Mucha Muchacha

A beloved poetry collection, available again The word "vos/z," spoken in Salvadoran Spanish, means "you" and also means "voice." If the word ends in "s" it means "you"; ending in "z" it means "voice." Leticia Hernández-Linares's poetry comes in somewhere between the S and the Z, and it is, like bread, like music, for everyone. The way Hernández-Linares shares her stories speaks to the hybridity of the cultural and literary histories she hails from. Hernández-Linares's poemsongs are her personal flor y canto. Mexican and Central American indigenous ancestors combined the concepts "in xochitl, in cuicatl" (in flower, in song) to define poetry--the poetic oral tradition they used to teach, engage, and philosophize. Hernández-Linares's writing excavates the faces of women in her family, silences in her community, and shapes their stories into a poetry that sings, and other times dances on the page. "I am cut from Santa Ana, El Salvador mujer steel, y qué orgullo," says Hernández-Linares.