Indifferent Cities - by Ángel García (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Poems exploring the push and pull of migration and immigration, familial archive, and regional history.

Through one state to another, from one country to the next Indifferent Cities traverses both distance and time to reconcile the most confounding reality of family: our people, sometimes, are the people we know least. Utilizing forms such as ekphrasis and epistolary, the collection sources photographs, postcards, and official documents as well as rumor, suspicion, and supposition to uncover the consequences, by choice or circumstance, of migration and immigration between Mexico and the United States across four generations.

Surveying the terrain of what one knows and does not know, what one inherits and disinherits, Indifferent Cities wrestles with every departure, each arrival, and the author's inevitable return to determine where and to who he belongs.

Review Quotes

"Sometimes ferocious, and always ferociously honest, Ángel García's poems address themselves to the cycle of violence that arises at the many borders, both enforced and inhabited, in the US-Latino experience: between macho stereotypes and sensuous masculinity, between painful alienation and penitent acceptance, and ultimately, between loss and love. Yet for all the bruised fists, black eyes, and broken jaws here, there are no victims in these harrowing poems, as they search not for blame, but for bravery--the courage to see oneself in the mirror, and recognize our universal humanity always hungrily staring back."-- "Rafael Campo, author of Comfort Measures Only"

About the Author

Ángel García, the proud son of Mexican immigrants, is the author of Teeth Never Sleep, recipient of a CantoMundo Poetry Prize, an American Book Award, and finalist for a PEN America Open Book Award and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Vermont Studio Center, and MacDowell. He currently teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.