About Erika L. Sánchez
Erika L. Sánchez, Poet, novelist, and essayist, is An award-winning and impactful new voice in modern American poetry. “The first time I saw the light”, she said in her her Poem of My Humiliations: “it was dim and predatory. I shielded my eyes, and the night cleared its silent throat. I could hear my mother wringing her hands the following morning. Naturally, I put my underwear on inside out, and of course, the elastic didn’t hold. At that moment, all I really wanted was a sandwich. Instead, I just clung to this leather whip. I ended up staining my sheets with my sorrow”. Her powerful debut poetry collection explores what it means to live on both sides of the border—the border between countries, languages, despair and possibility, and the living and the dead. Sánchez tells her own story as the daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants and as part of a family steeped in faith, work, grief, and expectations. The poems confront gender, shame, race, and an America roiling with xenophobia, violence, and laws of suspicion and suppression. With candor and urgency, and with the unblinking eyes of a journalist, Erika Sánchez roves from the individual life into the lives of sex workers, narco-traffickers, factory laborers, artists, and lovers. What emerges is a powerful, multifaceted portrait of survival. Her first book “Lessons on Expulsion” is a vibrant, essential collection now breaking into the national literary landscape. The book was released by Graywolf in July 2017. The Washington Post included it in their list of the best poetry for July 2017, describing it as a “fierce, assertive debut”. Kathleen Rooney in The New York Times commended Sánchez's “wrenching explorations of guilt and shame, grief and misogyny… Her portrayals of suffering are painful and lingering,” especially through her use of the second person “to engage readers with challenging topics.”In 2017, Tracy K. Smith, the United States poet laureate, highlighted Sánchez as one of the most promising new voices in poetry. Sánchez was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship in 2015.
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I love the smell of old bookstores—paper, knowledge, and probably mildew.
