los ríos is a trilingual collection by one of the most prominent Indigenous poets in Latin America: Irma Pineda. The book consists of 36 persona poems that tell a story of separation and displacement in two fictionalized voices: a person who has migrated, without papers, to the United States for work, and that person's partner who waits at home, in the poet's hometown of Juchitán, Oaxaca. According to Periódico de Poesía, a journal based at UNAM (Mexico's national university), when it was published in 2007, this book established Pineda "one of the strongest poets working in Zapotec, the [Mexican] Native language with the largest literary production."

A 4-part poetry collection that explores women's roles in familial dynamics, immigration, and El Salvador's civil war while reflecting on the death of the poet's father A National Poetry Series winner, selected by the celebrated poet Reginald Dwayne Betts When COVID-19 broke and the United States closed the border to travel, Alexandra Lytton Regalado was separated from family back in El Salvador. She wrote Relinquendaentirely during lockdown as a meditation on cancer, the passing of her father, and the renewed significance of community. The central part of the collection focuses on her father during his 6-year struggle with cancer and considers how his stoicism, alcoholism, and hermitage might serve as mirror and warning. In contrast, she dedicates other poems to what it means for daughters, mothers, and wives to care for another as reflected in her relationships with the men in her life. Situated in the tropical landscapes of Miami, Florida and El Salvador, the poems also negotiate the meaning of home, reflecting on immigration and the ties between United States and El Salvador 30 years after her birth country's decade-long civil war. In a lyrical and often bilingual voice, Regalado explores the impermanence and the body, communication and inarticulation, and the need to let go in order to heal regrets.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR TIME and GOODREADS . A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street. It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shameis the culmination of her search for home-in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.