Description
Book SynopsisAt once sharp and tender, this debut collection from Christine Larusso (winner of the Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize) overflows with all the sorrows and ecstasies, the violations and acts of revenge, of girlhood and women's coming-of-age. Set against the landscape of Southern California, where wide, wild expanses mingle with segregated sprawl, written from the viewpoint of a woman in a multiracial family,
There Will Be No More Daughters has one foot planted in the firm realities of patriarchal domination, racial unbelonging, sex, death, and intergenerational alcoholism-and another in vivid flights of dream and dissociation.
Trade ReviewThis first spell, the first marvel, of this collection is its primary word: No. A word as solid and sure as it is adolescent and reckless; a word of valiant resistance and of desolation. There is sorrow. There is shit-kicking. There is domesticity and there is a void. There is intimacy. There is ache. Few books, few poets, can handle all of this with as much care, perception, power and inquisition as Christine Larusso. She is a genius at gracefully walking this inner tightrope, then striking a match to it.
There Will Be No More Daughters reminded me of how pliable and immense and satisfying poetry can be." - Morgan Parker, author of
Magical Negro"Larusso takes the liminal world of her complex identity and turns it into a wild Southern California dreamscape where 'the histories won't stop calling from the grave' and where she enacts how these histories shape her and her family's inheritances. She takes great formal risks and lands them. I adore the ecstatic vision of this book, the nimble voice, and the book's baroque sensuality. Like Shane McCrae, Christine Larusso inscribes the inbetweenness with heart, intelligence, and guts." - Carmen Giménez Smith, author of
Cruel Futures"Christine Larusso's exquisite, fearless, and searching poems have changed the way I see, how I make sense of the mystery and power of girlhood, of home, of adolescence, of shame. 'I was a locked box with a clock inside,' Larusso writes, and an understanding that has long eluded me comes crisply into focus. Every word of
There Will Be No More Daughters is ignited with the ferocity of Larusso's mind. I am so deeply grateful for this book, and for this writer - I will never forget the truths I've found here." - Julie Buntin, author of
Marlena
