Nepantla

Starred review from June 18, 2018
Soto (Sad Girl Poems), a cofounder of the Undocupoets campaign and founder of the eponymous online journal at Lambda Literary, reaches back as far as the Harlem Renaissance to offer a taste of the past century’s “queer of color literary history.” In the introduction, Soto cites Gloria E. Anzaldúa as the source of the journal’s name, which, she writes, is “a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio.” The intention is to convey “the feeling of shifting between various communities and identities,” Soto notes, and the work he reproduces here duly follows that premise. Lighter-hearted, more joyful pieces (Danez Smith, Justin Chin) abut works of emotional turmoil (Paul Tran, Luther Hughes), just as challenging language experiments (Fatima Espiritu, Akilah Oliver) appear amid elegant lyrics (Ocean Vuong, Donika Kelly). According to Soto, three elements were considered in choosing the more than 100 poems included here: a poem’s emotionality, the risks a poet is taking, and whether the poet has been “absolutely pivotal to development of other queer of color poets.” Soto also recognizes the limitations of such an anthology, particularly in regards to the nebulous nature of defining terms of identity and ways included poets self-identify, as well as the various ways the work may be seen by other members of related communities in the U.S. and internationally. Despite these caveats, Soto succeeds in assembling an expansive, sonorous, and literarily significant volume that reveals the broad range of engagements queer poets of color have undertaken over the years.