Books
Art: © Jessica Salazar McBride
In her new collection, Cindy Williams Gutiérrez explores the primal forces in our lives—both the power and frailty of familial bonds and of the body. Traversing the tender terrains of family, mortality and forgiveness, the poet meditates on love and loss. This collection is imbued by the geography of the poet's border hometown--emerald macaws and gulf hurricanes and the Rio Grande--as well as the geography of her own body and breath as a cancer survivor. This deeply personal map of remembrance and healing is dedicated to the two men the poet has loved most deeply: her father and her husband.
Praise for This Tender Geography:
"Cindy Williams Gutiérrez is one of my favorite poets. Her work tenderly explores the deep geographies of family, friendships, the environment, and human animal relations. Throughout, she maps the thresholds of loss and love through carefully crafted narratives and haunting images. Every page feels like an ocean of emotions breaking open; at the same time, every page is 'one wing opening.'"
—CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ, author of
From Unincorporated Territory [ȧmat] and
2023 National Book Award Winnter for Poetry
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Art: © Cristina Acosta
In her new collection, Cindy Williams Gutiérrez explores the global oppression of women—and testifies to their resilience—in over 20 countries around the world. Based on real-life incidents ranging from Brazilian “honor killings” and Indian sati to Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and “Mississippi appendectomies” to rape as a weapon during the Rwandan genocide, these poems bear witness to the sociocultural forces that have waged war on women’s bodies, freedom, and humanity. Inlay with Nacre is herstory—the plight of Woman as bride, wife, mother, and daughter—and a call to action to restore the Feminine in the world.
Praise for Inlay with Nacre:
"With muscular and inventive stanzas—characterized by an insistent music and strikingly unpredictable narratives—Gutiérrez has effectively scotched the mythos of the conveniently silenced woman. In doing so, she's graced us with a euphony of irrepressible voices, all too long overlooked and all central to the power in this formidable collection."
—PATRICIA SMITH, author of Incendiary Art
"Summoning the stories silenced by time and history, Gutiérrez's work sings with clarity and urgency. Calling out from the voices and bodies of women subjected to the forces of industry, power, and cultural hegemony, the poems move with precision and an unflinching gaze. The poet, Muriel Rukeyser, once asked, 'what would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open.' Here are many worlds, split open and speaking."
—BRYNN SAITO, author of Power Made Us Swoon
More Praise for This Tender Geography
"Like putting pushpins into a map of longing and desire to find her way home, Cindy Williams Gutiérrez's This Tender Geography is a book of attention, precision, and wonder. Her hold on the subjects of illness and death is poignant. Her care for the subject of love is pierced with wonder. Some of this book's poems are engangled in passion. Others move toward restraint. But, all the poems in this wonderful book glow with Gutiérrez's evocative lyricism and graceful intensity."
—DAVID BIESPIEL, author of
Republic Café
"In This Tender Geography, Cindy Williams Gutiérrez offers a series of carefully crafted meditations on love and loss. These poems offer a chance to consider our own relationships, and to thnk about how we fashion, tug, tear, and sometimes mend the web of life as we traverse it. Love is what renders us alive, the poet argues. In a brilliant sequence titled, Remedies, Williams Gutiérrez offers a variety of cures for as may ailments. This wonderful book, full of inventive forms and gratitude, is a sort of remedy itself for days when we might need a dose of beauty."
—CLAUDIA CASTRO LUNA, author of Cipota Under the
Moon
"If, as they say, when a dear one dies a wole library of stories has burned, then this book turns that lament to abundant creation--telling stories of the lost so they return to us, summoned by these poems. Cindy Williams Gutiérrez conjures family story, and healing thought from the shadows in the spirit of 'say it all now.'"
—KIM STAFFORD, author of
As the Sky Begins to Change
Art: © José Luís Rodríguez Guerra
Latina poet Cindy Williams Gutiérrez describes a mosaic of worlds—Tenochtitlan, New Spain, and the Mexican diaspora—in an exploration of her multicultural identity. Spanning 600 years, these poems call out from two pivotal eras in Mexico's past through imagined fifteenth-century Nahua "songs" and irreverent sonnets and décimas inspired by seventeenth-century poet-nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The poet responds, paying tribute to all she holds dear in the border's diverse cultural tapestry. A literary bridge across six centuries of history, this collection extends the literary dialogue of the Americas.
Praise for the small claim of bones:
"Cindy Williams Gutiérrez invokes prayer and healing, history and memory, plume shadow and word light—those marigold songs that connect us to the power of the ancient wisdom and to the poetry of our saving grace. Ehua!"
—RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ, author of Unpeopled Eden
"Cindy Williams Gutiérrez has tapped into a deep motherlode of spirit, story, and image in this fine book. Puro floricanto. Read it."
—LUÍS URREA, author of The House of Broken Angels
"With this debut collection, Cindy Williams Gutiérrez earns a place in the company of Ana Castillo, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sandra Cisneros, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Carmen Tafolla, Pat Mora, and many other feminist Latina and Xicanista forebears."
—STEPHANIE WOOD, University of Oregon