Book Release: "Plantains and Our Becoming" by Melania Luisa Marte and Cleyvis Natera.
Join us in celebrating this new, imaginative, blistering, beautifully written poetry collection about identity and history on the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black Diasporic experience.
About “Plantains and Our Becoming”
A powerful poetry collection in the vein of BLACK GIRL CALL HOME and IF THEY COME FOR US, about identity, culture, home and belonging. PLANTAINS AND OUR BECOMING is an imaginative, blistering, beautifully written poetry collection about identity and history on the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black Diasporic experience.
Through the exploration of the themes of self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational traumas, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots Black stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood, one that is deeply grounded in the heirlooms and teachings of Black celebration as well as preservation.
The collection is structured in the following sections: Part I: Daughter of Diaspora, exploring immigration and identity within the U.S. Part II: A History of Plantains, exploring the aftermath of colonialism, displacement and gentrification for Afro-descendants.
About the Author:
Melania Luisa Marte is a writer, poet, and speaker from New York living in the Dominican Republic. Marte's poetry explores many subjects including her Caribbean roots, intersectionality, and self-love. Her most viral poem “Afro-Latina” was featured by Instagram on their IG TV for National Poetry Month and has garnered over 9 million views. Her work has also been featured by Ain’t I Latina, Mitu, The Root, Teen Vogue, Facebook, Telemundo, Remezcla, Pop Sugar, and People En Español. PLANTAINS AND OUR BECOMING is her debut poetry collection.
About our Conversation Partner:
Cleyvis Natera is an essayist, short fiction writer, critic and novelist. Her debut novel Neruda on the Park was an anticipated book of 2022 by TIME, the Today Show, Good Morning America’s Zibby Owens, ELLE, Ms Magazine, Bustle, Goodreads, Book Riot, Entertainment Weekly, The Millions, Electric Literature, Lit Hub and The Rumpus. Upon publication, Neruda on the Park was selected as a May 2022 New York Times Editor’s Choice and as the June 2022 pick for Nobel Laurate Malala Yousafzai’s Fearless Literati Book Club. Natera was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. She’s received honors from PEN America, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). Her fiction, essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, URSA Fiction, Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration, The Brooklyn Rail, TIME, The Rumpus, Gagosian Quarterly, The Washington Post, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix) and Kweli Journal, among other publications. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Skidmore College and a Master of Fine Arts from New York University. Cleyvis worked a corporate job in insurance for two decades ascending to the executive level before pivoting her career to become a full-time writer. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey.