Difficult Fruit

A collection of poems about coming into self-knowledge—of fighting for and winning personhood as a woman in the world—this offering from Trinidadian poet Lauren Alleyne grapples with personal experience. The poems form a lyric memoir of the author’s life, chronicling a journey that includes coming to terms with violence and loss, celebrating love and connection, and standing witness in the world that shaped that journey. The central poem, “Eighteen,” which narrates the aftermath of sexual a...