Deborah A. Miranda
Raised by Humans: Poems.
San Fernando, California: Tia Chucha Press, 2015. First edition. 9781882688500 75 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 6" x 9", is like new.
"The poems in "Raised by Humans" are about surviving childhood and colonization. Childhood did not agree with Deborah Miran­da, mostly because the adult humans in charge of her life were not prepared to manage their own lives, let alone the life of a human-in-training. Humans raised Deborah, but it wasn't a hu­mane childhood. This poetry collection is also about how indigenous people survive civilization and become readers and writers of the same alphabet that colonized their culture. The complexity of being forced to find her way into relationship with the very people or cultures that have hurt/raised Miranda is a paradox at the heart of her poetry, which pushes language past what Miranda calls the "alphabet of walls.""