2Leaf Press Spring 2019 Catalog by 2Leaf Press

WHAT’S INSIDE

WELCOME TO 2LEAF PRESS

2LP NEW TITLES

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, 2LP CURRENT AFFAIRS, CULTURE & POLITICS, and 2LP UNIVERSITY BOOKS.

Dream of the Water Children....................... 4 Ransom Street ............................................. 6 Wounds Fragments Derelict ........................ 7 2LP AUTHORS: Deidra Humphries Barker ........................ 8 Mother of Orphans ....................................... 9 Monsters .....................................................11 Designs of Blackness.................................12 Strength of Soul .........................................14 Trailblazers .................................................15 The Emergence of Ecosocialism ...............17

2LP RECENT TITLES NO VACANCY ...............................................18 Adventures in Black and White ................18 Substance of Fire .......................................19 The Beauty of Being ...................................19 P A P O L í T I C O ........................................20 shrimp .........................................................20 Critics of Mystery Marvel ...........................21 The Revlon Slough .....................................21

2LP FAVORITES Branches of the Tree of Life ............................22 Written Eye Visuals/Verse ...............................22 A Country Without Borders..............................23 Black Lives Have Always Mattered ................23 The Fourth Moment ........................................24 The Beiging of America....................................24 What Does it Mean to be White in America? .......................................25 Hey Yo! Yo Soy! ..................................................25

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 DISTRIBUTION 2LEAF PRESS trade distribution is handled by University of Chicago Press / Chicago Distribution Center, 773.702.7000. Titles are also available for corporate, premium, and special sales. Please direct inquiries to the UCP Sales Department, 773.702.7248. All new books and most of our backlist are available as ebooks at most major resellers and library suppliers.

Customer Service 11030 South Langley Avenue Chicago IL 60628 Tel: 1.800.621.2736 / 773.702.7000 | Fax: 800.621.8476 / 773.702.7212 custserv@press.uchicago.edu | www.press.uchicago.edu

2LP BACKLIST ............................................26 An imprint of THE INTERCULTURAL ALLIANCE OF ARTISTS

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

& SCHOLARS, INC. (IAAS)

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

DID YOU HEAR THAT? I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. Ah, it’s spring! While most people have a very romanticized notion of what the last line of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Everyday You Play” means, I think there is a bit more to it than meets the eye. Neruda offers insight using extraordinary metaphors about an awakening, and the magic of transformation. The transition from winter to spring when gossamer buds burst into bloom against gray, stormy skies. The darkest hours of winter clear away to make room for what’s to come. Spring ushers change so cherry trees can blossom, and along with it a blossoming awakens deep inside us all. Spring offers that special spark which makes it the best season of all — a time for birth and renewal. After spending months in hibernation cultivating manuscripts into books, there is something to be said about giving birth to books in spring. And this spring we have an eclectic selection of stories from a diverse group of writers. Human beings are primed to listen to stories, but also to listen for the person behind a story being told. This is why we read — out of curiosity, to have a new experience and learn something about the world we didn’t know before. I think this is why memoirs are so popular now — our need to connect with the experience and life wisdom of others. Our need to feel connected to a larger community. Being in the presence of that consciousness is one of the great pleasures of reading other people’s stories. And it is why we are publishing three very distinct memoirs this spring.

THE EMERGENCE OF ECOSOCIALISM by Joel Kovel, is a collection of the late author’s essays, speeches and manifestos about ecosocialism and the movement’s relevance in today’s society. And we are pleased to reissue one of the first comprehensive studies of African American literature and culture, DESIGNS OF BLACKNESS by A. Robert Lee, in a 20th anniversary expanded edition. We are also celebrating the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein with Claire Millikin Raymond’s MONSTERS: MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN AND MATHILDA, who also provides commentary from a feminist perspective. And finally, I am publishing my first book with 2Leaf Press, TRAILBLAZERS: BLACK WOMEN WHO HELPED MAKE AMERICA GREAT, AMERICAN FIRSTS/AMERICAN ICONS, which has evolved into two volumes. It is a book that will inspire anyone who reads it. The second volume will publish this fall.

As you beckon spring back into your life and awaken something deep inside of you, read a 2Leaf Press book to nurture your bliss. 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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We are offering two great poetry collections in April during National Poetry Month: WOUNDS FRAGMENTS DERELICT by Carlos Gabriel Kelley, and RANSOM STREET by Claire Millikin. Kelley debuts with an engaging collection of love poems, while Millkin, who is publishing her third poetry collection with 2Leaf Press, continues to explore homelessness, poverty, and abuse.

SPRING 2019

We’ve been talking about DREAMS OF THE WATER CHILDREN, a memoir by Black Japanese scholar, Fredrick D. Kakinami Cloyd, for several years and it is finally being released to the world. I am especially pleased because it deservedly has the distinction of being our very first book published under our new distribution deal with University of Chicago Press. It is a book born from a 800 page manuscript that has gone through a couple of iterations and in the process, has been formed and perfected into a wonderful book of prose, poetry, photographs, Japanese writing and historical artifacts that sings to reader. I encourage you to read it. You will not be disappointed. MOTHER OF ORPHANS by Dedria Humphries Barker, and STRENGTH OF SOUL by Naomi Raquel Enright share mixed race stories from two different perspectives. MOTHER OF ORPHANS investigates the story of a white great grandmother, while STRENGTH OF SOUL explores what it is like growing up biracial in America. Distinct storytelling rhythms abound.

2LP NEW TITLES

Dream of the Water Children 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

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SPRING 2019

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 A bbeing looked upon with curiosity and suspicion by society, as well as his family. Cloyd begins his story in present-day San Francisco, reh flecting back on a war-torn identity from Japan, U.S. military bases, aand his migration to the United States, uncovering links to hidden histories. DREAM OF THE WATER CHILDREN tells two main stoh ries: Cloyd’s mother and his own. It was not until the author began writing w his memoir that his mother finally addressed her experiences of o racism and sexism in Occupied Japan, which helped Cloyd make better b sense of, and reckon with his dislocated inheritances. Tautly written w in spare, clear poetic prose with fragments written in Japanese, n DREAM OF THE WATER CHILDREN is also a visual memoir project p filled with personal and historical photos, as well as photo collages. c Cloyd’s debut work is a one-of-a-kind nonfiction interdisciplinary c evocation that will appeal not only to those interested in black b and Asian relations and mixed-race Amerasian histories, but also a to a general audience that will move readers through emotional depths. d Cover art and design: Kenji C. Liu. “DREAM OF THE WATER CHILDREN is a challenging example of personal bravery and filial love. It puts the “more” in memory.” — Leonard Rifas PhD, University of Washington

PAPERBACK $24.99 | EBOOK $9.99 AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMOIR | 470 pp. | 8.5” x 8.5” ISBN: 978-1940939285 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939292 (ebk.) March 2019

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. KAREN CHAU was an editor at phati’tude Literary Magazine and 2Leaf Press, and has published in Racialicious. She is originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and received her BA from Brandeis University, and recently completed her MA at New York University.

“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

Poems by Claire Millikin Introduction by Kathleen Ellis

RANSOM STREET is Claire Millikin’s third collection of poetry with 2Leaf Press. The poems in this volume meditate on the idea of ransom to explore legacies of violence in the southeastern United States, ultimately seeking moments of reckoning for these unsettled histories. A fee paid to release a prisoner, ransom can, Millikin shows us, initiate a sacrificial act that drives people apart, but also, when paid, can bring the homeless home. The poems in RANSOM STREET move through the question of release elliptically, exploring these abstract implications of ransom through a fictional street in a southeastern American town. The presence of inherited violence, cultural and familial, haunt the terrain of RANSOM STREET, as the poems move through a geography of ghosts, always seeking “ransom,” the sacrificial act that returns the self to wholeness. Cover art: Dé-Jon Graves.

SPRING 2019

2LP NEW TITLES

Ransom Street

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Imagine a little girl at the beach with a third-degree sunburn. It is raining and she and has been wrapped in a wet sheet. Later she will recall that she as she walked over the dunes, the pain had rendered her “awake in every nerve.” That phrase ends the opening poem in Claire Millikin’s stunning new collection, and it sounds the key notes of a book that tells in sharpened lyric moments the story of a young woman’s coming of age in the face of violence, violation, homelessness, utter alone-ness. But, as the episodes unfold, and the pain is recalled and endured, there emerges from the corner of our eyes an image of a woman who has all along been forging her own fully-realized self and the voice thereof. Keats called our suffering a “vale of soul-making.” Down in that valley is where we find RANSOM STREET and this poetry of every wakened nerve. —Fred Marchant, professor, poet and author of Said Not Said: Poems (2017)

PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 152 pp. | 5” x 8” ISBN: 978-1940939902 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939919 (ebk.) April 2019

CLAIRE MILLIKIN’S poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, and she is the author of the poetry collections, TARTESSOS AND OTHER CITIES (2016), TELEVISION (2016), AFTER HOUSES (2014), MOTELS WHERE WE LIVED (2014), MUSEUM OF SNOW (2013). She received her BA in philosophy from Yale University, MFA in poetry from New York University, and PhD in English literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Millikin is a lecturer at the University of Virginia. www.claireraymond.org

Poems by Carlos Gabriel Kelly Introduction by Sean Frederick Forbes

SPRING 2019

WOUNDS FRAGMENTS DERELICT is Carlos Gabriel Kelly’s debut poetry collection. It is a love narrative, a novella consisting of fragments of poetry that express the torment of a relationship that clings to the heart even with the passage of time. Throughout the collection, Kelly focuses on “Her” as he re-imagines his world through the prism of lost love, weaving ghosts of the past both metaphorically and figuratively, into a lush verse that is romantic, bold, erotic, and speaks to the heart. These are not your typical badly written, saccharine love poems, rather these poems are artfully written with bone rattling repetitions organized in couplets, tercets, and sometimes quatrains. Kelly’s poetry maneuvers the white space of every page in accordance with his lines, at times relying on the space of the page to form his poems into non-traditional forms. In WOUNDS FRAGMENTS DERELICT Kelly also expresses resentment, fear, guilt, and misery, as he yearns for a lost love that denies him the possibility of moving forward. With honesty, poignancy, and romantic flair, Kelly distills the most exhilarating highs and heartbreaking lows of life and love into evocative lines that will become etched in the reader’s mind. Read this. We dare you. You will not be disappointed.

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Fluent in the language of hope and loss, WOUNDS FRAGMENTS DERELICT offers up pieces of a love story careening towards its familiar and inevitable end. From the delicate ruins, Carlos Gabriel Kelly has crafted a new world of hard-won wisdom, where the tender roots of romance, family and his Mexican culture intertwine. Steeped in nostalgia and shaped by the rough music of contemporary life, this is a beautiful and essential first book. Silvia Curbelo, award-winning poet and author of The Secret History of Water (2015) and Falling Landscape (2015)

CARLOS GABRIEL KELLY is a first-generation Mexican-American and second-year Ph.D. student at Ohio State University in the Department of English specializing in Digital Humanities. His work has appeared in PacificREVIEW: A West Coast Arts Review Annual, Poetry International, and Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature. Kelly has an MFA in Poetry, an MA in American Literature, and a BA in English from San Diego State University. WOUNDS FRAGMENTS DERELICT is Kelly’s debut poetry collection.

2LP NEW TITLES

Wounds Fragments Derelict

PAPERBACK $14.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 130 pp. | 6.5” x 6.5” ISBN: 978-1940939926 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939933 (ebk.) April 2019

2LP AUTHORS

Dedria Humphries Barker

Why did you want to write about your great-grandmother Alice? I wanted to write about Irish Alice because of an increasing American curiosity about the interracial, intercultural American family. Besides providing a missing historical link of my family during the Gilded Age era, I discovered that despite her shortcomings, she was a heroine who sacrificed her future for her family. I wrote about Irish Alice because I was working through that issue of sacrifice.

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SRPING 2019

How difficult was the research? The research was difficult and surprisingly, as I relate in Mother of Orphans, the frightening part was asking permission from my family to investigate. I discovered how invested families are in their inherited history. This difficulty was complicated by Irish Alice being an ordinary person who didn’t document her life in a diary or a journal. I had to go far back in history to lay a foundation for my Irish great grandmother’s life-changing decision to marry a black man in 1899. It turned out to be rooted in European ethnic discrimination, including 800 years of war with the English that the Irish lost. And most difficult was trying to discover why as a widow, Alice put her children in an orphanage as opposed to keeping her ten-year-old daughter home from school to care for the baby, as was common practice in most families, especially among African Americans.

What surprising things did you learn that helped you understand more about yourself and your family? There was a surprise at every turn. As an African American woman, I was surprised to learn that discrimination exists among Europeans – something rarely discussed in American history class. I was surprised that this bias against the Irish was brought to the United States, and the complex relationship that existed between blacks and the Irish communities eventually helped me to get born. How startling it was to learn the Irish were held in lower regard than slaves. People paid good money for a slave; the Irish had no value. To realize how deeply the Irish matriarchal influence shaped my experiences in school, employment, religion, and especially my tastes in food, amazed me, and it brought Alice’s turn-of-the-century life closer to my twentyfirst century life when I understood that media influenced both of us. Imagine my shock in learning that, in 1913, a mother could put her children in an Ohio public orphanage and still be a mother to them. It didn’t make sense. My idea of an orphanage did not jive at all with Irish Alice’s experience with them.

What do you want people to take away from your book? I hope all readers will question their family stories because you just might be living a lie. Seeking truths about family ghosts can spark racial understanding and the social justice we sorely need today.

The True & Curious Story Of Irish Alice, A Colored Man’s Widow by Dedria Humphries Barker Introduction by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials

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DEDRIA HUMPHRIES BARKER is a writer, journalist and teacher who lives in Michigan. Her essay, “The Girl with the Good Hair,” appeared in the anthology, The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About being Mixed Race in the 21st Century (2017). Her essays have been published by The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, the Ohio and Michigan historical societies, and the National Trust for Historical Preservation. A Detroit native, Barker graduated from Wayne State University, and studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with James McPherson.

SPRING 2019

MOTHER OF ORPHANS: THE TRUE & CURIOUS STORY OF IRISH ALICE, A COLORED MAN’S WIDOW by Dedria Humphries Barker is the compelling true story of Alice, an Irish-American woman who overcomes restrictive white-on-white discrimination to form a family with a black man and their mulatto children in Ohio in 1899, until his death forced her back to deeply-held values. In 1961, Alice, the matriarch of the family arrived in Detroit to live with her black family. A few months later she was dead, leaving three generations to wonder why she had surrendered her three mulatto children to an orphanage after her black husband died in 1912. Forty years after her death, Alice’s great granddaughter, Barker, who suffered her own clashes with American race relations, decided to find out what really happened and why. MOTHER OF ORPHANS uses memoir, biography, research, historical documents and photographs to reel through a story of early twentieth century race mixing in the Ohio River Valley. Barker switches narrative vantage points frequently, offering fragments of the past and glimpses of the present. The result is a haunting, introspective meditation on race and family ties that tackles the tricky questions involved in constructing identity. Part personal journey, part cultural biography, MOTHER OF ORPHANS examines a little-known piece of this country’s past: interracial families that survived and prevailed despite Jim Crow laws, including those prohibiting mixed-race marriage. In lyrical, evocative prose, this extraordinary book pierces the heart of issues of race and racial identity, leaving us ultimately hopeful about the world as our children might see it.

2LP NEW TITLES

Mother Of Orphans:

PAPERBACK $18.99 | EBOOK $7.99 BIOGRAPHY, SOCIAL SCIENCE | 250 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939780 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939872 (ebk.) April 2019

In January of 1818, FRANKENSTEIN; or, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS first published anonymously in an edition of 500 copies. Written by nineteen-yearold Mary Shelley, this young novelist’s achievement—her synthesis of so many 19th-century anxieties into a monster story rivaled only, perhaps, by Bram Stoker’s DRACULA—remains as impressive now as it was then, an amazing achievement in speculative fiction. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of FRANKENSTEIN, 2Leaf Press is publishing MONSTERS: MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN (1831 ed.) and MATHILDA, Shelley’s most popular work, for horror aficionados and bibliophiles around the globe. In this new volume, published under the 2LP CLASSICS series, scholar and author Claire Milllkin Raymond explores both FRANKENSTEIN and MATHILDA from a feminist perspective, with an engrossing introduction and commentary throughout the book.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Mathilda by Mary Shelley With an Introduction and Commentary by Claire Millikin Raymond

CLAIRE MILLIKIN RAYMOND 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), and Witnessing Sadism in Texts of the American South (2014). She has also published several volumes of poetry. www.claireraymond.org.

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MARY SHELLEY (1797-1851), is the author of seven books, including her most famous novel, Frankenstein (1818), and the posthumously published Mathilda (1959).

SPRING 2019

MONSTERS: MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN AND MATHILDA is the publication of Mary Shelley’s most popular works, accompanied by a critical introduction and commentary by professor and scholar Claire Milllkin Raymond. Cultures create and ascribe meaning to monsters, endowing them with characteristics derived from their most deep-seated fears and taboos. In this volume, Millikin Raymond explores both Frankenstein and Mathilda from a feminist and cultural studies perspective. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, conceived by nineteen-year old Shelley, and published before she was twenty, is the most famous and enduring imaginative work of the Romantic era. Shelley was keenly aware of contemporary scientific developments and incorporated them into Frankenstein. First issued in 1818, it has never been out of print, and has gone on to inspire legions of writers, scholars, professors, actors, theatrical producers, filmmakers, and even scientists. We publish here the 1831 edition, which was revised by Mary Shelley as an adult. Mathilda, Shelley’s second long work of fiction written between August 1819 and February 1820, deals with incest and suicide. It was published for the first time in 1959 and has become Shelley’s best-known work after Frankenstein. We present here the version edited by Elizabeth Nitchie in 1959. Frankenstein and Mathilda capture readers by force of their astonishing fantasy and range of implication: the definition of “monster,” which Millikin Raymond explores as well as other aspects of the Shelley’s work. MONSTERS will resonate forcefully for readers with a background or interest in science, science fiction, history, literature, and anyone intrigued by the fundamental questions of creativity and responsibility. Cover art: Dé-Jon Graves.

2LP NEW TITLES

Monsters

2LP CLASSICS PAPERBACK $21.99 | EBOOK $9.99 NOVEL, LITERARY CRITICISM | 316 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939704 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939841 (ebk.) June 2019

Mappings In The Literature and Culture of African Americans 20TH ANNIVERSARY EXPANDED EDITION

by A. Robert Lee

DESIGNS OF BLACKNESS, MAPPINGS IN THE LITERATURE AND CULTURE OF AFRICAN AMERICANS by A. Robert Lee, which initially published in London in 1998, was one of the first comprehensive studies of African American literature and culture. This highly anticipated 20th anniversary expanded edition is an update of literary trends into the twenty-first century. DESIGNS OF BLACKNESS brings together the work of 150 writers from 1746 to the present in all genres, as well as performers of vernacular forms – from spirituals and sermons to jazz and hip hop. Lee examines both high and popular styles from slave writing through the diaspora and the Middle Passage as memory, to postmodernism and cultural styles like rap. As Lee traverses through four centuries of African American works, he examines the work of writers as diverse as Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglas and Harriet Wilson in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Amiri Baraka, Octavia Butler and Robert Hayden in the twentieth century, and writers representing the twenty-first century such as Jesmyn Ward, Paul Beatty, Darryl Pinckney, Colson Whitehead and Natasha Tretheway. Lee meets this abundant play of imagination head on against the backdrop of a larger corpus of black artists such as Bessie Smith’s blues, Romare Bearden’s canvases, Gordon Park’s photography, Martin Luther King’s oratory, Muhammad Ali’s pop culture influence, and Spike Lee’s filmmaking, presenting an intertextual series of mappings of figures and forms in the making of African American literature. Yet despite so spacious a coverage, Lee keeps his focus sharp, and in doing so provides a diligent and informed assessment of the cultural history of African Americans. Cover art: “Wrapping It Up At the Lafayette” (1974) by Romare Bearden, Copyright © The Romare Bearden Foundation.

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SPRING 2019

2LP NEW TITLES

Designs of Blackness

2LP UNIVERSITY BOOKS PAPERBACK $24.99 | EBOOK $9.99 LITERARY CRITICISM | 212 pp. | 5.5” x 8.5” ISBN: 978-1940939766 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939865 (ebk.) June 2019

A. ROBERT LEE was a professor in the English department at Nihon University from 1997-2011. British-born, he previously taught at the University of Kent, UK. Among his academic publications are Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian Fictions (2003), which won the American Book Award in 2004, and Modern American Counter Writing: Beats, Outriders, Ethnics (2010). He is also the author of several poetry and verse collections. Lee currently resides in Murcia, Spain.

2LP AUTHORS

A. Robert Lee

What was the impetus of writing DESIGNS OF BLACKNESS in 1998?

Absolutely. Readership of the tradition from slave narrative to Toni Morrison, the New Negro 1920s to the autobiographies of Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm or Maya Angelou, a poetry that embraces Countee Cullen to Rita Dove, and the drama of Lorraine Hansberry or Amiri Baraka, simply refused to be erased. College courses and anthologies incorporate them even as they give them self-standing status.

Is there any merit to critics who argue that African American writing, as a literature, began with the institution of Jim Crow legislation and ended with desegregation, and today is nothing more than the balkanization of American literature? Cheap shots about balkanization usually come about from a panicked cultural right. The ship is going down, all hands lost. It’s nonsense. African American literature, written and spoken, like African American music and visual art, is utterly integral to America as multicultural fabric — Trump and like notwithstanding. You can relish, say, Ralph Ellison or Alice Walker, without somehow abandoning, say, Melville or Faulkner.

Why is it important for people of all races to read African American literature? It’s not quite “all races,” simply anyone with a literate turn of mind who has an interest in strong literary-creative achievement and/or the historic making of America should read these works. Different reading communities, for sure, can bring different credentials to bear — if you’re black, white, male, female, or an immigrant. But what simply cannot be in doubt is that here is a body of voices, a dynamic roster of memory and word, that continues to give enlightenment.

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In reviewing the material twenty years later, do you believe some progress has been made of African American writers in the American literary canon?

SPRING 2019

I first set foot in the U.S. in 1965, the vintage year of Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Vietnam War. Unusually at the time for a Brit, I’d done a thesis (at the University of London) on American literature. I was reading Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks and Chester Himes — the latter with whom I’d go on to have exchanges of correspondence. As the years went on, I’d teach African American authorship in the UK and the States and, for the BBC, interview names like Ishmael Reed and John Wideman. I also cultivated friendships with John A. Williams, Leon Forrest, Clarence Major, Ted Joans, and the historians Harold Cruse, Barbara Fields and Nell Irvin Painter. So there was this continuing thread, all within a multicultural literary compass that I was also writing about, which included Native American, Asian American and Latino/a literatures. I seem to have written a slew of essays on all of these genres – as well as on black and multicultural Britain. By the 1990s, just as I was about to depart for an appointment in Tokyo (which lasted fourteen years) I felt, rightly or otherwise, that I’d served a reasonable apprenticeship. The upshot was that the first edition of Designs of Blackness was published by Pluto Press, a progressive publishing house in London.

by Naomi Raquel Enright

STRENGTH OF SOUL by Naomi Raquel Enright proposes tangible strategies and ideas on how to challenge systemic racism through naming and resisting an ideology of racial difference and of white supremacy at its root. Enright explores racism and the language that upholds this ideology through personal narratives that includes an examination of her family’s experience. Throughout this volume, Enright shares reflections of her identity growing up as a bilingual, multiethnic individual, and as the mother of a son presumed to be white. She also advances ideas of how to confront societal notions of an inherent difference between the lived experiences of white people and people of color, which results in the widely-held belief that there is an inevitable “us” and “them.” In this regard, Enright suggests that embracing one’s total identity can allow people to challenge systemic racism as well as the language and ideology that created it, and upholds it. In these poignant and deeply personal stories, Enright allows readers to reconsider a society on a genuine path towards justice, healing and true transformation. STRENGTH OF SOUL is for anyone who is willing to rethink the status quo and is interested in creating systemic change vis-à-vis institutionalized and internalized racism. Cover art: Sebastián Whittaker. Cover design: Adam Whittaker.

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SPRING 2019

2LP NEW TITLES

Strength of Soul

PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 MEMOIR, SOCIAL SCIENCE | 166 pp. | 5” x 8” ISBN: 978-1940939728 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939858 (ebk.) June 2019

NAOMI RAQUEL ENRIGHT was born to a Jewish-American father and an Ecuadorian mother in La Paz, Bolivia, and was raised in New York City. She taught Spanish for eight years, and worked as a diversity practitioner for three years, where she became a National SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Facilitator. Her essays have appeared in several publications, and she writes about racism, grief, loss and parenting on her blog. Enright holds a BA in Anthropology from Kenyon College and studied at the Universidad de Sevilla in Spain her junior year. She resides with her family in Brooklyn, NY.

Black Women Who Helped Make America Great American Firsts/American Icons, Vol. 1 by Gabrielle David Edited by Carolina Fung Feng Introduction by Chandra D.L. Waring, PhD

SPRING 2019

TRAILBLAZERS, BLACK WOMEN WHO HELPED MAKE AMERICA GREAT, AMERICAN FIRSTS/AMERICAN ICONS, VOL. 1 by Gabrielle David delves into the lives and careers of 150 brilliant women from the eighteenth century to the present, who blazed uncharted paths in every conceivable way. What binds these courageous women together is as they struggled on the front lines against racism and male chauvinism, they also challenged and shook-up the status quo of black people in America. Since it is impossible to include every single pioneering woman, David strived to present a fair representation of women from various backgrounds – some famous alongside others who should be better-known. A collection that contains biographies of each woman, replete with powerful and expressive photographs, TRAILBLAZERS is divided into ten sections preceded by a brief introduction by the editor, which provides an overview of the significance of the stories that follow. An additional section consisting of over 100 names with short bios is also included in the back of the book. Through painstaking research, David has created an affordable and accessible reference book that helps fill-in the backstory behind the feminist and civil rights movements of today. The overall objective is to present a hopeful, revisionist view of the world—one in which black women share the same mobility as white women and their male counterparts. From the foremothers who blazed trails and broke barriers, to today’s women warriors, TRAILBLAZERS features powerful and inspiring role models for women and girls from all cultural backgrounds who are poised to become super women of the future. Simply put, TRAILBLAZERS belongs on the bookshelf of every school, library, and home.

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GABRIELLE DAVID is the publisher of 2Leaf Press, and serves as the Executive Director Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS), a NY-based organization that promotes multicultural literature and literacy. www.gabrielledavid.net. CAROLINA FUNG FENG is a copy editor and translator. She earned a BA in SpanishEnglish translation and interpretation, and English Language Arts from Hunter College (CUNY), summa cum laude. CHANDRA D. L. WARING holds a joint position as an Assistant Professor of Sociology, Criminology and Anthropology, and Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Her work has been published in Race, Gender & Class, Sociological Imagination, Feminist Teacher, Social Identities, and the DuBois Review.

2LP NEW TITLES

Trailblazers

PAPERBACK $34.99 BIOGRAPHY | 800 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1-940939797 (pbk.) June 2019

Collected Essays by Joel Kovel Edited by Quincy Saul Introduction by Kanya D’Almeida

2LP NEW TITLES

The Emergence of Ecosocialism

THE EMERGENCE OF ECOSOCIALISM, COLLECTED ESSAYS is the first book

SPRING 2019

published posthumously by author, activist and scholar, Joel Kovel, who passed away on April 30, 2018. In 2001, Kovel co-authored “An Ecosocialist Manifesto,” launching a global movement with ancient roots and prophetic horizons. Since that time, dozens of books and hundreds of articles have been published on the subject as global warming, climate change, pollution, and ecological balance becomes one of the major concerns around the world today. As a result of this growing awareness, ecosocialist movements and organizations have emerged on every populated continent. Here for the first time, editor Quincy Saul has compiled THE EMERGENCE OF ECOSOCIALISM, a definitive collection of Kovel’s essays on ecosocialism, chronicling the emergence of its theory and practice, which informs and educates. From the original manifestos and declarations, to essays and undelivered speeches, to classics from Capitalism Nature Socialism, the Journal of Ecosocialism which Kovel edited, THE EMERGENCE OF ECOSOCIALISM offers a 360-degree orientation guide of an ecosocialist praxis written by one of its founding fathers. Cover art: Hannah Allen.

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THE EMERGENCE OF ECOSOCIALISM by Joel Kovel, brilliantly curated by Quincy Saul, is a great gift during the moment of looming climate crisis and ecological collapse. Kovel pioneered the understanding and analysis that environmental degradation is inseparable from capitalist exploitation and commodification of the natural world. Brilliantly and compassionately written, the essays reflect the life work of a giant among us and addresses the difficult work ahead. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

JOEL KOVEL (1936–2018) was an American scholar and author, known as a founder of the worldwide ecosocialist movement. Originally trained as a physician and psychoanalyst, Kovel was a former professor at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and at Bard College. Author of a dozen books, he played a leading role in the emerging ecosocialist movement through his book, The Enemy of Nature (2002, 2007). QUINCY SAUL, a cofounder of Ecosocialist Horizons with Joel Kovel, is the co-editor of Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz (2013), the author of Truth and Dare: A Comic Book Curriculum for the End and the Beginning of the World (2014), and Maroon Comix: Origins and Destinies (2018). His articles have appeared in Truthout, Telesur, Counterpunch, The Africa Report, and more.

PAPERBACK $21.99 NOVEL, LITERARY CRITICISM | 338 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939957 (pbk.) June 2019

2LP FAVORITES SPRING 2019

NO VACANCY Homeless Women in Paradise

NO VACANCY, HOMELESS WOMEN IN PARADISE describes an incredible journey of Michael E. Reid’s discovery of 500 women living without shelter in one of the most affluent sea-side communities in California, to uncovering the complicated reasons for its existence — even in the place so many call “paradise.” One by one, bodies were being found dead in plain sight, high above the glittering cities of Monterey, Pebble Beach and Carmel. When Reid, an Episcopalian priest, found out he took action and co-founded the Fund for Homeless Women, which he now manages full time. NO VACANCY captures Reid’s journey into this landscape with a personal story that delves into the complex realities of homelessness, and how existing well-intentioned policies and programs often widen the gap between the indigent and mainstream societies. By sharing these women’s stories, Reid has provided an unvarnished look at the culture of long-term homelessness with a fresh approach. NO VACANCY will inspire and encourage readers to take the next step to help make a difference for the greater good, and onto the circuitous road of grassroots social change. Cover design: Donna Murphy.

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Adventures in Black and White

ADVENTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE, a memoir-travelogue, was first published by worldrenown child prodigy Philippa Duke Schuyler in 1960. In this first revised edition of ADVENTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE since its initial publication, scholar Tara Betts provides a critical introduction, including minor edits, and annotations of the original text. Schuyler was heralded as America’s first internationally-acclaimed mixed race celebrity. When the transition from child prodigy to concert pianist proved challenging in America, like many black performers before her, she went abroad during the 1950s for larger audiences. She traveled to Latin America, and later throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, performing before royalty, dignitaries and celebrities, witnessing first-hand the dissemblage of European colonies in Africa and the Middle East, readers learn how this young musician would eventually find her way tp become an author and a journalist.

Substance of Fire by Claire Millikin Introduction by R. Joseph Rodriguez | Contributors: Blake Calhoun, Richard Delgado, Reginald Wilburn, Riley Blanks and Roxana Trujillo 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY

2LP RECENT

Gender and Race in the College Classroom

JUL 2018 | PAPERBACK $29.99 SOCIAL SCIENCES | 198 pp. | 8.5” x 8.5” | ISBN: 978-1940939681 (pbk.)

FALL 2018

SUBSTANCE OF FIRE: GENDER AND RACE IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM brings readers inside the four-year college experience, unfolding multiple perspectives and voices. This multi-genre book, written by college professor Claire Millikin, explores how race and gender function within the privilege of the four-year 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. 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 claims 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.

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, as he promotes resilience and self-care to his readers. Unbeknownst to many, Oyewole, a founding member of the Last Poets and a poet in his own right, has been writing short stories for years. 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. Perhaps the most riveting part of this book are Oyewole’s short stories of remembrance, which at first glance read like a travelogue but under closer scrutiny are collectively a love story, and a beautiful mediation on grief and loss. In THE BEAUTY OF BEING, Oyewole connects to readers with sincerity, humor, heart and grace.

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by Abiodun Oyewole Introduction by Felipe Luciano

FALL 2018

2LP RECENT

PAPOLÍTICO, POEMS OF A POLITICAL PERSUASION is award-winning poet Jesús Papoleto Meléndez’ sixth book of poetry. Classical, contemporary, 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 to nudge people out of complacency and draw readers into his own kingdom of truth and justice. Investigating the serious and mundane, Meléndez’ poetry is written with the satirical and ironic wit and “cascading” style he has become known for. Throughout this volume, 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.

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shrimp

by jason elong vasser Introduction by Michael Castro

SHRIMP, the debut poetry collection of jason elong vasser, examines the African diaspora in a post-colonial context using “shrimp” as a metaphor for the “small” things in life. Using the shrimp motif, elong vasser 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 elong vasser scavenges for answers about his own ancestry, he 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. Throughout SHRIMP 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.

FALL 2018

CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL is Youssef Alaoui’s third poetry collection, which explores human relationships between individuals, cultures, races, and genders. Alaoui deftly utilizes archaic tones that formulates 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, which blends surrealism, magical realism, and language alchemy as he 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.

2LP RECENT

Collected Poems

The Revlon Slough New and Selected Poems

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, exploring 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, natural beauty and ugliness. His poetry, primarily written in free verse, 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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by Ray DiZazzo Introduction by Claire Millikin

2LP FAVORITES

SPRING 2019

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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Written Eye Visuals/Verse 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.

SPRING 2019

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.

2LP FAVORITES

A Country Without Borders

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 FAVORITES

PAGE 24

SPRING 2019

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.

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 JUN 2017 | PAPERBACK, $24.99 | EBOOK $9.99 SOCIAL SCIENCE, DISCRIMINATION & RACISM | 286 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939544 (pbk.) | ISBN: 978-1940939551 (ebk.)

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.

Breaking the White Code of Silence, A Collection of Personal Narratives Edited by Gabrielle David and Sean Frederick Forbes 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY APR 2016 | PAPERBACK, $29.99 | EBOOK $12.99 SOCIAL SCIENCE, DISCRIMINATION & RACISM | 670 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939483 (pbk.) | ISBN: 978-1940939490 (ebk.)

SPRING 2019

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.

2LP FAVORITES

What Does it Mean to be White in America?

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.

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40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry The Collected Works of Jesús Papoleto Meléndez

SPRING 2019

2LP BACKLIST

Birds on the Kiswar Tree by Odi Gonzales Translated by Lynn Levin

2LP TRANSLATIONS BILINGUAL: SPANISH-ENGLISH

The Collected Works of Shirley Bradley LeFlore Foreword by Amina Baraka Introduction by Gabrielle David

SEP 2014 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 FICTION, NOVEL | 162 pp.| 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939261 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939278 (ebk.)

MAY 2013 PAPERBACK 18.99 | EBOOK $9.99 POETRY | 120 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-0988476349 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-0988476387 (ebk.)

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. This is Gonzales’ first book published in a bilingual Spanish/English edition. Cover art: Eugen Berlo.

Tartessos and Other Cities PAGE 26

Brassbones & Rainbows

Poems by Claire Millikin Introduction by Fred Marchant

MAY 2016 PAPERBACK, $14.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 126 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939421 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939438 (ebk.)

TARTESSOS AND OTHER CITIES continues Claire Millikin’s exploration homelessness. Named for Tartessos, a lost city 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 leads readers to discover that home is not just the place where you happen to live, it is the place where you become yourself.

BRASSBONES & RAINBOWS is the debut poetry collection of Shirley Bradley LeFlore, an oral poet and performance artist from St. Louis, Missouri. Her 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. This collection also includes historical photos of LeFlore and other prominent poets and writers. Cover art: Frank Frazier.

The Death of the Goddess A Poem in Twelve Cantos Patrick Colm Hogan Introduction by Rachel Fell McDermott OCT 2014 PAPERBACK $16.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 132 pp. | 5” x 8” ISBN: 978-1940939346 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939353 (ebk.)

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.

The Birth of a Self-Made Identity by Samuel Diaz Carrion Introduction by Urayoán Noel

Providencia A book of poems by Sean Frederick Forbes Introduction by V. Penelope Pelizzon

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.)

The Morning Side of the Hill

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.

Boricua Passport by J. L. Torres

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.)

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 both real and imaginary. A must read! Cover art: Vagabond.

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A Novella by Ezra E. Fitz

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 the two insecure, incomplete protagonists that was inspired by William Faulkner’s classic novel The Wild Palms. THE MORNING SIDE OF THE HILL exposes an unexpected coincidence that Faulkner may have hinted at but never fully explored. Cover art: Vagabond.

SPRING 2019

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.)

2LP BACKLIST

Our Nuyorican Thing

2LP BACKLIST

The Last of the Po’Ricans y Otros Afro-artifacts Poems by Not4Prophet Graphics by Vagabond Introduction by Tony Medina NUYORICAN WORLD SERIES

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SPRING 2019

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

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 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.

Broke Baroque

Rivers of Women, The Play

by Tony Medina Introduction by Ishmael Reed

by Shirley Bradley LeFlore Photographs by Michael J. Bracey

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.)

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.

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.

Off Course

Poetry for the Homeless by Claire Millikin

by A. Robert Lee

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

WHEREABOUTS

Edited by Brandi Dawn Henderson

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. Of course, it’s all OFF COURSE. Read without discretion, and take out some personal insurance before reading.

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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Stepping Out of Place An Outside in Literary & Travel Magazine Anthology

MAY 2016 PAPE0RBACK $14.99 | EBOOK $6.99 POETRY | 138 pp. | 6” x 9” ISBN: 978-1940939407 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-1940939414 (ebk.)

SPRING 2019

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.

Roundabouts & Deviations

2LP BACKLIST

After Houses

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