Plantains and Our Becoming : Poems

A rousing, beautifully observed, and tender-hearted debut poetry collection about identity, culture, home, and belonging—for fans of Jasmine Mans and Fatimah Asghar   “We, children of plátanos, always gotta learn to play in everyone else’s backyard and somehow feel at home.”   Poet and musician Melania Luisa Marte opens PLAINTAINS AND OUR BECOMING by pointing out that  Afro-Latina is not a word recognized by the dictionary. But the dictionary is far from a record of the truth. What does it mean, then, to tend to your own words and your own record—to build upon the legacies of your ancestors?   In this imaginative, blistering poetry collection, Marte looks at the identities and histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black diasporic experience. Through the exploration of themes like self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational trauma, [...]and...