In lush imagery of earth, sea, sky, flora and fauna, am-phib-ian traces a daughter's odyssey―through a web fractured relationships with both lovers and kin, experiences the poet calls a "physics of cruelty"―and through the flux of accompanying existential questions concerning personal identity. This collection is also the story of a spirit determined to survive the journey―appropriating in the effort whatever available tools and attributes―human or amphibian.

In Brilliant Imperfection Eli Clare uses memoir, history, and critical analysis to explore cure—the deeply held belief that body-minds considered broken need to be fixed. Cure serves many purposes. It saves lives, manipulates lives, and prioritizes some lives over others. It provides comfort, makes profits, justifies violence, and promises resolution to body-mind loss. Clare grapples with this knot of contradictions, maintaining that neither an anti-cure politics nor a pro-cure worldview can account for the messy, complex relationships we have with our body-minds. The stories he tells range widely, stretching from disability stereotypes to weight loss surgery, gender transition to skin lightening creams. At each turn, Clare weaves race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender together, insisting on the nonnegotiable value of body-mind difference. Into this mix, he adds environmental politics, thinking about ecosystem loss and restoration as a way of delving more deeply into cure. Ultimately Brilliant Imperfection reveals cure to be an ideology grounded in the twin notions of normal and natural, slippery and powerful, necessary and damaging all at the same time.

Kimberly Rodriguez, a first-generation Xicana Indigena artist, poet, and activist, invites readers on a transformative journey of self-discovery and empowerment through her book, Incantations Rituals for empowerment, reclamation, and resistance , serving as a catalyst for reclaiming our stories, truth, and power. In Incantations Rituals for Empowerment, Reclamation, and Resistance , author Kimberly Rodriuguez takes readers on a profound and transformative journey towards self-discovery and empowerment. Within its pages lies a poignant exploration of the human experience, interwoven with elements of spirituality, healing, and personal growth. At its core, Incantations Embodied serves as a triumphant homecoming—a return to the essence of one's being. It invites readers to embark on a sacred journey, emboldening them to embrace their true selves with unwavering honesty and compassion. Through Rodriguez's captivating stories, enlightening prose, and enchanting rituals, this book becomes a powerful catalyst for reclaiming our stories, our bodies, our identities, our voices, and ultimately, our power. In a world where societal norms and expectations often stifle individuality and self-expression, Incantations Embodied stands as a resounding call to break free from these chains. It seeks to dismantle the oppressive narrative that has been ingrained in our collective consciousness, urging us to question and challenge the colonized structures that have kept us disconnected from our own truth. The book serves as a powerful guide for self-realization, urging individuals to transcend their limitations and embrace their innate potential. With each turn of the page, a profound shift occurs—a blossoming of self-awareness, strength, and resilience. "Incantations are our liberation. With the power of words, we become conjurers, bringing our wildest dreams to life." - Kimberly Rodriguez

Poet and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series "Brown Girls" captures the experience of being a Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America, while exploring identity, violence, and healing. In this powerful and imaginative debut poetry collection, Fatimah Asghar nakedly captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in America by braiding together personal and marginalized people's histories. After being orphaned as a young girl, Asghar grapples with coming-of-age as a woman without the guidance of a mother, questions of sexuality and race, and navigating a world that put a target on her back. Asghar's poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests in our relationships with friends and family, and in our own understanding of identity. Using experimental forms and a mix of lyrical and brash language, Asghar confronts her own understanding of identity and place and belonging.

A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.

Homecoming is Alvarez's first published collection of poetry, a work of great subtlety and power in which the young poet returned to her old-world childhood in the Dominican Republic. Now this revised and expanded edition adds thirteen new poems.  Long before her award winning novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents , and In the Time of the Butterflies , Julia Alvarez was writing poetry that gave a distinctive voice to the Latina woman and helped give to American letters a vibrant new literary form. These more recent writings are still deeply autobiographical in nature, but written with the edgier, more knowing tone of a woman who has seen, and survived, more of life. Wonderfully lucid and engaging, toned with deep emotionality and a wry observation of life, the poems of Julia Alvarez stand next to her fiction to both delight us and give us lessons in living and loving.

A candid, sexy and wonderfully mood-strewn collection of poetry that celebrates the female aspects of love, from the reflective to the overtly erotic . • From the bestselling author of  The House on Mango Street and winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” — The New York Times Book Review “All poets would do well to follow the example of Sandra Cisneros, who takes no prisoners and has not made a single compromise in her language.” — Barbara Kingsolver, Los Angeles Times

From the celebrated poet Yrsa Daley-Ward, a poignant collection of autobiographical poems about the heart, life, and the inner self. Bone. Visceral. Close to. Stark. The poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward's collection bone are exactly that: reflections on a particular life honed to their essence--so clear and pared-down, they become universal. From navigating the oft competing worlds of religion and desire, to balancing society's expectations with the raw experience of being a woman in the world; from detailing the experiences of growing up as a first generation black British woman, to working through situations of dependence and abuse; from finding solace in the echoing caverns of depression and loss, to exploring the vulnerability and redemption in falling in love, each of the raw and immediate poems in Daley-Ward's bone resonate to the core of what it means to be human. "You will come away bruised. You will come away bruisedbut this will give you poetry."

Centering the experiences of black women allows for richer therapeutic practices for everyone. “Black feminisms have provided a foundation from which it becomes more possible to speak and write of interconnection―of a spirited life, soul, a natural mystic blowing through the air―and engagement with all of this in therapeutic practice.”   Part thesis, part memoir, and part poetry, this book is unlike any other therapeutic text. Psychotherapist and writer Foluke Taylor explores how the centering of black women’s experiences in therapeutic scholarship allows for greater space―space for wandering, for wondering, and for deepening narratives―in every therapeutic relationship. Beginning with the book’s poetic structuring, Taylor rejects the need for a streamlined solution, instead inviting the reader to take a different path through her crucial research―one that is unruly, nonlinear, and celebratory of the richer, fuller narratives allowed for by black feminisms.  

After six years of study and meditation, the author presents a book which takes the reader on a journey of the soul via the teachings of the great sorcerer, Don Juan. Like layers of an onion, the author reveals that there are worlds existing within our own that can be visited through dreams.

Edited with a Foreword by Aracelis Girmay, How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates famous poems and shines light on lesser-known poems by poet―and national treasure―Lucille Clifton (1936–2010). Lucille Clifton’s poetry defined strength through adversity focusing particularly on African-American experience and family life. Clifton’s poems were widely celebrated during her lifetime, and she received wide acclaim for her work including the National Book Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems continue to inspire a new generation of readers and writers in the 21st century. In How to Carry Water, formidable younger poet Aracelis Girmay (winner of the Whiting Award, GLCA Award, and the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award) introduces a selection of Clifton’s work that is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today’s tumultuous social and political moment.

"The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 may be the most important book of poetry to appear in years."--Publishers Weekly "All poetry readers will want to own this book; almost everything is in it."--Publishers Weekly "If you only read one poetry book in 2012, The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton ought to be it."—NPR "The 'Collected Clifton' is a gift, not just for her fans...but for all of us."--The Washington Post "The love readers feel for Lucille Clifton—both the woman and her poetry—is constant and deeply felt. The lines that surface most frequently in praise of her work and her person are moving declarations of racial pride, courage, steadfastness."—Toni Morrison, from the Foreword The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965�2010 combines all eleven of Lucille Clifton's published collections with more than fifty previously unpublished poems. The unpublished poems feature early poems from 1965�1969, a collection-in-progress titled the book of days (2008), and a poignant selection of final poems. An insightful foreword by Nobel Prize�winning author Toni Morrison and comprehensive afterword by noted poet Kevin Young frames Clifton's lifetime body of work, providing the definitive statement about this major America poet's career. On February 13, 2010, the poetry world lost one of its most distinguished members with the passing of Lucille Clifton. In the last year of her life, she was named the first African American woman to receive the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honoring a US poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition," and was posthumously awarded the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America. "mother-tongue: to man-kind" (from the unpublished the book of days): all that I am asking isthat you see me as somethingmore than a common occurrence,more than a woman in her ordinary skin.

FOR EVERY BLACK BOY is a book I’ve been writing my entire life — since the moments I took my very first breath in this world. For as long as I’ve lived, I’ve existed as a Black boy. This book recounts racialized experiences and other human discoveries through poetry and prose. Exploring topics like death, love, manhood, and sexuality, this text captures a complex and multilayered story. While this book was written with every Black boy at the center, I offer an invitation to anyone to step inside the world it creates. Through the writing process, there were several times when the poetry felt like it was being written through me instead of by me. I’ve never been a deeply spiritual person but I try to listen when my ancestors have something to say; I endeavor to honor them. This book is a gift; and, that is why the cover reads... "from JAKE."

In a moment of racial tension, have you ever tried to simply “shrug off?” your outrage? Or put on a pleasant face so that others wouldn’t feel uncomfortable? Or dared to take a stand—only to find that it inflamed the situation? With Mindful of Race, Ruth King offers another option: To tend first to our suffering, listen to what it is trying to teach us, and direct its energies most effectively for change. Drawing on her expertise as both a meditation teacher and diversity consultant, King supports readers of all backgrounds with an abundance of insights and guided practices to help us identify our misperceptions, honor and engage with our most challenging emotions, temper them with compassionate forgiveness, and find the optimal course of wise action.

Few recognize the enormous power of rage as a vehicle for healing, or possess the skillful means to transform rage from a destructive to a life affirming resource. Rage is fuel, the source of our empowerment. When we embrace this brilliance respectfully, rage teaches us how to live, love, and heal. Self-help authors rarely distinguish between anger and rage, but Ruth King has devoted her career to exploring the subtle varieties of rage, while challenging the notion that rage is an “evil” emotion that must be eradicated. In Healing Rage, she gives all readers access to her pioneering, breakthrough program, which has already changed thousands of lives through workshops nationwide. Rage, King explains, sits at the crossroads of personal transformation. Those of us seeking more self-awareness will inevitably stumble upon personal rage on the path. Rage is not to be understood as a useless emotion, empty of story or knowledge, but as clarity and untapped fuel. Embraced with compassion, the energy trapped in rage becomes an intimate and empathic teacher offering balance, integrity, and inner peace to your healing journey, relationships, and service. King identifies six common disguises of rage (dominance, defiance, devotion, distraction, depression, and dependence) and provides healing exercises including: * Discover your rage inheritance and how to transform your legacy. * Learn how to Look Within before Acting Out. * Learn how to break habitual pain patterns in relationships. * Learn how to center yourself again and again in difficult situations. * Learn how to stay true to yourself when others are raging. * And learn how to stop contributing to your own suffering. Many of us go through our lives maintaining a good front. We may have all of the trappings—good job, higher education, and material gain--yet we have an inherent discontent with our lives that won’t go away. Written for every woman—ranging from counselors and their patients to those who may not realize that rage is at the root of their unhappiness and have just begun to seek new paths of hope—Healing Rage is a unique invitation for transformation.