Poet’s Platform: Janet E. Aalfs
Poet’s Platform: Janet E. Aalfs
Rebecca Pelky’s story-in-poems assembles the author’s research into her Native and non-Native heritage in the land now known as Wisconsin. Written in English and Mohegan, Through a Red Place reshapes itself from page to page, asking what it means to navigate place as both colonizer and colonized. An inventive collage of geography, history, myth, translation, lineage, erasure, journalism, and photography, Through a Red Place builds a map between distances and lost stories to unearth and honor the past.
Balderrama’s collection explores the multigenerational immigrant experience of Mexican-Americans who have escaped violence, faced pressures to assimilate, and now seek to reconnect to a fragmented past. Through the poetics of witness, ekphrasis, portraiture, and family mythos, Now in Color deepens our understanding of hybrid identities and calls attention to those impacted by tensions along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Author photograph by Jesus Huerta Jr.
