2Leaf Press Spring 2018 Catalog by 2Leaf Press

WHAT’S INSIDE 2LP NEW TITLES PAPOLíTICO ................................................... 4 The Revlon Slough ...................................... 5 Critics of Mystery Marvel ............................. 6 shrimp ........................................................... 7 The Beauty of Being ..................................... 8 Adventures in Black and White .................. 9 Dream of the Water Children.....................10 Substance of Fire .......................................12

SPRING 2018

2LP RECENT TITLES A Country Without Borders ........................14 Written Eye Visuals/Verse .........................14 The Fourth Moment ...................................15 Black Lives Have Always Mattered............15 The Beiging of America ..............................16 Tartessos and Other Cities ........................16 What Does it Mean to be White in America .....................................17 Off Course ...................................................17

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2LP FAVORITES 2LP AUTHORS: Lynn Levin ......................... 18 Birds on the Kiswar Tree ............................19 Brassbones & Rainbows............................19 Branches of The Tree of Life......................20 Hey Yo! Yo Soy! .......................................... 20 2LP AUTHORS: Jesús Papoleto Meléndez ...21

WELCOME TO 2LEAF PRESS 2LEAF PRESS publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry and bilingual works that connect to readers everywhere. We challenge the status quo by partnering with multicultural poets, authors, artists, activists and scholars who create stories that inform, entertain, educate, and inspire. Our press produces high quality and beautifully produced hardcover and paperback print editions, and ebooks. We also publish books through our series: 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY, 2LP TRANSLATIONS, NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES, 2LP CLASSICS, and 2LP CURRENT AFFAIRS, CULTURE & POLITICS. 2LEAF PRESS is strongly attached to its home in New York City, its native language and landscape, and its vast richness of cultures, so we consider ourselves “local internationalists” who bring readers an eclectic mix of multicultural writers. As a small press, we publish a limited number of titles (approximately ten titles per year) during spring and fall, so we are committed to publishing the highest quality writing possible that can make a difference.

2LEAF PRESS DISTRIBUTORS All new books and most of our backlist are available as ebooks, often in a variety of formats from most major resellers and library suppliers.

2LP BACKLIST ............................................22 Cover Credits ..............................................25

An imprint of THE INTERCULTURAL ALLIANCE OF ARTISTS

Book previews available at ISSUU http://issuu.com/2leafpress

& SCHOLARS, INC. (IAAS)

a NY-based nonproﬁt organization PO Box 4378 | Grand Central Station New York, NY 10163 Tel: 646-801-4227 | Fax: 646-998-1318 editor@2leafpress.org | www.2leafpress.org

SINCE 2LEAF PRESS’ FOUNDING and the publication of our first book, Hey Yo! Yo Soy! 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry, The Collected Works of Jesús Papoleto Meléndez in 2012, we embarked on a journey to explore the human condition. Why? Because we love people and their stories. Because we are curious about works that explore race and identity, and cultural, political, and social issues. Because we are interested in works that challenge what’s happening in the here and now, and how it affects us individually or collectively. Because we want to publish stories that transcend boundaries that can make a difference. Because the human condition is an important part of our understanding of literature. And while some people are disturbed by the human condition; we have become endlessly fascinated by it.

2Leaf Press continues to publish a broad range of fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction that explores the intersections and contradictions of human nature, and experiences that are enduringly human. As major publishers continue to merge, consolidate, and focus on blockbusters and best sellers, 2Leaf Press remains focused on discovering new writers who tackle the fundamental issues of our human condition in meaningful ways. We are a small press with big ideas. Visit our website at www.2leafpress.org for more information. Happy reading. — Gabrielle David Publisher

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This spring, we also publish four books of poetry in April during National Poetry Month: award-winning poets Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, author of PAPOLíTICO Poems of a Political Persuasion, and Ray DiZazzo’s The Revlon Slough, New and Selected Poems; seasoned poet Youssef Alaoui’s first full-length poetry collection, Critics of Mystery Marvel, Collected Poems, and jason vasser-elong’s debut poetry collection, shrimp. These collections delve into various levels of the human condition, whether it’s one’s own personal exploration, or the exploration of the world and their place in it. More often than not, it’s both.

SPRING 2018

Since we are small press, we thrive at the very thing we are best at: being small and different. Using the human condition as our guidepost, our focus is on creating books that challenge the “norm.” Lately, we’ve found ourselves creating books that are built from fragments and vignettes that do much more than combine genres—personal essays, critical theory, poetry, photography and artwork—we kind of let our writers put these different forms into the blender and shred them to come up with something that suits their storytelling. Such was the case of The Fourth Moment, Journeys From the Known to the Unknown (Fall 2017), Carole J. Garrison’s debut memoir. Her book was an assemblage of personal narratives and short stories that were combined alongside photographs to create a volume of work that would draw readers into different aspects of her life. This could also be said about Abiodun Oyewole’s first self-described collection of prose, The Beauty of Being, A Collection of Fables, Short Stories & Essays (Spring 2018), which tackles his life stories and moral lessons using a mix of fiction and nonfiction. This approach is further exemplified in Fredrick Cloyd’s “anti-memoir,” Dream of the Water Children (Spring 2018), who uses language (English and Japanese), poetry, prose, historical analysis, and personal narratives, alongside personal and historical photographs, and photo-collages, to convey his story of displacement as a Black Japanese living in Japan and the United States. Rather than relying on the publishing industry’s preexisting notion of genres and book formats, these writers dared to create new models that mesh with the telling of their stories, that has produced slightly unconventional yet interesting books. As a publisher, I love publishing books that do something that I didn’t think a book could do. It’s exactly these kind of works that a small press like 2Leaf Press seeks to champion.

Poems of a Political Persuasion by Jesús Papoleto Meléndez

Introduction by Joel Kovel and DeeDee Halleck

PAPOLíTICO, POEMS OF A POLITICAL PERSUASION is awardwinning poet Jesús Papoleto Meléndez’ sixth book of poetry. Witty, wise, personal and political, Meléndez, often weary of the social issues and politics of the day, has created an exciting compilation of new and previously published poems in a collection that he has daringly named after himself to nudge people out of complacency. His poetry is written with satirical and ironic wit, presented in a “cascading” style that dictates the beat and rhythm of his poems he has become known for. This volume contains some of Meléndez’ classic poems, like “A San Diego Southern/African Night,” with new poems that are a bit edgier and challenge the status quo. Despite the frustrations and harsh realities we live in today, Meléndez maintains an eternal belief that it is never too late for our future to be changed for the better, making PAPOLíTICO a poetic call for tolerance, reflection, reconciliation, and healing.

SPRING 2018

2LP NEW TITLES

PAPOLíTICO

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“Papo’s latest poetry collection, PAPOLíTICO, does not allow even the most progressive or the most radical of us to get away with the hypocrisy of simply living and getting by. His metaphors demand you swallow the fetid water of racism, the rancid meat of capitalism, the insidious candy of nihilism, and forces us to think of what we’ve become as a nation.” —Felipe Luciano, poet, community activist, journalist, lecturer

PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 156 pp. | 8.5” x 8.5” ISBN: 978-1940939735 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939889 (ebk.) April 2018

JESÚS PAPOLETO MELÉNDEZ (“Papo”) is an award-winning New York-born poet who is also a playwright, teacher and activist recognized as one of the founders of the Nuyorican Movement. He has published several volumes of poetry: Casting Long Shadows (1970), Have You Seen Liberation (1971), Street Poetry & Other Poems (1972), Concertos On Market Street (1994); and the stage plays The Junkies Stole the Clock (New York Shakespeare Festival, 1974), and An Element of Art (El Porton Theatre Co., 1978). His book, Hey Yo! Yo Soy! 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry, A Bilingual Edition (2012), is comprised of his three previously published books from the 1970s.

New and Selected Poems

by Ray DiZazzo

Introduction by Claire Millikin

SPRING 2018

THE REVLON SLOUGH, Ray DiZazzo’s fourth poetry collection represents fifty years of writing that explores his life’s observations in harmony with both the natural world, and the often anomalous societies we inhabit. This volume is organized into seven sections that explore creatures both exotic and mundane, the fragility of damaged individuals, social and political perspectives, personal observations, science fiction and space, and perhaps most important, what it means to be a human being in this contested, often volatile world. As the collection’s title elucidates, DiZazzo has created a narrative initially inspired by his discovery of a farmland slough, with its own biosystem, and natural dichotomy of beauty and ugliness. His poetry, primarily written in free verse (with an occasional haiku) projects an intimacy with nature that resists sentimentality and romanticism, giving the poetry a vivid, unadorned feel throughout the volume. THE REVLON SLOUGH is DiZazzo’s most intimate and eloquent poetry collection to date.

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“Ray DiZazzo’s imaginative new and selected poems, THE REVLON SLOUGH, has managed to do the nearly impossible: to enter into the minds and experiences of the human and non-human world he imagines with both fresh imagery and insight.” —Laurel Ann Bogen, poet, literary curator,author of Psychosis in the Produce Department: New and Selected Poems 1975-2015 (2016)

RAY DIZAZZO is an author, filmmaker, and poet. His work has appeared in numerous commercial and literary magazines, newspapers and books, including The Berkeley Poetry Review, Westways, Mother’s Manual, The Easter River Review, Valley Magazine, Poetry Now and The Mid-Atlantic Review. He is the author of three poetry collections, The Water Bulls (2009), Songs for a Summer Fly (1978), and Clovin’s Head (1976). DiZazzo is the recipient of the Percival Roberts Book Award, the Rhysling Award, and he is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

2LP NEW TITLES

The Revlon Slough

PAPERBACK $18.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 170 pp. | 5.5” x 8.5” ISBN: 978-1940939698 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939827 (ebk.) April 2018

Collected Poems by Youssef Alaoui

Introduction by Laila Halaby

CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL is Youssef Alaoui’s debut full-length poetry collection, which explores human relationships between individuals, cultures, races, and genders. Alaoui deftly utilizes archaic tones to formulate an artistic approach to metaphor in verse, creating images that appear wholly in the mind and not on the page. This volume consists of ten sections that explores Alaoui’s family and heritage, an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. Blending surrealism, magical realism, and language alchemy, Alaoui explores the human mythos of love, gender, poverty, politics, racism, and war. A few of the poems are written in French and Spanish, translated to English. Post-beat verse from the San Francisco Bay area and the Big-Sur, CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL touches the depth of the soul with poetry that is metaphorically luminous. Cover art: Amine Alaoui-Fdili. Cover design: Youssef Alaoui

SPRING 2018

2LP NEW TITLES

Critics of Mystery Marvel

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“Youssef Alaoui’s poems in CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL are the exoskeletons of bullets, of bombs. Be careful, but proceed anyway. The barrage is not for harm, but for diversion: It is hiding a deep pool where lightning gathers in a broken heart, where silver shards of memory rise painful, but sweet in this poet’s voice.” —Dian Sousa, author of Lullabies for The Spooked and Cool (2004) and The Marvels Recorded in My Private Closet (2014)

PAPERBACK $18.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 176 pp. | 5.5” x 8.5” ISBN: 978-1940939667 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939803 (ebk.) April 2018

YOUSSEF ALAOUI is a Moroccan Latino American poet, author, editor and artist. Alaoui studied classical Arabic and Spanish baroque poetry, and Moroccan contemporary poetry at New College of California, San Francisco. Alaoui’s work has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Big Bridge, Cherry Bleeds, 580 Split, Full of Crow, Carcinogenic Poetry, Dusie Press, Tsunami Books, Red Fez, and Rivet Journal. He is the author of the novella, The Blue Demon (2012), Death at Sea—Poems (2013), and the short story collection, Fiercer Monsters (2017). youssefalaoui.tumblr.com

Introduction by Michael Castro

SPRING 2018

SHRIMP, the debut poetry collection of jason vasser-elong, examines the African diaspora in a post-colonial context using “shrimp” as a metaphor for the “small” things in life. Using the shrimp motif, vasser-elong weaves together his ancestral past and present through nature, the topography of the land, and all creatures “great and small,” simultaneously casting a light on the broader cultural and sociopolitical issues of the day. As the author scavenges for answers about his own ancestry, vasser-elong stumbles onto the small things in life which he finds most meaningful, like the reclamation of self with a renaming that is tied to his roots in Cameroon; or colloquial name-calling reserved for those who are short in an ancestral society where being tall is the standard. The poet’s journey into the past, the duality of his culture fired by eponymous random observations of life and love, leads to discoveries and an appreciation of life’s lost moments. Throughout it all there is hope: something that is not always easy to hold on to when you are going through challenges both inside and outside yourself — but it is definitely necessary if you are going to survive. SHRIMP is the realization of that journey. Cover art and design: Dé-Jon Graves.

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“Through the inviting poems in SHRIMP, jason vasser-elong includes us on his lyric quest to determine who he is and in what ways he as an individual connects with his family, his multi-racial lineage and present day society.” — Sally Van Doren, author of Promise: Poems (2017)

JASON VASSER-ELONG is a poet and essayist that was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, with maternal ancestral roots in Cameroon, Central Africa. His poetry has appeared in Black Lives Have Always Mattered (2017), Crossing the Divide: From the poets of Saint Louis (2016), and Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of The Black Imagination (2016). He earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Missouri, St. Louis after studying cultural anthropology and presenting his ethnographic , “Rhyme and Reason: Poetics as Societal Dialogue.”

2LP NEW TITLES

Shrimp

by jason vasser-elong

PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 174 pp. | 5” x 8” ISBN: 978-1940939674 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939810 (ebk.) April 2018

A Collection of Fables, Short Stories & Essays by Abiodun Oyewole

Introduction by Felipe Luciano

THE BEAUTY OF BEING, A COLLECTION OF FABLES, SHORT STORIES AND ESSAYS, is Abiodun Oyewole’s debut collection of prose. Oyewole writes frankly about his experience as a young poet and activist, and provides life lessons with fables and a fascinating travelogue that promotes resilience and selfcare to his readers. As the title suggests, THE BEAUTY OF BEING investigates a natural, moral, and sacred spiritual being of self-love, reminding readers if they use these elements as part of the beauty within, endless possibilities await. In his fables, Oyewole has a unique eye for the tiniest details that sheds light on the whole. In his essays, he provides an analysis about The Last Poets, the state of poetry today, and shares first-hand accounts of what activism means to him. Perhaps the most riveting part of this book are his stories of remembrance, which at first glance read like a travelogue but when closely examined, is a love story with a beautiful mediation on grief and loss. Throughout THE BEAUTY OF BEING, Oyewole brilliantly yet subtly interweaves mediations on race, class, culture, life and death, illusion and reality, while deftly showcasing several points of view in a contained space. In THE BEAUTY OF BEING, Oyewole connects to readers with sincerity, humor, heart and grace. Cover art: Annelie Solis

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SPRING 2018

2LP NEW TITLES

The Beauty of Being

“Abiodun Oyewole is a born storyteller, a real griot. I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time. When you read his stories in THE BEAUTY OF BEING, most of them personal and touching, it’s like you can hear him telling them to you in his warm and melodious voice. This book is not only a historically relevant book, especially when he writes about The Last Poets and Malcolm X, but it is also full of wisdom.” — Christine Otten is a Dutch writer, journalist, performer, and the author of The Last Poets (2016)

PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $7.99 PROSE, SHORT STORIES | 166 pp. | 5” x 8” ISBN: 978-1940939742 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939834 (ebk.) April 2018

ABIODUN OYEWOLE is a poet, teacher, and founding member of the American music and spoken-word group, The Last Poets, which laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip hop. He is the editor of Black Lives Have Always Mattered (2017), Branches of The Tree of Life: The Collected Poems of Abiodun Oyewole 1969-2013 (2014), and co-editor of On A Mission: Selected Poems and a History of the Last Poets (1996). Oyewole received his BS in biology and BA in communications at Shaw University, an MA in Education at Columbia University, and is a Columbia Charles H. Revson Fellow (1989).

SPRING 2018

ADVENTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE, a memoir-travelogue first published in 1960, is being reissued with a critical introduction, including minor edits and annotations of the original text by scholar Tara Betts. Recognized as a prodigy at an early age, Philippa Duke Schuyler was heralded as America’s first internationally-acclaimed mixed race celebrity. Her father, a conservative black journalist, and her mother, a white Texan heiress, dedicated Schuyler’s development to the cause of integration with the claim that racial mixing could produce a superior hybrid human, a claim that Schuyler resisted, but would nonetheless hurl her into a destructive identity crisis that consumed her throughout her life. When the transition from child prodigy to concert pianist proved challenging in America, Schuyler, like many black performers before her, went abroad during the 1950s for larger audiences. Schuyler’s witnessing first-hand the dissemblage of European colonies in Africa and the Middle East is the focus of ADVENTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE. This narrative connects the Harlem Renaissance to the prelude of the Civil Rights Movement at a time when the public conversation on interracial identity in America was just beginning. As Schuyler writes about Africa—“the homeland of her ancestors”—readers can begin to understand how the young musician would eventually find her way as an author and a journalist, and the books that followed. Cover photo: Carl Van Vechten

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“Philippa Schuyler’s engaging memoir provides an up-close and personal view of the dangerous political and racial climate of the 1950s. This reprint of Adventures and Black and White is indeed timely, given our own turbulent days.” —Kathryn Talalay, author of Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler (1997)

PHILIPPA DUKE SCHUYLER (1931-1967) was a mixed-race American pianist, composer, journalist and author. TARA BETTS is an award-winning poet, author and scholar of African American and white French descent. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University, and an MFA in creative writing from New England College. She was a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and currently teaches at University of Illinois-Chicago and as part of the MFA faculty at Chicago State University.

2LP NEW TITLES

Adventures in Black and White

by Philippa Duke Schuyler | Foreword by Deems Taylor Edited and with a critical introduction by Tara Betts

2LP CLASSICS

PAPERBACK $18.99 | EBOOK $7.99 MEMOIR, TRAVELOGUE | 324 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939773 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939896 (ebk.)

June 2018

SPRING 2018 PAGE 10

“My dream is not only my own. It is collective, spanning many space-times. It did not originate with or within me. It is an act of remembering in the present and an act of re-navigating the past in the present to change the present-future. I am restless. I turn over. I resist. Through telling my mother’s and my own story, I reveal spaces for those who want change to consider. I open.” —”Chapter 2, Dream of the Water Children,” p. 18

Memory and Mourning in the Black Paciﬁc

by Fredrick D. Kakinami Cloyd

Introduction by Gerald Horne | Foreword by Velina Hasu Houston Edited by Karen Chau

— Leonard Rifas Ph.D , University of Washington

FREDRICK D. KAKINAMI CLOYD is a scholar, writer and artist who was born in Japan shortly after U.S. occupation to a mother from an elite Japanese nationalist family, and an African-American/Cherokee father who served in the U.S. military, His work has published in Kartika Review, Oakland Word, The Pacific Reader, and Nikkei Heritage. Cloyd received his Masters in post-colonial cultural anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he currently resides. He commits most of his time and energy on his historical project, “Black Pacific Memory.” www.dreamwaterchildren.com.

PAPERBACK $24.99 | EBOOK $9.99 AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMOIR | 470 pp. | 8.5” x 8.5” ISBN: 978-1940939285 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939292 (ebk.) June 2018

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“DREAM OF THE WATER CHILDREN is a challenging example of personal bravery and ﬁlial love. It puts the ‘more’ in memory.”

SPRING 2018

DREAM OF THE WATER CHILDREN, MEMORY AND MOURNING IN THE BLACK PACIFIC is a compelling memoir about a son of an African American father and a Japanese mother who spent a lifetime being looked upon with curiosity and suspicion by society, as well as both sides of his ancestry. Cloyd begins his story in present-day San Francisco, reflecting back on a war-torn identity from Japan, U.S. military bases, and his migration to the United States, as he uncovers links to hidden histories. DREAM OF THE WATER CHILDREN tells two main stories: Cloyd’s mother and his own. It was not until the author began writing his memoir that his mother finally addressed her experiences of racism and sexism in Occupied Japan, which helped Cloyd make better sense of, and reckon with his dislocated inheritances. Tautly written in spare, clear poetic prose with fragments written in Japanese, DREAM OF THE WATER CHILDREN is also a visual memoir project filled with personal and historical photos, as well as photo collages. Cloyd’s debut work is a one-of-akind nonfiction interdisciplinary evocation that will appeal not only to those interested in black and Asian relations and mixed-race Amerasian histories, but also to a general audience that will move readers through emotional depths. Cover art and design: Kenji C. Liu.

2LP NEW TITLES

Dream of the Water Children

Gender and Race in the College Classroom by Claire Millikin

Foreword by R. Joseph Rodríguez | Afterword by Richard Delgado With contributed material by Riley Blanks, Blake Calhoun, Rox Trujillo

SUBSTANCE OF FIRE: GENDER AND RACE IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM brings readers inside the four-year college experience, unfolding multiple perspectives and voices. This multigenre book, written by college professor Claire Millikin, explores how race and gender function within the privilege of the fouryear college classroom. Additional contributions are from recent graduates and current faculty, who interrogate the forces of sexism and racism from the various perspectives of gay, straight, biracial, white, African American, and Latino writers and artists. How does being a female professor differ from being a male professor? How does being a lesbian student make a difference in terms of accessing a professor’s time, attention, and respect? How does having dark skin or a non-Anglo last name impact a student’s freedom to pursue different majors? These and more questions are examined in THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE. As the title suggests, race and gender are not topics “under control” in higher education but instead they are flash points, tinder, waiting just under the surface of our culture that still makes the claim of equal access to higher education even as so many lives testify to the incompleteness of this so-called equality. Gender and race can ignite, causing pain in the college setting. This book goes to the place of that fire. Cover art and design: Dé-Jon Graves.

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SPRING 2018

2LP NEW TITLES

Substance of Fire

2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY PAPERBACK $29.99 SOCIAL SCIENCES | 198 pp. | 8.25” x 8,25” ISBN: 978-1940939681 (pbk.) June 2018

CLAIRE MILLIKIN is a poet and scholar, who has taught at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville since 2007. Her scholarly works include Women Photographers and Feminist Aesthetics (2017) Francesca Woodman’s Dark Gaze (2016), Witnessing Sadism in Texts of the American South (2014), and Francesca Woodman and the Kantian Sublime (2010). Her poetry collections include Tartessos and Other Cities (2016), Television (2016), After Houses-Poetry for the Homeless (2014), Motels Where We Lived (2014), and Museum of Snow (2013). www.claireraymond.org.

2018 FALL PREVIEW

SPRING 2018

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2LP RECENT SPRING 2018

A Country Without Borders Poems and Stories of Kashmir by Lalita Pandit Hogan

A COUNTRY WITHOUT BORDERS, POEMS AND STORIES OF KASHMIR is the debut collection of Lalita Pandit Hogan, an expatriate Kashmiri scholar and poet who shares with readers the loss of identity and home, culture, migration, womanhood, otherness and exile. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blooded poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven, evoking a home no longer accessible. A COUNTRY WITHOUT BORDERS is an invaluable collection for all who are interested in cultural remembrance and meditations thalect postcolonial poetry, and for students reading South Asian literature and culture.

Written Eye Visuals/Verse PAGE 14

by A. Robert Lee

WRITTEN EYE VISUALS/VERSE by A. Robert Lee offers poems whose starting point or source of inspiration is a work of visual art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, Lee seeks both to engage and amplify their meaning. Accessible and insightful, these delightful poems express the poet’s playful attention to a wide international range of paintings, photography, films, sculptures and architecture, and the impact literary and visual arts can have on society. For those interested in the re-thinking of ekphrastic poetry’s motives and purposes, and the interplay between poetry and visual art, WRITTEN EYE VISUALS/VERSE is essential reading.

The Fourth Moment by Carole J. Garrison Introduction by Sarah Willis

SPRING 2018

THE FOURTH MOMENT, JOURNEYS FROM THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN is a memoir by Carole J. Garrison. A child of humble beginnings, Garrison paved the way for herself to accomplish great things, but for her, the journey was far from your typical “rags to riches” tale. Through a series of tragedies and triumphs, blunders and epiphanies, Garrison’s life has been filled with a number of unusual detours from being a suburban housewife in Miami, to working in Cambodia as it emerged from decades of civil strife, all the while growing into the passionate humanitarian she is today. Eschewing the formulaic conventions of autobiography, THE FOURTH MOMENT consists of short stories—vignettes—that move back and forth across time and space to describe events and observations from a fascinating life. In THE FOURTH MOMENT, Garrison reveals truths not always within everyday reach, but certainly within everyday aspirations, something that readers will be able to connect to.

2LP RECENT

Journeys from the Known to the Unknown, A Memoir

Black Lives Have Always Mattered

Edited by Abiodun Oyewole

BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED, A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, POEMS AND PERSONAL NARRATIVES, edited by Abiodun Oyewole, extends beyond the Black Lives Matter movement’s primary agenda of police brutality to acknowledge that even when affronted with slavery, segregation,Jim Crow, racial injustice and inequality, black lives have always mattered. This anthology consists of 79 contributors who address a wide range of hot-button issues that disproportionately impact the black community. While written primarily by African American poets, writers, activists and scholars, selections are also from people of the Latino and African diasporas, and white activists. Connecting the past to the present, the contributors of BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED provide an eye-opening and engaging collection that has the potential to reignite a broader push for black liberation and equality for all. Cover photo: Ricky Flores, Cover design: Vagabond.

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A Collection of Essays, Poems, and Personal Narratives

2LP RECENT

The Beiging of America

Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century

Edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes, and Tara Betts 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY

SPRING 2018

THE BEIGING OF AMERICA takes on “race matters” and considers them through the firsthand accounts of mixed race people in the United States. Edited by mixed race scholars Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts, this collection consists of 39 poets, writers, teachers, professors, artists and activists, whose personal narratives articulate the complexities of interracial life. THE BEIGING OF AMERICA is an absorbing and thought-provoking collection of stories that explore racial identity, alienation, with people often forced to choose between races and cultures in their search for self-identity. While underscoring the complexity of the mixed race experience, these unadorned voices offer a genuine, poignant, enlightening and empowering message to all readers. Cover art: Laura Kina, Cover design: Cathy J. Schlund-Vials.

Tartessos and Other Cities PAGE 16

Poems by Claire Millikin

Introduction by Fred Marchant

TARTESSOS AND OTHER CITIES is Claire Millikin’s second book of poetry with 2Leaf Press that continues to explore homelessness. In this collection, Millikin uses the sensitivity of poetry to express some of the emotions surrounded by homelessness and loss. Named for Tartessos, a lost city on the Guadalquivir, a river in Andalusia, Spain that was likely buried by a devastating tidal wave in BC, the poems in TARTESSSOS gather lost cities and places that were not myths, but were once real. Throughout the collection, Millikin addresses questions such as, “What happened to home” and “Where do I come from?” that examines American geographies of loss, with the poems serving as archeological elements that persist against these losses. TARTESSOS charts a map of disappearances and resistances to vanishing that make up part of the ghostly American landscape. In the end, Millikin leads readers to discover that home is not just the place where you happen to live, it is the place where you become yourself.

What Does it Mean to be White in America? Edited by Gabrielle David and Sean Frederick Forbes 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY

2LP RECENT

Breaking the White Code of Silence, A Collection of Personal Narratives

SPRING 2018

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA? is a collection that asks just that. While the literature on “whiteness” has long been dominated by an academic point of view, editors Gabrielle David and Sean Frederick Forbes came to the realization that there was an unmet need for an anthology about white race and culture from the perspective of white Americans. The first of its kind, this collection of 82 personal narratives speak frankly and openly about race. The stories cover a wide gamut of American history from contributors around the United States; from reminiscing about segregation and Jim Crow, to addressing today’s headlines of police brutality, politics and #BlackLivesMatters. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA is a valuable starting point that includes numerous references and further readings for those who seek a deeper, richer, understanding of race in America.

Off Course

by A. Robert Lee

OFF COURSE ROUNDABOUTS & DEVIATIONS by A. Robert Lee’s interleaves poetry and prose. Beneath the carefully crafted and accessible surface of Lee’s work lies a profound, complex voice that deliberately disrupts traditional literary boundaries and distinctions. Different takes on the odd, oftentimes the antic, at work in the daily round. Seamed in wit, dark but congenial humor, Lee’s work is aimed to amuse yet at the same time, stir recognitions. Fake correspondence might just be real. Foodways edge towards the gothic. Each composition comes over as slant, diagonal, oblique. Set phrases turn askew. Geographies un-map themselves, whether ostensibly Europe, England Japan, or America. Of course, it’s all OFF COURSE. Read without discretion, and take out some personal insurance before reading.

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Roundabouts & Deviations

2LP AUTHORS

Lynn Levin How did you come to translate Odi Gonzales’ work?

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SPRING SPRING 2018 2018

In 2002, I began to make contact with Cusco-based poets and writers in advance of a trip to Peru. A lucky string of emails led me to Odi Gonzales, who was then studying in the US. I translated a number of his early poems. Then, in 2005, he sent me La escuela de Cusco [Birds on the Kiswar Tree], and I was so captivated by the passion and rebelliousness of the poems that I translated the whole book.

How closely do you think translation of syntax is tied to the translation of tone and rhythm?

PHOTO Beverly Collins-Roberts

Gonzales’s poems speak assertively, and the poet’s use of complex periodic sentences lends his lines accumulating power. My translation closely follows the poet’s syntax, and I hope that recreates the drive of the poems.

When translating Birds on the Kiswar Tree, were you seeking an idiom, and what do you think of rendering local color in translations? I sought to recreate the elegant and formal language that Gonzales uses in the poems. I think of that as speaking in his idiom, as opposed to seeking another style of speech. He does include much local color references to foods, festivals, customs, and landscape. In some cases, I retain the original words, for example, cuy for guinea pig, as well as many of the names of flowers and birds. The foreignness adds flavor, and I include glossaries for the poems that define the foreign words. •

by Odi Gonzales Translated by Lynn Levin

2LP FAVORITES

Birds on the Kiswar Tree

BIRDS ON THE KISWAR TREE by Peruvian Andean poet Odi Gonzales presents poems that sing in the voices of native birds and speak through the devout, but subversive, Quechua artists of Peru’s colonial era. Originally published in Peru in 2005 as La Escuela de Cusco (The School of Cusco), BIRDS ON THE KISWAR TREE stands as an elegant and richly imagined tribute to these indigenous and mestizo artists. Translated by Lynn Levin, this is Gonzales’ first book to be published in a bilingual Spanish/English edition. Cover art: Eugen Berlo. SPRING SPRING 2018 2018

Brassbones & Rainbows

Foreword by Amina Baraka | Introduction by Gabrielle David

BRASSBONES & RAINBOWS is the debut poetry collection of Shirley Bradley LeFlore, an oral poet and performance artist from St. Louis, Missouri who has been in the literary scene for over five decades. LeFlore’s poetry weaves the fabric of verse through jazz, blues and gospel in an easy going, smooth and soothing Southern American dialect mixed with African American vernacular that will certainly roll off your tongue. With a foreword by Amina Baraka and introduction by Gabrielle David, this collection also includes historical photos of LeFlore and other prominent poets and writers. Cover art: Frank Frazier.

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The Collected Works of Shirley Bradley LeFlore

2LP FAVORITES

Branches of the Tree of Life

SPRING SPRING 2018 2018

BRANCHES OF THE TREE OF LIFE is the first comprehensive volume of poems by Abiodun Oyewole, many of them never before published. Oyewole’s poems are powerful, often political, always lyrical and profoundly moving. Using the spiritual, the sacred and the mystical, Oyewole turns to the tree as a symbol of change and growth. The poetry rebranches into different directions, becoming grandeur in its proportions, and more complexly diversified in its structure, that confirms Abiodun Oyewole’s place at the forefront of poetic achievement. Cover art: Vagabond.

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Hey Yo! Yo Soy!

HEY YO! YO SOY! is n historical poetry collection comprised of legendary Nuyorican poet Jesús Papoleto Meléndez’ three previously published books. Meléndez shares stories about growing up Puerto Rican in New York City’s El Barrio during the 1960s and 1970s. It is the first book to be translated from the English to the Spanish, which links cultural connections in the Spanish-speaking community. Foreword by Sam Diaz and Carmen M. Pietri Diaz; introduction by Sandra Maria Esteves; and afterword by Jaime “Shaggy” Flores. Edited by Gabrielle David and Kevin E. Tobar Pesántez, with translations by Adam Wier, Carolina Fung Feng, and Marjorie González. Cover art Jaime “Shaggy” Flores.

2LP AUTHORS

Jesús Papoleto Meléndez What’s it like being the ﬁrst author published by 2Leaf Press? I remain quite moved and humbled to have been the first author to publish under 2Leaf Press, which, in its five-year existence continues to publish, against all odds, quite a number of new and established voices in poetry. To have been the first is quite an honor. I am especially thrilled because publisher and editor, Gabrielle David, has been an inspiration and the prime motivator in this endeavor. She believed in my work, and in this age of “spoken-word” poetry, I am happy that 2Leaf Press believes in the printed poem on the page. And I also get a kick out of lining up 2Leaf Press publications along their spines to view the many Latino surnames aligned with the 2Leaf Press logo.

PHOTO Vagabond

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To me, the topic of Nuyorican poetry travels through a myriad of areas – there’s message, content, performance, appearance, style – a whole bunch of stuff. When we were coming up (during the 1960s and 1970s), we had a distinct relationship with identity and culture, and one would think that conversation is over ‘nough said; it’s been covered. However, the Nuyorican/Puerto Rican Diaspora is a living organism, constantly evolving. And over the years, many people of a variety of cultures have come to identify themselves with this movement as an ethereal forum for personal investigation and growth. I’m glad to see young people take up the mantle of poetry; that’s how it should be; it’s the natural order of things. But when we were coming up, our voices were marginalized so our battle was against a system that ignored us. Today, I see that the spoken word poets want to marginalize the elder poets as passé. In poetry, there is no such thing as an old poet; there are younger and older poets, that’s it. Since poetry is life-blood and life-giving, experience speaks for its own wisdom, and that simply cannot be denied. So, while I’m appreciative of poets rising out of the ashes from wherever they come from, it is imperative that they study and learn to appreciate what preceded them, because it is the older poets that laid the foundation for the artistic freedom of expression that they currently enjoy. •

SPRING SPRING 2018 2018

As one of the founding members of the Nuyorican movement, what’s your take on Nuyorican literature today?

2LP BACKLIST SPRING 2018

Our Nuyorican Thing

Providencia

by Samuel Diaz Carrion Introduction by Urayoán Noel

Introduction by V. Penelope Pelizzon

The Birth of a Self-Made Identity NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES

MAY 2014 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 132 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939070 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939087 (ebk.)

In OUR NUYORICAN THING, BIRTH OF A SELF-MADE IDENTITY, poet, writer and activist Samuel Diaz Carrion explores the question, “What is a ‘Nuyorican’?” OUR NUYORICAN THING is a compendium of blog correspondence for the Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s website (2001-2004), which includes Diaz Carrion’s poetry, seen through the eyes of a “Puerto Rican Indiana Jones.” This collection is riveting, informative and delightful, and will satisfy any reader with an appetite for cross-cultural discussions. Cover art: Clare Ultimo.

OCT 2013 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 104 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939018 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939025 (ebk.)

PROVIDENCIA, Sean Frederick Forbes’ debut poetry collection, is a deeply personal, coming-of-age narrative. This lovely collection traces the experience of a gay, mixed-race narrator who confronts the traditions of his parents’ and grandparents’ birthplace in Providencia, Colombia against Forbes’ rough and lonely life in Southside Jamaica, New York, that explores the struggles of self-discovery. Cover art: Holly Turner.

The Morning Side of the Hill

Boricua Passport

Introduction by Ernesto Quiñonez

NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES

OCT 2014 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 NOVEL | 132 pp., 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939070 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939087 (ebk.)

MAY 2014 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 116 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939193 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939209 (ebk.)

A Novella by Ezra E. Fitz PAGE 22

A book of poems by Sean Frederick Forbes

In THE MORNING SIDE OF THE HILL, Ezra E. Fitz’ debut novella, asks readers: What if you anted up and kicked in everything you had on a belief, a hope, a dream, on faith, and you lost? This is one of the questions facing Willie and Mo, the two insecure, incomplete protagonists that was inspired by William Faulkner’s classic novel The Wild Palms. Faulkner fans may think they know what the end holds, but rest assured, THE MORNING SIDE OF THE HILL exposes an unexpected coincidence that Faulkner may have hinted at but never fully explored. Cover art: Vagabond.

by J. L. Torres

BORICUA PASSPORT evokes the complex in-betweeness that represents the contemporary Puerto Rican condition as filtered through the prism of poet J.L. Torres’ life experience. In BORICUA PASSPORT, Torres, screams, shouts, rejoices, celebrates, tickles and challenges with a poetry sprinkled with Spanish/ Spanglish that is immediate and urgent. It’s your passport into a world simultaneously real and imaginary, one most people don’t even know exists. A must read! Cover art: Vagabond.

Poems by Not4Prophet Graphics by Vagabond Introduction by Tony Medina NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES

NOV 2013 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 132 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-0988476332 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-0988476325 (ebk.)

Poetry by A. Robert Lee

OCT 2013 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 126 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939056 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939063 (ebk.)

IMAGINARIUM SIGHTINGS, GALLERIES, SIGHTLINES, A. Robert Lee’s latest collection of poetry, turns on two connecting keynotes imagination and sight. Each sequence provides a broad canvas that explores the ways we go about imagining as much as seeing reality. A delightful yet informative collection that invites readers into a two-way exchange, imagination as seeing, seeing as imagination.

Rivers of Women, The Play

JUL 2013 PAPERBACK $18.95 | EBOOK $9.99 POETRY | 176 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-0988476356 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-0988476394 (ebk,)

MAY 2013 PAPERBACK $12.99 PLAY, POETRY | 104 pp, | 8.5” x 8.5” ISBN: 978-0988476370 (pbk.)

by Tony Medina Introduction by Ishmael Reed

BROKE BAROQUE is the third in a series of “Broke Books” by award-winning poet, Tony Medina, who articulates Broke’s erratic experiences as a homeless person on the streets of Any City, USA. Funny and perversely sharp, whimsical and impassioned, this poetry collection is compulsively readable, and will connect with fiction and poetry lovers alike. Cover art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cover design: Miriam Ahmed.

by Shirley Bradley LeFlore Photographs by Michael J. Bracey

In RIVERS OF WOMEN, THE PLAY, Shirley Bradley LeFlore has outdid herself in this groundbreaking collection of dramatic poems written in vivid and powerful language that is simply breathtaking. Here is the complete text, including stage directions, accompanied with photographs by award-winning, Chicago-based photographer Michael J. Bracey. This poignant and powerful play explores family, love, woman-to-woman experiences, race and religion, speaking to the very soul of the reader. Cover photo: Michael J. Bracey.

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Broke Baroque

SPRING 2018

LAST OF THE PO’RICANS Y OTROS AFRO-ARTIFACTS, the debut poetry collection of Not4Prophet, provides an incredible verbal and musical profusion of poetry that reflects the cultural landscapes of Puerto Rico and New York City through the eyes of a Puerto Rican born in Ponce, living in El Barrio and the South Bronx. A poetry collection that breaks boundaries and challenges us with iconic imagery and word play that dares to speak of the unspeakable. Cover photo: Jeffrey Akers, Cover design: Vagabond.

Imaginarium Sightings, Galleries, Sightlines

2LP BACKLIST

The Last of the Po’Ricans y Otros Afro-artifacts

2LP BACKLIST SPRING 2018

After Houses

The Death of the Goddess

Introduction by Tara Betts

Patrick Colm Hogan Introduction by Rachel Fell McDermott

MAY 2014 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 160 pp,| 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939308 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939315 (ebk.)

OCT 2014 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 132 pp. | 5” x 8” ISBN: 978-1940939346 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939353 (ebk.)

Poetry for the Homeless by Claire Millikin

AFTER HOUSES is an extended meditation on homelessness. In unflinching, raw poetry, poet Claire Millikin explores states of homelessness, and a longing for, even a devotion to, houses — houses as spaces where one could be safe and at ease. Millikin’s verse echos the voices of girls who have not quite survived, but who persist, intact in the way that Rimbaud insists on intactness, in words. Cover photo: Gary Baller.

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WHEREABOUTS

Stepping Out of Place An Outside in Literary & Travel Magazine Anthology Edited by Brandi Dawn Henderson

A Poem in Twelve Cantos

THE DEATH OF THE GODDESS is an epic, narrative poem that is a moving account of affection, personal loss, and grief. Inspired by Buddhism and Indic thought, its central figures are two lovers who refuse to accept unjust social hierarchies and suffer separation and death for that choice. This groundbreaking narrative is a literary achievement to be read by serious poetry lovers and students in mythology or epic literature alike. Cover art: Lalita Pandit Hogan.

Incessant Beauty, A Bilingual Anthology Ana Rossetti Edited and translated by Carmela Ferradáns

2LP TRANSLATIONS | BILINGUAL SP./ENG.

OCT 2013 PAPERBACK $19.99 | EBOOK $9.99 ESSAYS | 212 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-0988476363 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939001 (ebk.)

WHEREABOUTS STEPPING OUT OF PLACE is an anthology of the best nonfiction stories from Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, an online journal founded in 2011. Editor Brandi Dawn Henderson presents thirty-eight emerging and established global storytellers who share what it means to enter a new place, exploring the question Why does anyone take the first step to anywhere he or she doesn’t “belong?”

MAY 2014 PAPERBACK $18.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 168 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939216 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939223 (ebk.)

INCESSANT BEAUTY offers to an English-speaking audience a first glimpse into Ana Rossetti’s eclectic and voracious symbolic universe. Editor and translator Carmela Ferradáns has selected poems that offer a wide range of themes that span more than thirty years, varying from the more brooding meditations on transcendental human qualities, to the latest festive celebrations of the poetic word itself. Cover art: Spencer Sauter.

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COVER ART The painting on the cover is “Mural from the Temple of Longing—Thither” (1922) by Swiss German artist Paul Klee (1879–1940), whose highly individual style was inﬂuenced by expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Medium: Watercolor and transferred printing ink on gesso on fabric mounted on cardboard. Dimensions: 11 7/8 × 15 1/2 in. (30.2 × 39.4 cm). Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Berggruen Klee Collection, 1984. QUOTE Phineas Taylor (P.T.) Barnum (1810–1891) was an American showman, politician and businessman best remembered for the founding of the Barnum & Bailey Circus (1871–2017). What most people do not know is that Barnum was also an author, publisher (he owned and ran a newspaper), served two terms in the Connecticut legislature as a Republican for Fairﬁeld, and served one term as Mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He quickly distinguished himself as one of the legislature’s most impassioned advocates of African American equality and voting rights. The quote is from Barnum’s book, The Humbugs of the World: An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits and Deceivers Generally, in All Ages (1866), p. 13. JOIN OUR MAILING LIST & RECEIVE 2LP UPDATES We periodically email our newsletter about new books, special discount offers, and upcoming events. You can sign up on our website at www.2leafpress.org.

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