LOVE & OTHER FUTURES

An inspirational volume offers poetry published by Untold Stories, a collective of women of color residing in Michigan.

This collection of diverse voices—“Black, Latinx, Arab, Indigenous, and Asian”—predominantly features free verse written in the first person. Each of the three main sections is tied to a specific workshop held in 2019: “Mothering”; “Migration, Rootedness, and Belonging”; and “Survival & Vision.” A fourth section highlights selected poems from these earlier chapters translated into Spanish, thereby allowing bilingual readers to compare and enjoy both versions. (The volume’s introduction is rendered in English and Spanish as well.) Uncredited photographs of various workshop participants and settings appear throughout the text, with design and graphics by Miriam Cuevas Enciso. The book also presents brief profiles of all 26 contributors, including the five “founding sisters” of Untold Stories, debut editors Rios, Simmons, Quiroz, Ibarra-Frayre, and Reza. One of the most impressive poems is “Microchimerism” by Maria Thomas, which represents a conversation of sorts between a mother and son as they trade stories of amazing animal feats: “You’re in kindergarten now / and the factoids / are getting / more sophisticated / more bizarre / more flatulent / and gory.” Reflecting their unbreakable bond, the title refers to the phenomenon whereby fetal cells can remain in a mother’s body for long periods of time. Thomas continues with animal imagery in order to combine the enthusiasm of learning with the responsibility of educating children in matters of social justice. On a more harrowing note, the mother in Quiroz’s “Truth” tries to protect her 3-year-old daughter from an abusive partner: “Then he blew up / No talk back allowed / he said / He’d taken enough / living brown in world of white.” Moreover, the lack of punctuation effectively lends a breathless quality of immediacy and escalation to the text. In “Awareness,” Ibarra-Frayre considers the challenges of immigration and employs the image of boiling water—alternately dangerous, transformative, and comforting—to convey both suffering and strength: “And the boiling grief of my mother’s prayers / Creates an impenetrable vapor of / Protection.” Every workshop participant was invited to publish at least one piece. While the volume as a whole may strike some readers as occasionally uneven, this project underscores the notion that poetry belongs to everyone as a form of expression and connection.

A noteworthy collection with a compelling backstory of community building and personal empowerment.