Popular North American Poetry Books
Find poetry books written by authors from North America for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (75)
31.
Inheritance by Elizabeth Acevedo EN
Country: North America / 
United States of America
United States of America
Description:
They tell me to "fix" my hair. And by fix, they mean straighten, they mean whiten; but how do you fix this shipwrecked history of hair? In her most famous spoken-word poem, author of the Pura Belpré-winning novel-in-verse The Poet X Elizabeth Acevedo embraces all the complexities of Black hair and Afro-Latinidad--the history, pain, pride, and powerful love of that inheritance. Paired with full-color illustrations by artist Andrea Pippins in a format that will appeal to fans of Mahogany L. Browne's Black Girl Magic or Jason Reynolds's For Everyone, this poem can now be read in a vibrant package... continue
32.
Islands of Decolonial Love: Stories and Songs by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson EN
Country: North America / 
Canada
Canada
Description:
In her debut collection of short stories, Islands of Decolonial Love, renowned writer and activist Leanne Simpson vividly explores the lives of contemporary Indigenous Peoples and communities, especially those of her own Nishnaabeg nation. Found on reserves, in cities and small towns, in bars and curling rinks, canoes and community centres, doctors offices and pickup trucks, Simpson's characters confront the often heartbreaking challenge of pairing the desire to live loving and observant lives with a constant struggle to simply survive the historical and ongoing injustices of racism and coloni... continue
33.
Mexico34.
Knitting the Fog by Claudia D. Hernández EN
Country: North America / 
Guatemala
Guatemala
Description:
A young Guatemalan immigrant's adolescence is shaped by her journey to the US, as she grapples with Chapina tradition and American culture.
35.
Letters to My Son by Stephen Dantes EN
Country: North America / 
St. Lucia
St. Lucia
Description:
Saint Lucian poet, Stephen A. Dantes compiles a collection he dedicates to an imaginary son. Entitled, Letters to My Son, the poems simulate conversations a father might have with a son as he teaches him about the ways of the world and how to make decisions.
36.
Luisa in Realityland by Claribel Alegría, Pedro Caubet, Darwin Flakoll, Erik Flakoll EN
Country: North America / 
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Description:
Claribel Alegria combines poetry, fiction, and historical narrative about her early childhood in Santa Ana, El Salvador.
37.
Country: North America / St. Lucia
St. Lucia
Description:
Most of the poems in this sequence of fifty where written in close succession during one summer in Trinidad. Their principle themes are the relationship of poetry to painting, the stasis of midsummer in the tropics, and the pull of the sea, family and friendship. Walcott records the experience of middle life - in reality and in memory or the imagination. On the publication of Derek Walcott's previous collection, The Fortunate Traveller, Blake Morrison wrote in the London Review of Books: ' The Forunate Traveller is an impressive collection that moves lucidly and at times brilliantly between ab... continue
38.
My Urohs by Emelihter Kihleng EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
The first collection of poetry by a Pohnpeian poet, Emelihter Kihleng's My Urohs is described by distinguished Samoan writer and artist Albert Wendt as "refreshingly innovative and compelling, a new way of seeing ourselves in our islands, an important and influential addition to our [Pacific] literature."
39.
Night Vision : Poems by Kendel Hippolyte EN
Country: North America / St. Lucia
St. Lucia
Description:
Because we see with history, it is difficult to see through it. And yet we must or we become it, become nothing else but history. It is this challenge, laid down in the powerful title poem of this collection, which Kendel Hippolyte takes up in Night Vision. And the history that Hippolyte penetrates is a history of the change overtaking the island of St. Lucia. As town becomes city and city spreads like a cancer, the poet's searching verse finds among the waste of humanity, nature, and culture a microcosm of the transforming Caribbean-from tradition, community, rooted identity, to social fragme... continue
40.
Noopiming : The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson EN
Country: North America / Canada
Canada
Description:
"Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for "in the bush," and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie's 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. Set in the same place as Moodie's colonial memoir, this genre-fluid novel is offered as a cure for Moodie's racist treatment of Mississauga Nishnaabeg in her writing. The giant Sabe meditates on the gifts and challenges of their recent sobriety. Migrating geese make a case for coordinated formation as a way to get out of "one's own cycling head." Racoons turn Bougie Kwe's Zen-garden pond into their personal urban spa. This is... continue