A South Side Girl’s Guide to Love & Sex

This brilliant collection of poems charts the story of immigration, of family, of place, politics, identity, and the complex nomadic hybrid diasporic identities of the 21st century. It is built around the four elements of hip-hop: MC’ing which we think of as Rap; B Boying, what you think of Dance; Graffiti writing which covers the visuals; and DJing, which covers composition and change. It flirts dangerously with access—at once surprising readers with unexpected slant rhymes, colloquial turns of phrase juxtaposed at seeming odds and even the occasional dip into cliché—all aimed at establishing a larger conversation with a more varied audience than lyric poetry. This risk is something that all fans of Larry Levis will understand: the delicate and precise skill of leaning up against but never spilling into sentimentality. With poems that are funny, elegiac, political and textured by Bomba, Salsa and Hip-Hop, this is a vivid, beautiful, breathtaking, moving and profound book. I can’t recommend it enough."" - Chris Abani, author of Sanctificum and GraceLand.