Poetry. Winner of the Hudson Prize. Shortlisted for The Chicago Review of Books Chirby Award.
Available from independent bookstores, libraries or Black Lawrence Press ᐧ SPD ᐧ Powell’s ᐧ Barnes & Noble ᐧ TSAB
“There is so much unbridled joy and pained tenderness in Ananda Lima’s poetry. Inspired by the poet Nathaniel Mackey and the musician Caetano Veloso, her verse streams effortlessly down the page, plaiting English with Portuguese, as Lima sings of the thrills and terrors of her new life in America, the pleasures of motherhood, and what she inherited from her family. Her voice is singular and wise and fresh. I love the poems in this collection.” —Cathy Park Hong
“Mother/land thoughtfully examines topics of immigration, family, and motherhood, combining fresh imagery that almost paints scenes in your mind with raw, vulnerable language.”—Farrah Penn for BuzzFeed
“In Ananda Lima’s luminous debut, the cultural landscape stretches vertically, from the bustling US cities to the tropical waters of Brazil. English communes with Portuguese, shaping a language that is musical and enchanting, though not without tension. For this speaker, hard-hitting questions about homeland, nationality and citizenship persist, as does the search for home. Mother/land gives breath to the immigrant’s bittersweet songs about what is gained with migration and what is lost, what can be recovered and what will remain out of reach.”—Rigoberto González
“Interrogating the liminal space of place as both mother and immigrant, Lima’s poems are full of the many small, but dear, longings and confusions of mentally existing in two countries at once and the separations between familiarity, families, and new experiences. She is masterful at tasking us look more deeply at the seemingly mundane, from making a peanut butter and jelly for her son to cutting her hair too short.”—Angela María Spring for Electric Literature
“Ananda Lima’s Mother/land is as much a mother’s grappling with how to raise her son amid the danger and violence of today’s America as it is an investigation of a daughter’s inherited, migrant Brazilian past. Lima’s poetry has the rare power to let us feel and “know the terror” of the present moment, while reflecting on ancestry and passing on familial legacy to the next generation. Her poems aren’t afraid to “shout ‘I’m an American citizen’ ” across borders and languages, while shattering the security of presumed identity and recognizing both the precarity and privilege of citizenship. Piercing and poignant, Lima’s voice and music stay with you, “undisturbed / by wind or water, there will always remain/ a footprint” guiding your way home.” —Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
“Brazilian-American Ananda Lima’s new poetry collection vividly explores the intersections and complexities of motherhood and immigration […] Lima masterfully paints bilingual portraits of child-rearing, transformation, and place.”—Priscilla Blossom for Reader’s Digest “
“Ananda Lima’s debut collection Mother/land, language crosses cultural landscapes effortlessly, full of the musical rhythms and family lore that have shaped the poet’s life. Lima plaits English and her native Portuguese in luscious verses that span a range of emotions as she tells us about the terrors and joys of motherhood, her new life in the United States, and being a human in a world that is slipping through our fingers.”—Gabriella Souza for The Rumpus
“Ananda Lima is a radiant poet, and her poems, too, are radiant. (…) This great book left me thinking about this country and the work we still have to do from the inside out.”—Leah Umansky for Poetry Society of America, “The Writer’s Desk”
“a profound collection full of wisdom thanks to Lima’s singular vision and voice” —Adam Morgan for the Chicago Reader‘s “The best Chicago books of 2021”
“Whether immigrants ourselves or not, Mother/land can speak to the many of us who have grappled with existing in a national context that puts up barriers on so many fronts, from language to physical movement. Lima’s collection resounds with both incantations in her mother tongue and with English refrains that burn blue with longing, with the search for home.”—Esther Sun for Counterclock
“Lima challenges our linguistic and cultural boundaries, our empirical knowledge, and the self-defeating American habit of reading history selectively. One comes away feeling closer to the sights, smells, and sounds within her world, and more attuned to one’s own.”—Mary Sutton for West Trade Review
“Lima’s collection is a gem that expands the conversation on America’s legacy as a land of immigrants.”—Amy Strauss Friedman for Newcity Lit
“a stunning debut”— Latino Stories, “2021 Top 10 “New” Latino Latinx Authors You, Your Family, and Teachers Need To Read”
“With tremendous experimentation in form, in Mother/Land, poet Ananda Lima grapples with the desolation of diaspora and how maternal love cannot always overcome the vast universe’s apparent indifference. […] a sparse, potent look at motherhood in the context of migration and the universe at large.”—Elliott Turner for Latino Book Review
Featured in Poet & Writers “Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin”
Featured in “New Confessions: Six Books by Latinx Poets,” as one of six poetry collections that “enlarge the poetic landscape and expand Latinx and Latin American linguistic and geographical boundaries”— Ruben Quesada for Harvard Review
Mother/land is focused on the intersection of motherhood and immigration and its effects on a speaker’s relationship to place, others and self. It investigates the mutual and compounding complications of these two shifts in identity while examining legacy, history, ancestry, land, home, and language. The collection heavily focuses on the latter, including formal experimentation with hybridity and polyvocality, combining English and Portuguese, interrogating translation, and transforming traditional repeating poetic forms. These poems from the perspective of an immigrant mother of an American child create a complex picture of the beauty, danger, and parental love the speaker finds and the legacy she brings to her reluctant new motherland.