Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributor Rachelle Cruz

Welcome to our Summer Reads 2011 blog series!  Throughout the summer, we will be featuring recommended reading lists submitted by Lantern Review contributors who want to share titles they plan to read and want to suggest to the wider LR community.  This week features a set of reads from LR Issue 1 contributor Rachelle Cruz.

She writes:

I am so lucky to host a poetics radio program (The Blood-Jet Writing Hour) because it allows me to invite poets I am curious about and/or admire.  Although I feature poets of many different backgrounds, I seek to support and promote poetries of the Pacific Islands, Asia and their diasporas.  Summer is also the time for me to catch up on some fantastic Young Adult (YA) literature, poetry blogs/websites, and anthologies (hello, Norton!).

Below is just a small selection from my very long Summer 2011 Reading List.

Books:

*FROM UNINCORPORATED TERRITORY [SAINA]
by Craig Santos Perez
(Omnidawn, 2010)

Innovative, intertextual poetry that disrupts, navigates and de-navigates the histories of Guam (Guahan). I’ve just finished FROM UNINCORPORATED TERRITORY [HACHA] and I am excited to start Perez’s second book.

 

*BOUGH BREAKS
by Tamiko Beyer
(Meritage Press, 2011)

A fellow Kundiman poet who was also featured in LANTERN REVIEW! Her book seeks to interrogate queer motherhood, gender and the politics of adoption. Tamiko will be on the show with another Kundi, Hossannah Asuncion…

*FRAGMENTS OF LOSS
by Hossannah Asuncion
(The Poetry Society of America, 2011)

Winner of The Poetry Society of America’s 2010 Chapbook Fellowship, Asuncion’s chapbook begins with an epigraph by Rachel Cohen: “Walking in cities is an accumulation of small fragments of loss.” Asuncion gives us these heartbreaking, dreamlike fragments in fleeting moments, between New York City intersections and subway rides. There is quiet here amidst the city.

 

*AKATA WITCH
by Nnedi Okorafor
(Viking Juvenile, 2011)

This YA book caught my attention at my local Books Inc. It’s about a young, soccer-playing Nigerian girl named Sunny who is albino. She soon realizes she’s “a free agent” with incredible magical powers and joins a quartet of magic-bearing friends to fight crime. I can’t wait to start this one!

 

Website:

*DOVEGLION PRESS
www.doveglion.com

Named after Filipino poet Jose Garcia Villa, poets Barbara Jane Reyes and Oscar Bermeo co-curate and edit this fantastic website/resource, featuring essays, visual art and poetry by Sesshu Foster, Craig Santos Perez, Kenji Liu, Jean Vengua, Reginald Dwayne Betts and more! Reyes and Bermeo do an incredible job of curating thoughtful, meaningful works on the Internet, amidst the cacophony of viral videos and tweets.

Thanks for the reading recommendations, Rachelle, and good luck with The Blood-Jet Writing Hour!

Rachelle’s poem “I Am Still Alive“was published in Lantern Review, Issue 1.