We could not end Poetry Month without offering some recommended titles to read. On this list, we have included titles for children and adults, with a mix of both older and newer titles. We hope you enjoy the power of poetry and leave you with one question: How can you incorporate more poetry in your day-to-day life?
Plantains and Our Becoming by Melania Luisa marte
Poet and musician Melania Luisa Marte opens PLAINTAINS AND OUR BECOMING by pointing out that Afro-Latina is not a word recognized by the dictionary. But the dictionary is far from a record of the truth. What does it mean, then, to tend to your own words and your own record--to build upon the legacies of your ancestors?
In this imaginative, blistering poetry collection, Marte looks at the identities and histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black diasporic experience. Through the exploration of themes like self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational trauma, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood.
The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: Latinext Edited by Felicia Chavez, José Olivarez, and Willie Perdomo
A BreakBeat Poets anthology that opposes silence and re-mixes the soundtrack of the Latinx diaspora across diverse poetic traditions.
Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora
This gorgeous debut speaks with heart-wrenching intimacy and first-hand experience to the hot-button political issues of immigration and border crossings.
A Song of Frutas by Margarita engle and illustrated by sara palacios
When we visit mi abuelo, I help him sell
frutas, singing the names of each fruit
as we walk, our footsteps like drumbeats,
our hands like maracas, shaking...
The little girl loves visiting her grandfather in Cuba and singing his special songs to sell all kinds of fruit: mango, limón, naranja, piña, and more! Even when they're apart, grandfather and granddaughter can share rhymes between their countries like un abrazo--a hug--made of words carried on letters that soar across the distance like songbirds. Also available in Spanish.
From the Bellybutton of the Moon and Other Summer Poems: del Ombligo de la Luna Y Otros Poemas de Verano by Francisco X. Alarcón illustrated by Maya Gonzalez
With a poet's magical vision, Alarcón takes us back to his childhood when he traveled with his family to Mexico to visit his grandma and other relatives. We travel with him in the family station wagon, across the misty mountain range to the little town of Atoyac. There, in the beloved town of his ancestors, we hear his grandma's stories, sample Auntie Reginalda's tasty breakfasts, learn about the keys to the universe, and take playful dips in the warm sea.
The lighthearted illustrations of Maya Christina Gonzalez perfectly capture the spirit of summer in Alarcón's Mexico where "colors are more colorful, tastes are tastier, and even time seems to slow down."
black god mother this body by Raina J. León
black god mother this body explores the divine, the ancestrally aligned, the natural rhythmed black woman in her embodied reality, particularly as mother. glorification of whiteness is death. this is a healing meditation, an extended song, an experimentation in augmenting reality that constantly threatens black mothers and children. it is also a covert communication in the hidden ways of trees. did you know that some can determine how to share resources through their roots and even support a cluster community in the dying of one tree so that others might be able to grow? león invites defiant and collective flourishing. this book integrates biomimicry, technology, afrofuturist practices and afrosurrealist revelations, and generational engagement even across human and nonhuman worlds. it boldly encounters the horrors of (digital) lynchings in the murders of black and brown peoples in spirit and in body while also uplifting new radical dreams. what we know to be true started as a dream; what is a nightmare can be countered boldly in communal power. here we find visual poems, halos in augmented reality, sonnets alongside couplet sequences, reinventions in form and the subversion of the "i" in favor of the "we". we find audacity against fear.
When we make it by Elizabet Velasquez
An unforgettable, torrential, and hopeful debut young adult novel-in-verse that redefines what it means to "make it," for readers of Nicholasa Mohr and Elizabeth Acevedo.
Sarai is a first-generation Puerto Rican question asker who can see with clarity the truth, pain, and beauty of the world both inside and outside her Bushwick apartment. Together with her older sister, Estrella, she navigates the strain of family traumas and the systemic pressures of toxic masculinity and housing insecurity in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn. Sarai questions the society around her, her Boricua identity, and the life she lives with determination and an open heart, learning to celebrate herself in a way that she has long been denied.
My AfroRican State of Soul: A Journey of Identidad, Struggle, Love & Faith by lucas rivera
My AfroRican State of Soul is a blend of narrative nonfiction and poetry that chronicles Lucas Rivera's journey through life. This debut collection of poetry speaks to both budding young creatives and OG hip-hop heads who remember the dawn of an artistic era. As a BIPOC man, Rivera has struggled against traditional conceptions of masculinity toward a path of love, acceptance, vulnerability, and shared healing. His work speaks to everyone who has struggled with imposter syndrome, displacement and disempowerment.
As a child, he could speak to his father but would never actually know him. He grew into a man who learned to salvage healing from that loss, building an artistic vision for identidad, struggle, love, and faith that has spread across the United States. Art is a means of survival for him, from turntables to Latin dance to painting to stained glass to writing. These mediums opened his world, and allowed him to experience true love, accept faith and reconciliation, and eventually grace his own father with Aché (blessings) despite the pain of his absence.
Nostalgia Doesn't Flow Away Like Riverwater by Irma Pineda and illustrated by wendy call
A story of separation and displacement in two fictionalized voices: a person who has migrated, without papers, to the United States for work, and their partner who waits at home.
Nostalgia Doesn't Flow Away Like Riverwater / Xilase qui rié di' sicasi rié nisa guiigu' / La Nostalgia no se marcha como el agua de los ríos is a trilingual collection by one of the most prominent Indigenous poets in Latin America: Irma Pineda. The book consists of 36 persona poems that tell a story of separation and displacement in two fictionalized voices: a person who has migrated, without papers, to the United States for work, and that person's partner who waits at home, in the poet's hometown of Juchitán, Oaxaca.
According to Periódico de Poesía, a journal based at UNAM (Mexico's national university), when it was published in 2007, this book established Pineda "one of the strongest poets working in Zapotec, the [Mexican] Native language with the largest literary production."
Catrachos: Poems by Roy G. Guzmán
A name for the people of Honduras, Catrachos is a term of solidarity and resilience. In these unflinching, riveting poems, Roy G. Guzmán reaches across borders--between life and death and between countries--invoking the voices of the lost. Part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story, Catrachos finds its own religion in fantastic figures such as the X-Men, pop singers, and the "Queerodactyl," which is imagined in a series of poems as a dinosaur sashaying in the shadow of an oncoming comet, insistent on surviving extinction. With exceptional energy, humor, and inventiveness, Guzmán's debut is a devastating display of lyrical and moral complexity--an introduction to an immediately captivating, urgently needed voice.
Ruddy Lopez is an educator, writer, and editor who was raised in Inglewood, California. She attended California State Long Beach, where she obtained a BA in English Literature and English Education. In her spare time, Ruddy enjoys reading, drinking coffee, and exploring what her city has to offer.
