Stepmotherland (Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize)

Stepmotherland (Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize)

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

Stepmotherland is a tour-de-force debut collection about coming of age, coming out, and coming to America. Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes's first full-length collection, is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family, and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panamá to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes's work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life. Exploring a complex range of emotions, this collection is a celebration of discovery, from the discovery of America to the discovery of self, and the ways they may be one and the same. Holnes's poems experiment with macaronic language, literary forms, and prosody. In their inventiveness, they create a new tradition that blurs the borders between poetry, visual art, and dramatic text. The new legacy he creates is one with significant reverence for the past, which informs a central desire of immigrants and native-born citizens alike: the desire for a better life. Stepmotherland documents an artist's evolution into manhood and heralds the arrival of a stunning new poetic voice.


From the Forum

No posts yet

Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update

Recent Reviews

Your rating:

  • AlysonAlyza
    May 05, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    0
    comments 0
    Reply
  • View all reviews
    Community recs if you liked this book...
    Find this book in...