RESISTENCIA and its "diverse brigada of mass creation"
By Red Poppy Resistencia Libros
By Red Poppy Resistencia Libros
"Resistencia could not be more timely. It is a stunning collection of revelations and witness... Indispensable."
– Luis Alberto Urrea
Below you will find our Resistencia anthology, ready for purchase straight from Bookshop--buying here helps out local bookstores around the country.
We have also made a curated list of available books by the poets and translators included in the collection, along with other pertinent titles that tie into the themes of the anthology. We hope you'll pick up Resistencia, but that it will also serve as a launching point, a gateway, for seeking out specific poets and translators to explore even further. We hope the below selection of books by some of the anthology's contemporary contributors will provide portals for readers to dive even further, and then beyond and beyond.
As Julia Alvarez writes in her introduction to Resistencia, “There is a strong and vibrant tradition in the Americas of a poetry of witness. This should come as no surprise in a hemisphere carved out of violence, wrested from the Indigenous, built on the backs of the enslaved, the conquered, the murdered, the raped.”
There are voices from across Latin America as well as the Caribbean: poets writing not just in Spanish, but in French, Portuguese, Kreyól, Quechuan, Miskito, Mapudungun, Yucatecan Mayan, and Maya Kaqchikel––translated by an all-star team into English.
We hoped to allow readers to thoroughly experience the vitality of that tradition in its lyrical form, given a poetic viewpoint through which they might grapple with the myriad of issues that texture its vibrant tapestry. As Julia so beautifully notes, the book assembles a "diverse brigada Américana, armed with weapons of mass creation." They use their pens in resistance to an unprecedented range of challenges. The intimacy of each poem should be further illuminating by the variating electricity on the pages that surround it.
We did limit the span to poems written just over the past one hundred years, so that in its anthological form, while being enriched by each poem readers also get the added effect of being able to trace the evolution of how this poetry has developed, decade after decade, cause to cause, within one general ecosystem, a region with a unique poetic richness, consistently grappling with similar threats from tyrannical and oppressive powers.
We also hope the book will serve as a launching point, a gateway, for seeking out specific poets and translators to explore even further. And we hope the below selection of books by some of our contemporary contributors with the project will provide portals for readers to dive even further, and then beyond and beyond.
In our work as a non-profit, we're providing discounted or free copies of Resistencia to those thirsty for this literature but whose income is limited. We are also working on an educational outreach program for the book. Your purchase here will help towards those efforts, while giving back to independent bookstores at the same time.
Resistencia: Poems of Protest and Revolution
Julia Alvarez, Mark Eisner, et al.
$18.95 $17.62"A groundbreaking collection of works by over 50 poets, Resistencia is alive with bravery, feminism, strength, agency, protest, power and hope." – Ms. Magazine
Unaccompanied
Javier Zamora
$16.00 $14.88Javier is one of the youngest poets in the collection. His father fled El Salvador when Javier was a year old, as did his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents’ migrations were caused by the US-funded Salvadoran Civil War (1980–1992). In 1999, Zamora migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually the Sonoran Desert. After a coyote abandoned his group in Oaxaca, Zamora managed to make it to Arizona with the aid of other migrants. "Zamora’s resourcefulness is one of his most distinctive qualities as a poet. "-- The New Yorker
Cantoras
Carolina De Robertis
$26.95 $25.06Yet another moving book by Carolina, who translated Rebeca Lane's rap "Poisonous Poetry" for the anthology. And this luscious novel, set in her native Uraguay flows with sweeping Resistencia prose. As the New York Times put it: "Cantoras is bold and unapologetic, a challenge to the notion of ‘normalcy’ and a tribute to the power of love, friendship and political resistance. It’s a revolutionary fable, ideal for this moment, offered with wisdom and care.”
Neruda: The Biography of a Poet
Mark Eisner
$19.99The acclaimed biography of one of the most iconic resistance poets of the 20th century. It braids together three major strands of Neruda’s life—his world-revered poetry; his political engagement; and his tumultuous, even controversial, personal life—forming a single cohesive narrative of intimacy and breadth, and showing the efficacy of the self-proclaimed "people's poet" ability to create social change through verse. Written by Resistencia's co-editor Mark Eisner, with the participation of contributors Megan Coxe, Jessica Powell, Carolina de Roberits, among others. Features input by Resistencia poets such as Raúl Zurita. A Finalist for the PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography. Basis for Mark's Paris Review essay, "What We Can Learn from Neruda's Poetry of Resistance"
Out of the Cage
Fernanda García Lao
$15.95 $14.83Out March 11, 2021! Pre-order now to get in on all the excitement about this deliriously wonderful novel by Fernanda García Lao. It's her first book published in English. Fernanda, from Argentina, contributed one of the most powerful contemporary poems in the anthology. Will Vanderhyden translated it brilliantly, as he did this book.
Every Day We Get More Illegal
Juan Felipe Herrera
$15.95 $14.83The newest book from the cilantro magic heart and poet, powerful lines from one of the most humble huge hearted poets you'll ever read. After his first term as poet Laureate bringing poetry to children, he was asked to serve another term. Published by holy City Lights...
The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War (Anchor Books)
Gioconda Belli
$19.00Gioconda has been crucial in the anthology's evolution. While there are several volumes of her poems translated into English, this memoir from the electrifying Nicaraguan is just gorgeous and so important. Salmon Rushdie describes it as "a passionate, lyrical, tough-minded account of an extraordinary life in art, revolution, and love. It's a book to relish, to read and re-read. Unforgettable."
Manual destructivista / Destructivist Manual
Tina Escaja and Jhon Aguasaco
$15.00The groundbreaking Destructivist Poetics of multidisciplinary artist and scholar --and Resistencia co-editor Tina Escaja, transformed into English by one of Resistencia's translators, Kristin Dykstra. "...the Destructivist destroys / poetry in its censored shapes, obsolete complicities, canonical / restrictions, demystifies it, dismembers it, bites it, tears it turns it to toilet paper, to origami, to poetry in Hokkein."
Purgatory
Raul Zurita
$35.94The Poetry Foundation has described Raúl as “one of Latin America’s most celebrated and controversial poets.” This volume is translated by our incredible contributor Anna Deeny. This is a landmark book that sets up Anna and Raúl's collection of his selected poems, "Sky Below." “There isn’t a more important contemporary writer than Raúl Zurita. And through her insistent attention to diction and syntax, Anna Deeny creates an English poetry as abrupt, heuristic, sweeping, and finally redemptive as the Spanish; to wit, she delivers Zurita’s genius.” —Forrest Gander. "Raúl Zurita is one of the essential poets of the twenty-first century, and we are fortunate to have these fiercely beautiful translations." —Robert Hass
The Winter Garden Photograph
Reina Maria Rodriguez
$20.70This book is the latest jewel from an astonishing body of work from one of Cuba's most dynamic minds. It won the 2020 PEN Award for Translation. Kristin Dykstra, its principal translator, has worked with the poet for years now. When asked what Rodríguez’s work means to the spirit of resistance, Dykstra concluded: “What she resists most insistently is the reduction of life to codified platforms. What she gives us instead in her poems is something vibrant, moving, fleet”. (Dykstra’s translation of Rodríguez’s “California Apples” appears in the anthology).
Before a Mirror, the City
Nancy Morejon
$17.00 $15.81“I am, at once, Nancy Morejón,” she asserts, “an individual, a unity, who cannot be subdivided into parts as one does when learning math…I am not more of a black person than a woman; I am not more of a woman than a Cuban; I am not more of a black person than a Cuban. I am a brief combustion of those factors.” That combustion flares with the flames of all the factors and identities of herself and the collective realities and history of her fellow Afro-Cuban women to burn lines that rage in resistance, among other struggles, to their continued erasure from contemporary and historical narratives, while keeping their revolutionary spirit alive. Before a Mirror, the City offers an exciting new angle, where she focuses on the poetry of place, richly illuminating the character of Habana in all its vibrancy.