When we reach the camp, there will be thousands like us.If I make it onto the plane, you must follow me to the roadsand waiting pastures of America. We will not ride the water today on the shoulders of buffaloas we used to many years ago, nor will we foragefor the sweetest mangoes. I am refugee. You are too. Cry, but do not weep.—from “Transmigration”Afterland is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. Mai Der Vang is telling the story of her own family, and by doing so, she also provides an essential history of the Hmong culture’s ongoing resilience in exile. Many of these poems are written in the voices of those fleeing unbearable violence after U.S. forces recruited Hmong fighters in Laos in the Secret War against communism, only to abandon them after that war went awry. That history is little known or understood, but the three hundred thousand Hmong now living in the United States are living proof of its aftermath. With poems of extraordinary force and grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived.

    No Matter the Wreckage presents readers with new and beloved work that showcases Kay's knack for celebrating family, love, travel, history, and unlikely love affairs between inanimate objects ("Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire"), among other curious topics. Both fresh and wise, Kay's poetry allows readers to join in on her journey of discovering herself and the world around her. It's an honest and powerful collection.

    . . It’s honest to god the basic human playbook”These are some of the thousands of messages that Kate Baer has received online. Like countless other writers—particularly women—with profiles on the internet, as Kate’s online presence grew, so did the darker messages crowding her inbox. These missives from strangers have ranged from “advice” and opinions to outright harassment. At first, these messages resulted in an immediate delete and block. Until, on a whim, Kate decided to transform the cruelty into art, using it to create fresh and intriguing poems. These pieces, along with ones made from notes of gratitude and love, as well as from the words of public figures, have become some of her most beloved work.  I Hope This Finds You Well is drawn from those works: a book of poetry birthed in the darkness of the internet that offers light and hope. By cleverly building on the harsh negativity and hate women often receive—and combining it with heartwarming messages of support, gratitude, and connection, Kate Baer offers us a lesson in empowerment, showing how we too can turn bitterness into beauty.

    While it may feel safest to take a step back when the government calls to "build that wall," Baca steps forward into the lives of those who suffer profoundly at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. In language we can all understand, Baca sends us on a journey with Sophia, an El Salvadorian mother searching for a better life. She takes step after painful step up a mountain of obstacles, carrying with her the burden of all that has come before: past her husband's murder, through her searing grief, to the wrenching separation from her young son at the border, then rape and abuse at the hands of American officials; always onward, exhaustively. "I keep walking/carrying you in my thoughts," she wills her boy, so far away, to know she is coming.When I Walk Through That Door, I Am is a call for our attention, for our compassion, for our energy in pursuit of democracy and of justice. Jimmy Santiago Baca shines this light on America's downtrodden, and asks us to walk through their pain with them. "They don't see/democracy's body/on the barbwire," he writes. Through this book we do.

    Come On In.With characters who face random traffic stops, TSA detention, customs anxiety, and the daunting and inspiring journey to new lands, who camp with their extended families, dance at weddings, keep diaries, teach ESL, give up their rooms for displaced family, decide their own answer to the question "where are you from?" and so much more, Come On In illuminates fifteen of the myriad facets of the immigrant experience.

    Donika Kelly's Bestiary is a catalogue of creatures--from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel, from "Out West" to "Back East." Lurking in the middle of this powerful and multifaceted collection is a wrenching sequence that wonders just who or what is the real monster inside this life of survival and reflection. Selected and with an introduction by the National Book Award winner Nikky Finney, Bestiary questions what makes us human, what makes us whole.

    W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind. He also charges that the strategy of accommodation to white supremacy advanced by Booker T. Washington, then the most influential black leader in America, would only serve to perpetuate black oppression.Publication of The Souls of Black Folk was a dramatic event that helped to polarize black leaders into two groups: the more conservative followers of Washington and the more radical supporters of aggressive protest. Its influence cannot be overstated. It is essential reading for everyone interested in African-American history and the struggle for civil rights in America.

    In Outgoing, the speaker erases his brother s answering machine message to save his family from the shame of dead you / answering calls. In other poems, once-ordinary objects become dreamlike. A buried light bulb blooms downward, a flower / of smoldering filaments. A refrigerator holds an evening landscape, a tinfoil lake, vegetables / dying in the crisper. Destructive and redemptive, Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing, sorrow and laughter, and torment balanced with moments of relief.

    Dajani and his swans; Sitti Khadra, who never lost her peace inside.Maybe they have something to tell us.Naomi Shihab Nye has been writing about being Arab-American, about Jerusalem, about the West Bank, about family all her life. These new and collected poems of the Middle East -- sixty in all -- appear together here for the first time.

    To address this void, they started a blog. Now with an annual readership of nearly one million, their posts foster dialogue about activist methods, intersectionality, and sisterhood. And the writers' personal identities—as black women; as sisters, daughters, and lovers; and as television watchers, sports fans, and music lovers—are never far from the discussion at hand.These essays explore "Sex and Power in the Black Church," discuss how "Clair Huxtable is Dead," list "Five Ways Talib Kweli Can Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop," and dwell on "Dating with a Doctorate (She Got a Big Ego?)." Self-described as "critical homegirls," the authors tackle life stuck between loving hip hop and ratchet culture while hating patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism.Brittney Cooper is an assistant professor at Rutgers University. In addition to a weekly column in Salon.com, her words have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Cosmo.com, and many others. In 2013 and 2014, she was named to the Root.com's Root 100, an annual list of Top Black Influencers.Susana M. Morris received her Ph.D. from Emory University and is currently an associate professor of English at Auburn University.Robin M. Boylorn is assistant professor at the University of Alabama. She is the author of the award-winning monograph Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience (Peter Lang, 2013).

    Drawing upon everyday incidents, common situations and rural imagery, Frost fashioned poetry of great lyrical beauty and potent symbolism. Originally published in 1916 under the title Mountain Interval.

    The book traces the history of three families: the working-class African-American Twymons, the working-class Irish McGoffs, and the middle-class Yankee Divers. It gives brief genealogical histories of each families, focusing on how the events they went through illuminated Boston history, before narrowing its focus to the racial tension of the 1960s and the 1970s. Through their stories, Common Ground focuses on racial and class conflicts in two Boston neighborhoods: the working-class Irish-American enclave of Charlestown and the uneasily integrated South End.

    Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.

    Winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück, a stunningly beautiful collection of poems that encompasses the natural, human, and spiritual realmsBound together by the universal themes of time and mortality and with clarity and sureness of craft, Louise Glück's poetry questions, explores, and finally celebrates the ordeal of being alive.

    home body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself – reminding readers to fill up on love, acceptance, community, family, and embrace change. Illustrated by the author, themes of nature and nurture, light and dark, rest here.i dive into the well of my bodyand end up in another worldeverything i needalready exists in methere’s no needto look anywhere else– home