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Overview
In this stunning debut, poet José Olivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between. Combining wry humor with potent emotional force, Olivarez takes on complex issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and immigration using an everyday language that invites the reader in. Olivarez has a unique voice that makes him a poet to watch.
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is a co-host of the podcast, The Poetry Gods. A winner of fellowships from Poets House, The Bronx Council On The Arts, The Poetry Foundation, and The Conversation Literary Festival, his work has been published in The BreakBeat Poets and elsewhere. He is the Marketing Manager at Young Chicago Authors.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781608469543 |
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Publisher: | Haymarket Books |
Publication date: | 09/04/2018 |
Series: | BreakBeat Poets Series |
Pages: | 80 |
Sales rank: | 162,182 |
Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
I 1
(Citizen) (Illegal) 3
My Parents Fold Like Luggage 4
Mexican Heaven 5
River Oaks Mall 6
My Therapist Says Make Friends with Your Monsters 7
Boy & The Belt 9
The Voice in My Head Speaks English Now 10
Rumors 11
II 13
Mexican Heaven 14
Ode to Cheese Fries 15
I Wake in a Field of Wolves with the Moon 17
Note: Rose that Grows from Concrete 18
Ode to Cal City Basement Parties 19
Not-Love is a Season 20
Mexican Heaven 22
On My Mom's 50th Birthday 23
Hecky Naw 24
Ode to Scottie Pippen 26
III 27
Mexican Heaven 28
The Day My Little Brother Gets Accepted into Grad School 29
I Tried to Be a Good Mexican Son 30
I Walk into Every Room & Yell Where the Mexicans At 31
Mexican American Obituary 32
White Folks Is Crazy 33
Mexican Heaven 35
I Ask Jesus How I Got So White 36
Poem in Which I Become Wolverine 37
When the Bill Collector Calls & I Do Not Have the Heart to Answer 39
Mexican American Disambiguation 41
IV 43
Mexican Heaven 44
You Get Fat When You're in Love 45
Interview 46
My Family Never Finished Migrating We Just Stopped 48
If Anything Is Missing, Then it's Nothing Big Enough to Remember 49
Sleep Apnea 50
Mexican Heaven 51
Note: Vaporub 52
Summer Love 53
V 55
Mexican Heaven 56
Poem to Take the Belt Out of My Dad's Hands 57
My Mom Texts Me for the Millionth Time 58
I Loved the World So I Married it 59
Love Poem Feat Kanye West 60
Getting Ready to Say I Love you to My Dad, it Rains 61
River Oaks Mall (Reprise) 63
Gentefication 64
Guapo 66
Acknowledgments 67