All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems
All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems
All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems
Description
Description
All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems challenges colonized ideas of history and truth, particularly in relation to Filipinx/a/o history and its colonization by the United States. Engaging with archival materials and playing with the sounds of remembered words and their unique associations, Michelle Peñaloza confronts violent and ironic tensions within historical narratives, subverting erasure and creating her own cultural fluency that speaks to growing up in diaspora and the complexities of identity, motherhood, and the transmission of love across generations. The expression and reception of love between parent and child, particularly Filipinx/a mothers and daughters, becomes its own translation, a generational game of telephone across time and space. In conversation with the history of US imperialism and the broader implications of colonization, this book embraces the impotence of revision, the power of the always-reaching--what wisdom and connection we find there.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Navigating humor and sorrow--and never neglecting the startling and subversive joy that can be found at their intersection--Michelle Peñaloza uses music and elegantly constructed moments of surprise to guide her reader with a seemingly effortless yet brilliantly deliberate hand. Transposing the mythologies and historical artifacts of an often buried Philippine history and the complex diasporic self-vision of a post-colonial Pinay daughter, Peñaloza's All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems is a sure-footed and confident second collection that establishes this poet's vision as distinct and unforgettable. These poems illuminate the expansive and specific perspective of a multilingual and multicultural speaker with playful precision and sophistication, utilizing modes and meanings that renew the power of storytelling. Here is an unapologetic voice, one that is not afraid to take up necessary space and to claim her belonging in the world, a voice that rings as clearly as a fiercely struck bell."--Tarfia Faizullah, Keetje Kuipers, and Barbara Jane Reyes "Academy of American Poets"
"Michelle Peñaloza's world--overflowing with flowers, languages, ancestors, abundant dinners, laughter, longing, and endless questions--is a delight. This book is a perfectly crafted home for all of us living in diaspora. Peñaloza's singular voice recasts both personal and global history: our losses are no longer just sites of grief, but totems of power and resilience. Colonialism never precludes indigenous triumph, reality never precludes hope. These poems make me feel whole."--Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Persea Books
Pub date:
2025-09-16
Length:
96 pages
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