the daughterland

"the daughterland is a Plathian interrogation of Mexican motherhood during the regressive Covid-era by a mother who was a daughter during the arms race, Ronald Reagan, and socially-accepted toxic masculinity. Garcia's poems are the secrets parents wish they didn't have to keep to themselves."

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--Michelle Cruz Gonzales, Musician, professor, author of The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band

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"Margaret Elysia Garcia may be my favorite living poet, a maestra of the form. In our era of sacrifice, young blood spilled, and hummingbirds that fly too close to the sun, Garcia tenders her exquisite language, late-stage lyricism, & fullnamed, full-throated mestiza cri de cuento."

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--Susie Bright, author of Susie Bright's Sexual State of the Union and Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir

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"Margaret Elysia Garcia paints poems of a mother's broken-heartedness with unfiltered ferociousness, her daughter's life as palette. While we can't know our daughters' traumas, we do try. We hope they forgive our failures to protect them. How could we? Garcia's written her own mother-comforting failure salve, her own writer-comforting vengeance."

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--Jenny Forrester, author of Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir and Soft Hearted Stories: Seeking Saviors, Cowboy Stylists, and Other Fallacies of Authoritarianism

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"Breathtaking. A brave and timely work. Margaret Elysia Garcia digs deep into the personal to reach the universal stream. The poems in this volume come together like an underground chorus of the female experience here and now at the edge of the world, burning and surviving."

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--Ariel Gore, author of The Wayward Writer: Summon Your Power to Take Back Your Story, Liberate Yourself from Capitalism, and Publish Like a Superstar

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"the daughterland is an urgent and beautiful collection of poetry that speaks to the bonds of mother and daughter and the many faces of survival. Margaret Elysia Garcia's voice soars as she chronicles an authentic account of her experience as a Latina mother celebrating her heritage and supporting her daughter through bigotry, sexism, and trauma."

-Teresa Berkowitz, editor of Tangled Locks Journal