Selena Didn’t Know Spanish Either
Winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize
"What’s language? Better yet, what’s a mother tongue? Incorporating contemporary politics, existential questions, family and place with questions of who says what and how they say it , “Selena Didn’t Know Spanish Either” is thoughtful, engaging and wide-ranging in its sincerity and recognition of the deeper roots of belonging."
— Tracie Morris, Author of Hard Kore: Poems of Mythos and Place
“In a time when Latinx individuals are expected to perform authenticity…
…as our cultures are increasingly commodified, we find in this collection a voice that revels in the freedom that comes from failing your “purity exam.” Tirado’s lyric intensity will make you question the complicity and complexity of your own “sonic culture.” And, if you’re like me—as you turn the cumbias up for the neighbors who sing along, and those who don’t—dare you to write it!”
-Benjamin Garcia, author of Thrown in the Throat, Milkweed Editions
Praise for Selena Didn’t Know Spanish Either
“The sense of dissociation from one’s linguistic and cultural inheritance…
underpins this multifaceted chapbook, in which Tirado fuses personal heritage and colonial history in poems that often center around the amalgamated site of the speaker’s body.”
- Poetry Foundation
“Perhaps there is a blind spot in the white-American consciousness…
a place where, as Marisa writes, “white kids get more gold stars per language”—concerning the impact of white-American discrimination on the Hispanic experience, including its role in language loss. Perhaps…it’s simply the struggle of the American populace to do “nuance.”
- Xochitl Gonzales, Author of Olga Dies Dreaming