Kadupul Flower - by Kimberly Vargas Agnese (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Fresno, California, may be the nation's breadbasket, but it is also a food desert to some who call it home. Summer temperatures find their niche in the triple digits, and resilience makes its name in the fields and on the streets . . . it pours from the mouths of the children. But dignity, all too often, comes with a price tag. The last $5.48 left on the food stamp card or the $200-plus it costs to ship over plant cuttings from Ecuador. Because even nature isn't immune to commercialism. Peel back the price tags and recall the meaning of worth in Kadupul Flower, a social-environmental justice collection from debut poet Kimberly Vargas Agnese. Social and environmental justice converge in the intersectional work of Kadupul Flower. The poetry collection is distinctive in its uniting of several themes. The set deals with poverty - including homelessness - as well as racism, sexual assault, and ecological justice. The collection is, at its heart, about dignity, but the theme of dignity extends beyond the typical concept of 'human' dignity to encompass 'environmental' dignity, as well.

Review Quotes

"Kadupul Flower is a poetic memoir and a call for a 'whole' interconnection with nature, ancestors, family, self, and migrant realities in the San Joaquin Valley. It is also a flow of kindness, cultural search, and familia harmony. Vargas Agnese evokes the familiarity of day-to-day life through symbolic images like the scrappy hummingbird, friendship-forging Skittles, and resilient flowers. An exquisite, tender tapestry of our lives: bold realities in the Valley, on Earth, within nature and beyond. . . . ¡Viva Kimberly Vargas Agnese!" --Juan Felipe Herrera, MacArthur Fellow and United States Poet Laureate Emeritus

"Kadupul Flower is as strong and sensitive as the blossoms of forgiveness and hummingbirds of hope discovered in these poems. A beautiful and powerful collection." --Margarita Engle, Young People's Poet Laureate Emeritus and author of Wild Dreamers

"Kimberly Vargas Agnese is a true seer. The people who populate Kadupul Flower are given full color and dignity in poem after graceful poem. This marvelous book is engaged with its community and the justice it deserves, honoring the culture and the land along the way. Fresno comes alive: concrete, canal, chocoyote. We're reminded that 'nobody owns the sky.' I love this book." --Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate

About the Author

Kimberly Vargas Agnese makes her home in the smoggy California Central Valley. Kimberly spends her time cultivating a young food forest called Meadow Arc, praying and writing advocacy poetry. Her writing appears in "Anacua Literary Arts Journal," "The Seventh Wave," "Rappahannock Review" and "Awakened Voices," among others. Kimberly's full-length collection, "Red String on a Saguaro Cactus" was named a finalist for the 2022 André s Montoya Poetry Prize, awarded biannually by the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. To read more of her work, please visit www.kimberlyvargasagnese.com.