—Sophia Starmack, author of The Wild Rabbit
Joanna Valente’s Xenos is an immigrant narrative, but it’s not simply about the transition from one country to another, one homeland to the next–it’s the narrative of the heart that finds estrangement wherever it goes, the body that does and does not recognize itself, and the way family disinherits us even as it claims us. In these poems, we meet the strangers who we know all too well, and the loved ones who remain forever inexplicable, and we, too, are them.
—Gregory Crosby, Author of Spooky Action at a Distance
Joanna C. Valente is a gifted storyteller, crafting a deeply humanizing and expressive narrative within the pages of Xenos. To read this collection is to travel back in time, to be reminded that even then there were fires, even then so many of us were burning. Unifying and spirited, readers will find themselves returning to these poems over and over again.
