DANCING IN THE SANTA ANA WINDS: POEMS Y CUENTOS NEW AND SELECTED (2018)
Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds: Poems y Cuentos New and Selected contains twenty-five years of liz gonzález’s best writing. She explores memories, pivotal experiences, and cultural influences that shaped her: The death of a young father, family relationships that nurture and challenge, and the joys and struggles of growing up as a nontraditional Catholic Mexican American. Set against the diverse landscapes of the San Bernardino Valley and Los Angeles, these richly textured and sometimes humorous works, real and imagined, illuminate the trials and beauty of girls’ and women’s journeys to reclaim themselves.
Praise
"This collection of poetry and prose by liz gonzalez heralds another watermark in the the enduring presence of a vital Southern California writer whose generational and cultural/geographic roots run as deeply from the Santa Ana waters of the Inland Empire, where she was born and raised, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, by whose Los Angeles shorelines she now resides...Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds is a tour de force, an enjoyable/provocative read, and won't let you go, even after you've turned the last page."
–Ruth Nolan, author of Ruby Mountain
"Some believe the Inland Empire is bereft of culture, but not in her poetry, rich as it is with luscious detail. Overlaid with the rituals and imagery of the Catholic church and 70s rock, funk, and R&B bands pouring from car radios, the Inland Empire is alive with culture, sensation and the fullness of life. And whether it knows it or not, it even has its own de facto poet laureate. liz gonzález."
–Suzanne Lummis, author Open Twenty-Four Hours: Poems
"Like the crackling riffs emanating from the backseat speaker on an old Impala, these poems and stories sing us back in time."
–Levi Romero, New Mexico Poet Laureate 2020
Press
"There is a new book of poetry and prose on the horizon of the Inland Empire, a book establishing its place in the literature and lore of our tantalizing region and carving out its own storied spaces here in the voice of San Bernardino Valley native liz gonzález."
–‘Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds’ captures grief, life and culture in the Inland Empire, Press Enterprise
Purchase
BENEATHBONE BONE (2000)
Poetry collection
Praise
"liz gonzález writes with the hand of an assemblage artist and the voice of a Neo-Frida Kahlo and a re-invented Dolores del Rio. Her poems become performance pieces, fractured cinemas from dreams and day-to-day enlightenments. She paints the body, the face and the broken column of the self. The poems are lunar and prismatic; they move from abstract investigations of surface, being and impermanence and on to the journals of the erotic, meditations of absence and the nerve matters of death and desire." – Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate
"Her unique voice allows her to grapple with themes involving love, race, and womanhood without ever hitting a false note. liz gonzález is a fierce Chicana poet who deserves a huge following." – Renee Swindle, author of A Pinch Of Ooh La La
"liz gonzález's Beneath Bone strikes to the core. It's fast and flawless voicings make a world where what we see and what we know amazingly converge. Welcome to the real thing."–Elizabeth Willis, author of Alive: New and Selected Poems
Purchase
|
