Girl with Death Mask

"Givhan crafts a clear-eyed narrative of Latina womanhood in this lovely collection ripe with longing, hope, and broken faith. . . . Givhan explores the dark sides of adolescence and womanhood with searing imagery and a healthy dose of empathy."

~Publishers Weekly

"

Jennifer Givhan, we're awed by your use of pause and pacing, as you lead us to better understanding a woman's landmine-filled journey out of childhood.

"

~ForeWord Reviews

"

"Girl With Death Mask is so inspiring, it may just be that rare bird, a poetry bestseller."

"

~Cultural Weekly

"

In the image-rich, circuitous journey of Girl with Death Mask, the girl both defies and weds death and its accomplice, sex, defies and weds collective mythologies. She flies and she falls, floats and drowns. . . In this raw, kinetic masterpiece of survival Givhan assures us, 'even through death masks,' Givhan assures us, 'we can kiss.'

"

~Diane Seuss, author of, Four-Legged Girl

"

These poems beautifully, convincingly do what I hope poems might–they disrupt what I know, or what I thought I knew. And in that way they invent for me a world. A world haunted and brutal, yes. But one mended, too, by the love and tenderness and vision and magic by which these poems are made. Again and again I found myself looking into space, sort of shaken, sort of grasping, turning and turning inside a line or phrase, inside an image or metaphor, inside some devastating music.

"

~Ross Gay, author of, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

"

Magic, alchemy, transmogrification, and the body's deep obsessions fill these lyrically charged poems with an unearthed power. Givhan is a poet who knows the bones of her own world so well that she can rearrange them into anything she wishes. Both surreal and rooted in truth, the complex and gorgeous poems in Girl with Death Mask continue to shake, stun, and weave their spells long after the book is closed.

"

~Ada Limón, author of, Bright Dead Things

"

Girl with Death Mask shake the bars of our prisons and also those on which we write our music. . . . These poems illuminate how to love the body How hard our bodies work to bring their wisdom to us. How hard it is to love what we How hard it is to learn the ways that love abides despite our best efforts to dislodge, disprove, and doubt it. These poems find their way. They shake up our knowing in the best ways.

"

~Irena Praitis, author of, The Last Stone in the Circle