ChickenBones: A Journal

for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes

   

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Naomi Ayala is fearless in her debut collection of poetry. She writes

about cultural pride with succinct description and clarity.

 

 

Reviews of  Naomi Ayala's 

Wild Animals on the Moon..

Reviews

From the back cover

“Naomi Ayala writes poems like water, a clear, strong current, sometimes tranquil, sometimes furious, but always swirling with life.”

--Martín Espada, Puerto Rican Author

Ayala’s poems are bold, surrealistic, freewheeling.  She plays with placement on the page.  She pares punctuation and capitalization, and often uses enjambment to propel her text forward… Ayala [is] courageous in the agenda she sets for herself: racism, poverty, immigration, relationships and separation, the power of words, the struggles of women, and violence in individual lives, in neighborhoods, and in other countries…  Her voice is at times soft, at times ferocious.  She is a woman who will be heard.”

--Margaret Huntington, “Ruptured Lives,” American book review, Nov./Dec. 1998

“Vivid, sharp verse from a Puerto Rican living on the mainland and writing about those on the edge.”

--Margo Gutiérrez, Mexican American Library Program, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin, Selective List of Acquisitions, Spring 1998

“Naomi Ayala is fearless in her debut collection of poetry. She writes about cultural pride with succinct description and clarity. She views turmoil through the eyes of the oppressed [and] gives an identity to the unknown immigrant, the faceless woman… Her strong feminine voice is raised to heroism through expressive and courageous writing… Her poetry has a body that dances, a rhythm… a voice that demands to be heard.”

--Speed Reader, Weekly alibi, August 1997  

“These poems explore issues of racial identity, independence, and hope as Ayala explores her experiences of being Puerto Rican on the mainland and all this entails.  Her poems provide powerful free verse testimony to the Puerto Rican experience in this country and hold both literary and social value.”

--Midwest Book Review  

“These are very political poems in the sense that Adrienne Rich once said ‘There is no difference between the personal and the political.’”

--berniE-zine Reviews

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updated 9 April 2008

 

 

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