Once, a boy touched me on my nose, the squat slope unlike his own. If our bodies were land, his was full of ridges, cliffs dark under snow, jagged spectacles- and parting the folds together, we found mine: a small yellow plain. We fingered the grass. Felt its cold tear our fingers, our hands shifting, […]
Departing from her mother’s Japanese name, One Thousand Cranes, these poems bring a message of trauma and recovery, war and reconciliation, and the passage from personal shame to self-regard. They are historical, political, and personal in the same breath: from the memories of Shigeko Sasamori, Hiroshima survivor, to the author’s quieter struggle for dignity and respect in Albuquerque, New Mexico, resurgent city of the Southwest.
Passionate and sensuous, American Book Award winner Sasha Pimentel Chacon addresses both the mind and body in her debut book of poetry. The young Filipina poet proceeds with a sure understanding of the power of images to confront the instability of the world around her. Family, growth and decay, the politics of liberation are reflected with intensity.
Walking Backwards is about making a home when you are a nomad, and adding an American self to the many selves that the world’s myriad, bewildering places throw at one body. It is about how travel and restlessness wrench us and teach us about ourselves, how our losses compound our loves, and how endlessly absorbing the idea of home remains, particularly when we keep losing sight of it.
