Have You Been Long Enough at Table
Zando · Paperback · September 26, 2023
Winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry Finalist for the Vermont Book Award Finalist for the New England Book Award Finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award “Marvelous.”—Terrance Hayes Taking its title from Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Leslie Sainz’s Have You Been Long Enough at Table explores the personal and historical tragedies of the Cuban American experience through a distinctly feminine lens.
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- Who it’s for
- Lyric and associative poems bring Cuban American history, family grief, and women’s emancipation into conversation.
- Themes
- Cuban American experience, Displacement and inherited exile, Cuban women's emancipation
- Pacing
- Reflective
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Winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry Finalist for the Vermont Book Award Finalist for the New England Book Award Finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award “Marvelous.”—Terrance Hayes Taking its title from Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Leslie Sainz’s Have You Been Long Enough at Table explores the personal and historical tragedies of the Cuban American experience through a distinctly feminine lens.
Continue reading
Formally diverse with echoes of Spanish throughout, this debut collection critiques power and patriarchy as weaponized by the governments of the United States and the Republic of Cuba. In investigating the realities of displacement and inherited exile, Sainz honors her imagined past, present, and future as a result of the “revolution within the revolution”—the emancipation of Cuban women. Through lyric and associative meditations, Sainz anatomizes the unique grief of immigrant daughters, as her speakers discover how family can be a microcosm of the very violence that displaced them. What emerges is a spiritual blueprint for disinheritance, radical self-determination, and the nuanced examinations of myth, ritual, and resistance.
History at the Table
Lyric and associative poems bring Cuban American history, family grief, and women’s emancipation into conversation.
Come here for
- A distinctly feminine lens on displacement and inherited exile
- Spanish echoes alongside meditations on myth, ritual, and resistance
Expect
- Formally diverse poems that question power and patriarchy
- An intimate reckoning with family, grief, and self-determination
Where it sits
| Hispanic American Poetry | 59% |
|---|---|
| Caribbean & Latin American Poetry | 55% |
| LGBTQ+ Poetry | 52% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Hispanic American Poetry
- Women Poets
- Authors
- Leslie Sainz
- Publisher
- Zando
- Published
- September 26, 2023
- Format
- Paperback
- Theme
- Cuban American experience · Displacement and inherited exile · Cuban women's emancipation
- Reading lane
- Hispanic American Poetry