Description
Book SynopsisLetisia Cruz's latest collection,
Migrations & Other Exiles, many years in the making, includes poems that began as simple explorations of the poet's past and as a way of accepting the violence of her youth without fear or self-judgment. Cruz's parents immigrated to the U.S. when she was a child. A few years later, her father was murdered in the hallway of their apartment building in New Jersey. After his death, Cruz's mother remarried into a deeply abusive relationship that nearly ended her life. These poems are rooted in the violence of those years. They explore immigrant issues, exile, Latina/minority women's issues, the death of father, mother's experience with domestic violence, and the relationships of her youth.
Trade ReviewWith a Bachelardian dreaminess and a poetic language that is both sensuous and incisive,
Migrations and Other Exiles questions the contradictory nature of human love. Right from the opening poem, "Promise," the speaker attempts to shape an unidentified other into a graceful swan-like survivor only to renege: "I carved her neck long / so that when the rains came / she might hold it above / water. You will not drown, / I promised her. But then her / mouth and eyes filled and I / let them." What begins with hope, complex and lucent--a flight of spirit--often ends with the rarity or inability to fly: "Remember that one time / we flew? Like we were birds / with thrift-store wings." Other times, it's the literal, hard-hitting world of self-harming burns and gunshots that violate the boundaries of self. Precise and elegant, redemptive in its musicality and stunning imagery,
Migrations and Other Exiles is a remarkable, stand-out, collection." - Dzvinia Orlowsky
