Cape Verdean Blues
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- €14.99
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- €14.99
Publisher Description
“These words feel like experiences. Some are personal, most are enlightening, but all connect. Connect on a higher Level. A spiritual level.” —Kendrick Lamar, Grammy Award-winning artist, and winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music
A Lit Hub Favorite Book of 2018
The speaker in Cape Verdean Blues is an oracle walking down the street. Shauna Barbosa interrogates encounters and the weight of their space. Grounded in bodily experience and the phenomenology of femininity, this collection provides a sense of Cape Verdean identity. It uniquely captures the essence of “Sodade,” as it refers to the Cape Verdean American experience, and also the nostalgia and self-reflection one navigates through relationships lived, lost, and imagined. And its layers of unusual imagery and sound hold the reader in their grip.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her strong debut, Barbosa delves into how the nuances of identity are formed through intersecting struggles. She characterizes identity as mutable, flexible, and a means to keep the memories that shape a person. Writing of her Cape Verdean upbringing in Boston, Barbosa investigates what it means to be a woman of color and a cultural other: "While I study my aunt makes a few bucks with no English at the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square. She's sweeping like it's a Saturday morning in her Cape Verdean home." In Barbosa's poems, the act of remembering can spur self-reflection as well as a political epiphany. In "An Email Recovered from Trash," Barbosa contends with dating as a black woman: "Can you tell from my name, I'm still in search of a place to stay?" It seems that even when Barbosa wants to momentarily forget about otherness, the outside world serves as a constant reminder. Yet she finds an inner peace, writing "My noise so liberating/ it asks to be no one." For Barbosa, the memories that are a minefield can also become a haven; those aspects of identity that arise through conflict can serve as a source of exceptional strength.
