Flower Grand First by Gustavo Hernandez
Thu, Aug 19
|LibroMobile
A Book Celebration & Live Reading for Flower Grand First by Gustavo Hernandez
Time & Location
Aug 19, 2021, 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM PDT
LibroMobile, 220 E 4th St #107, Santa Ana, CA 92701, USA
About the Event
*In-person & Virtual event through IG Live
LibroMobile Presents: Flower Grand First by Gustavo Hernandez
Book Celebration & Live Reading on Thursday, August 19, at 6pm PST.
Location: LibroMobile Bookstore in the alley www.instagram.com/libromobile
About the Author: Gustavo Hernandez is the Author of Flower Grand First (Moon Tide Press 2021) and Form His Arms (Ghost City Press 2020). He was born in Jalisco, Mexico and lives in Southern California. www.hernandezpoetry.com
Praise for the Book:
Never have faith in family and flora been so intimately grafted together than in Gustavo Hernandez’ debut collection, Flower Grand First. In the prayer of naming where one’s faith resides, a mother tells us “Think of a stem growing north and a bloom spreading: Chicago, Tejas, Arizona, California” and what becomes, in this collection, a jacaranda blossom or a morning glory, or the sister-cities of Jalisco and Santa Ana. Intertwined in these homegrown poems is what one mourns and praises when moving from one country to another: the body’s constant labor, the struggle to love and live free from fear, the landscape of language one learns to write an homage to familial history. These poems, as elegies, are the most tender renditions of loss. Line by line, they are sharpened with a profound love and longing that cut cenote-deep and offer us “a sprig of rue, an oregano leaf” in order to heal, in order “to hold on to everything we can still recognize.” - Ángel García, author of Teeth Never Sleep
The sense of place and displacement — physically, mentally and spiritually — in Gustavo Hernandez’s debut collection is as thrilling as it is heartbreaking. The discombobulation of the immigrant experience, the awakening of sexuality in a strange land, the need to hold on and let go of traditions, and a family navigating the vagaries of the “American dream” can all be found in the masterfully rendered, elegiac poems of “Flower Grand First.” - Collin Kelley, author of Midnight in a Perfect World
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