Description
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 the discovery of America, 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.
Author: Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 02/01/2022
Pages: 104
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.33lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.22d
ISBN13: 9780268202163
ISBN10: 0268202168
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American | Hispanic & Latino
- Poetry | LGBTQ+
- Poetry | Subjects & Themes | Family
About the Author
Darrel Alejandro Holnes is an Afro-Panamanian American writer, performer, and educator. He is on the faculty of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. In addition to a chapbook, Migrant Psalms, his writing has been published in English, Spanish, and French in literary journals, anthologies, and other books. He also writes for the stage. Most of his writing centers on love, family, race, immigration, and joy.