Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

This book has been on my TBR shelves for a while, ever since my friend Heather got me excited about the publisher Sundress Publications. When I got it out with a stack of other small poetry books for a #30daysofreadathon Instagram post, I couldn't make myself put it away with the others.

The collection is all about immigration, and as such, there are a few people in whose hands I'd like to foist this in. It starts out with poems about her family living in Los Angeles, telling stories of her relatives' immigrant experiences and how they have and do shape their lives. Then the collection shifts hard to modern immigration, and the poems are about Bermejo's experience volunteering in the desert with the group No More Deaths -- a humanitarian organization that seeks to stop the deaths of migrants in the desert by leaving water and supplies on the trails, and sometimes providing emergency first aid. This shift in focus is abrupt, and could be more integrated, but the poems in both sections are strong.

My favorites were "My Mother's History, or Pieces I've Gathered So Far," and the "Did You Know?" poems.… (meer)