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The poems in the collection, "My People Redux," travel through time. We go back and forth between the present, "They Could Be Sisters," and the past, "Goose Eggs," not just the poet's past but that of her ancestors who came to the Midwest from Mexico in the late 1800s, as displayed in the piece, "My People Redux." The poet's voice is always female and strong, but also vulnerable as in the poem, "Child Pose Cannot Hold." These are poems of race, ethnicity, gender, and class. There are also mystical poems in this collection and things the poet cannot explain like in the piece, "Once in Seattle" and in "The Congregation." In Trudell Vasquez's fourth collection her concerns are the same as in all of her previous collections but her way of approaching the page varies. The poet travels in this collection: from Madison to Seattle, Santa Fe, Des Moines, Milwaukee, Washington D.C., Chicago, and outside of the country too, to the Caribbean to Isla Mujeres in Mexico. In the poem, "Everybody is Somebody's Child," we are given a glimpse of the poet's concern for all people across the globe. Ever present in all the work is nature, the poet's appreciation for the natural world and all its creatures, but especially the least fortunate among us.
About the author
Angie Trudell Vasquez is a Mexican-American writer, a Chicana, and holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts where she studied Indigenous Poetics. Finishing Line Press also published her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, in 2019. Her poems have appeared in the Yellow Medicine Review, The Slow Down, the Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Taos Journal of Poetry, on the Poetry Foundation's website, NPR, and elsewhere. She is the current poet laureate of Madison, Wisconsin and the first Latina to hold the position. You can find more about her and her work at angietrudellvasquez.com, artnightbooks.com, or follow her on Facebook.
