To the River, We Are Migrants - by Ayendy Bonifacio (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

To the River, We Are Migrants is Ayendy Bonifacio's debut collection. In this nostalgic volume, the image of the river carries us to and away from home. The river is a timeline that harkens back to Bonifacio's childhood in the Dominican Republic and ends with the sudden passing of his father.

Through panoramic and time-bending gazes, To the River, We Are Migrants leads us through the rural foothills of Bonifacio's birthplace to the streets of East New York, Brooklyn. These lyrical poems, using both English and Spanish, illuminate childhood visions and memories and, in doing so, help us better understand what it means to be a migrant in these turbulent times.

Review Quotes

"I've learned, unlearned my language too many times," writes Ayendy Bonifacio in To the River, We Are Migrants. Childhood, exile, faith, grief are all part of the language he shapes into luminous poems that remember in English and in Spanish. His voice is lyrical, direct--he confesses "[t]ime has made us strange" but also transforms a river into a rosary. These poems are exquisite, heartfelt.

--Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine

The actual Dominican river that gives title to Ayendy Bonifacio's "To the River, We Are Migrants" is also a river of words, the river of life, the river of death, the river dividing us from our truest selves and the river that delivers us home again. These are poems of immigration, separation and grief, but they are also poems that honor home, family and the enduring powers of language and memory. I am deeply instructed and moved by the mundos of this beautiful book.

--Kathy Fagan, author of Sycamore

Desde Broadway Junction hasta Bao, Ayendy nos lleva en su tren--the one que comienza with a word-dream born in the eyes of his father. Está lloviendo desde adentro, desde que dejó de llamar mundos a los countries. Cada verso estruja la nostalgia, y nos presta un rosario in order to survive here-there and en rotundo futuro que se rompe. Corre el agua con cada metáfora, con el pasaporte que se tragó el campo donde se regresan a descansar las palabras. Este poemario es una corriente encima del cuerpo, un ardor, pain, el recuerdo de su abuelo and the smell del idioma que tuvo que darle rompa en su lengua. "To the River, We Are Migrants" nos lleva "más allá de líneas de inmigración," el principio y el final de los días largos cuando la pérdida de un ser querido estruja la mirada, "paper planes when our motherlands liberated us," es un basement donde reciben los campesino, es la habitación donde su madre hospeda los nuevos recién llegando que parió Quisqueya. Vamos soñando in english and español silenciosamente "para que las nubes no se rompieran." Leer a Ayendy, es encontrarnos where nos habíamos dejado; en la desembocadura de un río que nos dispersó en alguna parte con una promesa hecha cicatriz.

--Fior E. Plasencia, author of Para Cenar Habrá Nostalgia