Winner of the 7th Annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize.

This “memorable and moving immigrant story” chronicles the life of the author’s father, a Hmong refugee and keeper of cultural memory (Booklist). Winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses. He keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning memoir The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father, Bee Yang, the song poet—a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by America’s Secret War. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. The songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a St. Paul housing project and on the factory floor, until, with the death of Bee’s mother, they leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has burnished a life of poverty for his children, polishing their grim reality so that they might shine.

The Cambridge History of American Poetry offers a comprehensive exploration of the development of American poetic traditions from their beginnings until the end of the twentieth century. Bringing together the insights of fifty distinguished scholars, this literary history emphasizes the complex roles that poetry has played in American cultural and intellectual life, detailing the variety of ways in which both public and private forms of poetry have met the needs of different communities at different times. The Cambridge History of American Poetry recognizes the existence of multiple traditions and a dramatically fluid canon, providing current perspectives on both major authors and a number of representative figures whose work embodies the diversity of America's democratic traditions.

Presents a collection of poems written in both Spanish and English on being young and Latino living up in the United States.

Cuban-American writers have been studied primarily within the context of Latino literature as a whole. Seeing a need to distinguish and define this unique literary perspective, Eduardo del Rio selected twelve important well-known authors and conducted interviews. He chose writers who were born in Cuba but have lived in the United States for a significant amount of time and whose works include themes he considers elemental to Cuban-American literature: identity, duality, memory, and exile. But rather than a cohesive, homogeneous group, these conversations unveiled a kaleidoscope of individuality, style, and motive. The authors’ bonds to Cuba inform their creative work in vastly different ways, and attempts to categorize their similarities only highlight the range of character and experience within this assemblage of talented writers. From playwright Dolores Prida to author and literary critic Gustavo Pérez Firmat, these voices run the gamut of both genre and personality. In addition to the essential facts of literary accomplishment, the interviews include a wealth of insight into each writer’s history, motivations, concerns, and relationship to language. These personal details serve to humanize and illuminate the unique circumstances and realities that have shaped both the authors and their work. What del Rio has ultimately brought together is a series of intimate sketches that will not only serve as an important reference for any discussion of the literature but will also help readers to develop for themselves a sense of what Cuban-American writing is, and what it is not. CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Nilo Cruz Roberto Fernández Cristina García Carolina Hospital Eduardo Machado Dionisio Martínez Pablo Medina Achy Obejas Ricardo Pau-Llosa Gustavo Pérez Firmat Dolores Prida Virgil Suárez Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

Acclaimed by many as one of the most gifted essayists and stylists in American letters these last few decades, Richard Rodriguez has left an indelible imprint on the tradition of autobiographical writing of the nation. Rodeño’s study of the four installments of Rodriguez’s self-writing offers an insightful and perspicacious analysis of the evolution and the most controversial elements in this Chicano writer’s production so far. Delving deeply into issues of racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religious background, various types of hybridity, and different forms of socio-cultural adaptation, this book presents all kinds of incisive observations about the contested space(s) that “minority” self-writers are often pushed to occupy in the American tradition of the genre.

Winner of the 10th annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize