Stepmotherland :

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Title :

Stepmotherland : poems / Darrel Alejandro Holnes.

Title:

Stepmotherland :

Author:

Holnes, Darrel Alejandro.

Format:

Books

Physical Description:

xvii, 80 pages ; 23 cm

ISBN:

9780268202163

9780268202156

Production / Publication Information:

Notre Dame, IN : University of Notre Dame Press, 2022.

Contents:

When my mother gives up her American dream to marry my father -- Praise song for my mutilated world -- Scenes from Operation Just Cause -- 20 de Dicembre, 1989: when the U.S. invades Panama -- When the narcos kidnap JuanFe -- The art of diplomacy -- Bread pudding Grandmamma -- Poder -- Conception -- How to dream about a woman -- ba-by -- Pietà by Michelangelo: marble, 1499 -- OTM or Other Than Mexican -- Mirror woman -- Marvelous sugar baby -- Cristo Negro de Portobelo -- Af-ri-can-Am-er-i-can-ize -- African Klan suit #2 -- Ferguson, USA -- Link -- Ode to my Father, the Captain -- Breaking & entering -- Angelitos Negros -- The down-low messiahs -- Power bottom -- Vinyl -- I always promised I would never do drag -- Arroz con pollo -- Joseph on knowledge in the bibliical sense -- All legs lead to Naomi Campbell -- Rihanna & child -- Naturalization -- Black parade -- Homecoming.

Summary:

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.

Language:

English

Genre:

Poetry.

Subject Term:

American poetry -- 21st century.

Immigrants -- United States -- Poetry.

American Dream -- Poetry.

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Material Type	Library	Call Number	Item Barcode	Location
Book	Searching... Andover - Memorial Hall Library	811.6 HOL	31330009141858	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Chelmsford Public Library	POETRY/HOLNES	31480011545685	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Haverhill Public Library	811.6/HOLNES D	31479007094419	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library	811.6 HOL 2022	32124002064814	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

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.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Holnes's ecstatic debut transforms an immigrant's dislocation into a newly discovered sense of belonging. Crossing borders and languages, these poems speak a truth about identity that's more complex than mere labels can capture. His joyful prosody comes through in such lines as, "our moreno swing-hips, dips, and spins to the two-beat/ carimbó drum rhythm stronger than the pulse/ thumping through my little boy body/ until I can't tell the difference/ between my corazón and the radio's ton-ton." The collection moves from the speaker's youth in Panama to a reimagined self and his relationship to America as he comes into adulthood. Poems question an authorized "African American" version of Blackness: "Now I like that boom boom pow, chickens jackin my style/ Now can I get a hey? Can I get a yo?/ You can get with this or--wait--is that how it goes?" Other poems celebrate the vulnerability of transformation: "A king,/ I queen so hard my earth-quaking rule/ breaks the laws of nature; flesh-colored spanx and/ control-top leggings tuck it away/ where the sun don't shine." This impressive work dazzles with songs for a shared humanity. (Feb.)

Booklist Review

Poet and playwright Holnes lights the page on fire with blazing lyrics in this crackling debut collection of poetry. Drawing on African, American, Panamanian, and Chocó heritages, Holnes illuminates the intersections between race, language, class, gender, and sex to create moving, multivalent poems that can be pithy and direct ("I don't want to be whiter, just free"), but also brazenly breathtaking: "I don't believe in this nation // but can in your naked grace. Come / make me a man / of faith." Holnes infuses the political with deeply personal insights by playing with dialogue and stage directions ("EXTERIOR: U.S. INVASION OF PANAMÁ 1989"), as well as a series of invented definitions, which includes entries for "baby" ("This woman's need for the family lost to the guerrilleros / This man's efforts to be her village") and "African-Americanize" ("To trade in Puma cleats for Air Jordans / To refer to futbol as soccer"). Holnes likewise paints vivid images, whether through strikingly original depictions, like that of the speaker's hands transforming ("I was sad to see them suddenly turn into wings, / plumed palms, hollow finger bones, / limp wrists") or via ekphrastic poems that invoke such Black artists as Michael Paul Britto, Kehinde Wiley, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. A incandescent volume by a promising poet.

Excerpts

When My Mother Gives Up Her American Dream to Marry My Father She always knew it was coming, the harpy on horseback, deity of her dreams with a grey and white feathered halo for a crown. I never understood religious offering, giving back to creators something they could so easily take themselves, whether it be taking her lamming for slaughter or taking her dreams deferred of becoming a nurse like Diahann Carroll's Julia on US TV stations that my mother watched as a little Black girl in the Panamá of the 1960s. Julia's good looks are an act of defiance. Black women on TV were never that beautiful. My mother takes note and offers my father her velvet on their wedding night. He crushes it to bring the beauty out of the thing like all men taught by their fathers to press a grape for wine or a body for blood when it was the only red the village men said he should take for a wife, when it was the only kind of woman the village men said he should take for love. There's always a bit of violence to sacrifice; flesh crushed under the pressure of other people's expectations, giving life to the machos, the patrones, the pelaos, like me. The blow of birthing machismo is only softened by promises of sainthood, promises of power over man now that her only son was going to be one. Excerpted from Stepmotherland by Darrel Alejandro Holnes All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.