Have You Been Long Enough at Table by Leslie Sainz
- Sale Date
- ISBN
- 9781959030119
- Page Count
- 96
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 6 x 9
- Imprint
- Tin House
Meet the Author
Leslie Sainz
Winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Finalist for the Vermont Book Award
Finalist for the New England Book Award
Finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award
“Marvelous.”—Terrance Hayes
Taking its title from Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Leslie Sainz’s Have You Been Long Enough at Table explores the personal and historical tragedies of the Cuban American experience through a distinctly feminine lens. Formally diverse with echoes of Spanish throughout, this debut collection critiques power and patriarchy as weaponized by the governments of the United States and the Republic of Cuba. In investigating the realities of displacement and inherited exile, Sainz honors her imagined past, present, and future as a result of the “revolution within the revolution”—the emancipation of Cuban women.
Through lyric and associative meditations, Sainz anatomizes the unique grief of immigrant daughters, as her speakers discover how family can be a microcosm of the very violence that displaced them. What emerges is a spiritual blueprint for disinheritance, radical self-determination, and the nuanced examinations of myth, ritual, and resistance.
Finalist for the Vermont Book Award
Finalist for the New England Book Award
Finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award
“Marvelous.”—Terrance Hayes
Taking its title from Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Leslie Sainz’s Have You Been Long Enough at Table explores the personal and historical tragedies of the Cuban American experience through a distinctly feminine lens. Formally diverse with echoes of Spanish throughout, this debut collection critiques power and patriarchy as weaponized by the governments of the United States and the Republic of Cuba. In investigating the realities of displacement and inherited exile, Sainz honors her imagined past, present, and future as a result of the “revolution within the revolution”—the emancipation of Cuban women.
Through lyric and associative meditations, Sainz anatomizes the unique grief of immigrant daughters, as her speakers discover how family can be a microcosm of the very violence that displaced them. What emerges is a spiritual blueprint for disinheritance, radical self-determination, and the nuanced examinations of myth, ritual, and resistance.
Praise for Have You Been Long Enough at Table
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“Sugar is a recurring motif in this debut collection by the daughter of Cuban exiles, whose poems address life after the revolution & especially the role of women.”
The New York Times Book Review -
“Sainz creates assemblages of spiky surfaces and eye-catching asymmetries. . . . having her poetry both ways, alternating an idiosyncratic squint with an eye for geopolitical change and mercurial family dynamics.”
Poetry Foundation -
“So many of Sainz’s lines carry the weight of a culture—poet as medium. . . . Ambitious. . . . A promising debut.”
The Millions, A Must Read Poetry Collection of Summer
About the Imprint
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