Description: In The Book of Wounded Sparrows, his second full-length collection of poetry, Octavio Quintanilla sifts through the wreckage left in the pursuit of the American Dream. This is a book within a book, a memory within a memory, a future within a past, and most urgently--a journey to reclaim the self for what it was and to proclaim what it could be. Nested within one another, the English and Spanish, the poetry and art, create layers of obscuration and revelation, unburying the fractured landscapes left in the wake of geographic, emotional, and familial dislocation.
Review Quotes: "Quintanilla has many poems about relatives, and in plenty of those you'll find a quality that permeates much of his work: nepantla, a Nahuatl (Aztec) word meaning "in the middle" or "in between." Chicana philosopher Gloria Anzaldua popularized the term, using it to refer to being between two cultures, as Quintanilla was, living on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico. . . . Quintanilla often speaks across borders: between those two countries, between two languages, across the grieving chasm between life and death, and across swaths of time."
--Salvation South--Andy Fogle "Salvation South" (4/12/2025 12:00:00 AM)