Description
Letisia Cruz’s latest collection, Migrations & Other Exiles, many years in the making, includes poems that began as simple explorations of the poet’s past and as a way of accepting the violence of her youth without fear or self-judgment. Cruz’s parents immigrated to the U.S. when she was a child. A few years later, her father was murdered in the hallway of their apartment building in New Jersey. After his death, Cruz’s mother remarried into a deeply abusive relationship that nearly ended her life. These poems are rooted in the violence of those years. They explore immigrant issues, exile, Latina/minority women’s issues, the death of father, mother’s experience with domestic violence, and the relationships of her youth.
Letisia Cruz is a Cuban-American writer and artist. She is the author of The Lost Girls Book of Divination (Tolsun Books, 2018). Migrations & Other Exiles was awarded the 2022 Idaho Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2022 artist grant from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance for her project Rituales: An Exploration of Faith in the Caribbean. Her writing and artwork have appeared in [PANK], Ninth Letter, The Acentos Review, Gulf Stream, Saw Palm, Third Coast, Duende, Moko Caribbean Arts & Letters, 300 Days of Sun, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Ink Brick, and Sakura Review, among others. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida with her partner and their cats, plants, and several hundred lizards.
