Gabriela Portillo Alvarado reviews three poetry titles on immigration, trauma, racism, and America: The Book ofDirt by Nicole Santalucia, Adelante by Jessica Guzman, and Every Day We Get More Illegal by Juan Felipe Herrera. The Book of Dirt is a guttural, expositional collection of poems rooted in central Pennsylvania, with jarring wordplay, intricate metaphor, and vivid, sometimes-fantastical imagery: “the apples have triggers, / the avocados, bullets, / the extra, large barrel-bananas / are discounted on Tuesday / when you buy two bunches.”
'America are you listening'
Gabriela Portillo Alvarado
Gabriela Portillo Alvarado reviews three poetry titles on immigration, trauma, racism, and America: The Book of Dirt by Nicole Santalucia, Adelante by Jessica Guzman, and Every Day We Get More Illegal by Juan Felipe Herrera. The Book of Dirt is a guttural, expositional collection of poems rooted in central Pennsylvania, with jarring wordplay, intricate metaphor, and vivid, sometimes-fantastical imagery: “the apples have triggers, / the avocados, bullets, / the extra, large barrel-bananas / are discounted on Tuesday / when you buy two bunches.”