Postcolonial Love Poem

Books | Poetry / American / General

4.6

(123)

Natalie Diaz

WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRYFINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRYNatalie Diaz’s highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book AwardPostcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality. Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: “I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope—in it, a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.

Poetry

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Author

Natalie Diaz

Pages

Publisher

Graywolf Press

Published Date

2020-03-03

ISBN

1644451131 9781644451137

Ratings

Google: 4

Community ReviewsSee all

"Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz is a beautiful and very queer poetry collection. I found myself drifting off in thought or inspiration as I read this book. I know that some people would say that "this book couldn't keep you attention then, huh". And I have to disagree this book made me think whether it was in the middle of a poem, after I finished a poem, or both. Even just a line in one of these poems make me pause and drift off in thought about the past, the present, and the future we are trying to build. I love poetry collections like this one. Where the author writes lines that push your ideas and really make you think. Natalie Diaz's poetry is just so thought provoking. And she gives us so much to think about. One of the several poems that made me think was "They Don't Love You Like I Love You". If you simplify the poem it is about self worth. But it is a complex poems and deserves a better description. "They Don't Love You Like I Love You" is about racism and it's affects on not only the author, but a large number of young people of color. It is a daughter's memory of a conversation between her and her mother in which she finally realizes what her mother was trying to say. The message is being native (or a person of color) is not a bad thing despite what white people think or say, you do not have to be white to deserve love. The themes of love (self love and otherwise), family, and race are a constant throughout the collection. Many of the poems speak out about land and water theft. They make you think, they make you want to take action even if you have already done everything currently in your power. However, many of these poems are at the same time speaking about love. So many different types of love. And I think it shows optimism for the future. Overall, I think Postcolonial Love Poem is a heartbreaking but optimistic poetry collection about how love is still possible even in the darkest moments. Even when everything else has been taken away if you exist there is still something worth fighting for."