Lessons on Expulsion
Poems
Graywolf · Print & ebook · July 11, 2017
An award-winning and hard-hitting new voice in contemporary American poetry The first time I ever came the light was weak and carnivorous.
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- Who it’s for
- These poems meet family, faith, grief, and desire with candor across borders both literal and intimate.
- Themes
- Border and language, Sex, shame, and race, Survival amid xenophobia
- Genres
- Hispanic American Poetry, American Poetry, Political & Protest Poetry
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For younger readers: The Other Side of the River, If I Tell You the Truth, Don't Ask Me Where I'm From
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An award-winning and hard-hitting new voice in contemporary American poetry The first time I ever came the light was weak and carnivorous. I covered my eyes and the night cleared its dumb throat. I heard my mother wringing her hands the next morning. Of course I put my underwear on backwards, of course the elastic didn't work. What I wanted most at that moment was a sandwich. But I just nursed on this leather whip.
Continue reading
I just splattered my sheets with my sadness. —from “Poem of My Humiliations” “What is life but a cross / over rotten water?” Poet, novelist, and essayist Erika L. Sánchez’s powerful debut poetry collection explores what it means to live on both sides of the border—the border between countries, languages, despair and possibility, and the living and the dead. Sánchez tells her own story as the daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants and as part of a family steeped in faith, work, grief, and expectations. The poems confront sex, shame, race, and an America roiling with xenophobia, violence, and laws of suspicion and suppression. With candor and urgency, and with the unblinking eyes of a journalist, Sánchez roves from the individual life into the lives of sex workers, narco-traffickers, factory laborers, artists, and lovers. What emerges is a powerful, multifaceted portrait of survival. Lessons on Expulsion is the first book by a vibrant, essential new writer now breaking into the national literary landscape.
Border Crossings
These poems meet family, faith, grief, and desire with candor across borders both literal and intimate.
Come here for
- Poetry attentive to the strain between despair and possibility
- Unflinching attention to sex, shame, race, and family expectations
Expect
- A movement from personal experience toward many lives and forms of survival
- Urgent, direct poems rooted in life on both sides of the border
Where it sits
| Hispanic American Poetry | 99% |
|---|---|
| Political & Protest Poetry | 38% |
| American Poetry | 33% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Hispanic American Poetry
- Authors
- Erika L. Sánchez
- Publisher
- Graywolf
- Published
- July 11, 2017
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Border and language · Sex, shame, and race · Survival amid xenophobia
- Reading lane
- Hispanic American Poetry