Dark Sister: Poems

Linda Rodriguez, author of the Cherokee detective series featuring Skeet Bannion (St. Martin’s/Minotaur Press), turns to family stories for her third book of poetry. She testifies to borderlands that still exists between Cherokee people and heirs of Andrew Jackson’s soldiers; between Americans and their British Isles forebears; and between the frontera of Mexico and southern plains states of the United States. She spares no quarter as she remembers history and its living embodiment in the present. She tells compelling stories with the sure hand of an oral storyteller and with lyrical intensity of a skilled poet. In Dark Sister, the ageless Cherokee language and Spanish blend with English to explain the complexities of life as a mixed-blood woman in the 21st century. This book appeals to young adults and adult audiences with family stories, love stories, just-so stories, and more.For her previous books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Linda Rodriguez has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, the Midwest Voices and Visions Award, the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, the 2011 and 2014 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Awards, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Rodriguez has edited four anthologies, most recently The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, co-edited with Diane Glancy. Her poetry has appeared in many national and regional journals and on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress, and New Letters on the Air.