Author Archive
“I used to think that I had to choose between the page and the musical aspect of it”: An Interview with Kelly Harris-DeBerry
Harris-DeBerry writes about freedom like someone who has felt the word in her mouth for years, felt the shape and sound of it, and has used the instruments of her voice and her page to translate it into something we can all understand.
The Power of Oral Stories in The Distant Marvels
Keeping the stories, the myths, the facts, and the losses of the Cuban people alive is important. Telling these stories is an act of active resistance against the washing away of the Cuban people who have toiled under colonizers and dictators.
The Ghosts of the Unseen in The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You
Maurice Carlos Ruffin writes about fathers trying to reach their sons, about peoples recently released from prison, about fathers with dead daughters, about people experiencing homelessness, showing the erasure that they feel by writing about these unseen, and about the ghosts that try to reach them.
Storytelling and Inherited Trauma in Of Women and Salt
As we read Gabriela Garcia’s debut novel, we come to understand that because of the trauma generations past experienced, stories get silenced, whether because the people involved die prematurely or because they are so traumatized that they hope that by silencing their stories they can stop their own pain—or
Inherited Trauma in We Cast a Shadow
What the narrator of Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s debut novel doesn’t fully comprehend is that he is worried about his son inheriting trauma from him. Inheriting something that cannot be wiped away.
Dreams and Death in Karisma Price’s I’m Always So Serious
Price’s poems often play with dreams, with alternate realities. Price writes about these dreams, these alternate realities, by using metaphor, by making lists, in which one person, one object, one thought, lives different realities. Love poems here have the names of the dead. Poems repeatedly turn serious.
Juan Felipe Herrera’s Poetry for the People
Many of Juan Felipe Herrera’s poems are dedicated to those who have died tragically, victims of violence. Herrera has made the choice to try to engage with these acts of violence, and to act with love for the lives lost.
Cooking as an Heirloom in Memorial
Early on in Washington’s new novel, Benson asks his partner’s mother for a story about her son. She says that stories are heirlooms, explaining that they are “a personal thing…You don’t ask for heirlooms. They’re just given to you.” She tells Benson this while she is cooking. But by
Matters of the Sea / Cosas del mar and the Gulf between Homes
“Every time I go to Cuba, I spend the first moments after I’m settled walking over to El Malecon and sitting by the sea.”
Hurricanes and Home-Building in If I Survive You
Jonathan Escoffery’s debut novel shows us how the people of Miami try to survive both the day-to-day obstacles and the hurricanes that threaten to destroy their houses, their jobs, their city, before they can even turn it into the home they want.