Description: Dark Sister: Poems gives voice to the living presence of Cherokee teachings and history, passed down through Linda Rodriguez's family.
Brief description: For her previous books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Linda Rodriguez has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, the Midwest Voices and Visions Award, the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, the 2011 and 2014 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Awards, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Rodriguez has edited four anthologies, most recently The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, co-edited with Diane Glancy. Her poetry has appeared in many national and regional journals and on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress, and New Letters on the Air. Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous/Aboriginal American Writer's Caucus, a founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Her three novels have received critical recognition and awards, and one of her short stories has been optioned for film.
Review Quotes:
"I want to say so much about Rodriguez's poetic gifts. What talent! The most accomplished poet of our generation. A poetic voice for our time." Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima and Albuquerque.
About previous books of poetry by Linda Rodriguez: "These poems are indeed a migration through the interior of the human heart in an act of searching and structure-building. The book is an architecture of self-portraits and familial relationships in all their humor and sadness. This work forms an able place. It is an act of restoration that builds the fragments of one's life into some sort of whole. Diane Glancy, author of Asylum in the Grasslands, University of Arizona Press, and Pushing the Bear; A Novel of the Trail of Tears, Harcourt
"Heart's Migration by Linda Rodriguez is a generous, gorgeous book of poetry. It's the kind of beautiful book that comes along every once in a long while, to keep the reader the perfect company. It's courageous, unflinching in its voice and tradition. You read a poem the likes of "My Daughter's Nightmares," and you feel the pangs of familial love and responsibility. Rather quickly at the start of this book, you feel like you are invited in, taken into a landscape of vivid image and memorable detail, such is the vibrant tapestry of this book. This is a gifted, capable poet who takes pride in making a lasting human connection. I praise her voice and her passion!" Virgil Suarez, author of 90 Miles: New & Selected Poems, University of Pittsburg Press.