When Love Was Reels: Poetry

“My parents crossed when I started losing / teeth. My memory of them is broken, chipped / away.” Expressing his longing not to be forgotten like so many abandoned children in his native country, José B. González writes about a young boy’s life—first in El Salvador under the care of his grandmother and later living with his uncle in New York City—in this moving collection of narrative poems that uses iconic Latin American and Latino films as a guiding motif.

In each poem, famous movie and TV ...