Paper america: New & Selected Poems gathers the poetic vision of Texas Poet Laureate Emmy P?rez, a voice rooted in the landscapes and communities of the Texas-Mexico border.
Drawing from her acclaimed collections Solstice and With the River on Our Face, alongside powerful new work, P?rez offers poems that confront the realities of immigration, border walls, cultural invisibility, and violence, while celebrating resilience, motherhood, and the enduring ties of family and heritage.
Writing from McAllen and the Rio Grande Valley, P?rez continues the legacy of Gloria Anzald?a and Chicana/Latina writers who turned la frontera into a literary ground of strength and survival. Whether she is memorializing the children of Uvalde, reflecting on the river that sustains border communities, or capturing everyday encounters in classrooms and neighborhoods, her lines of poetry are precious–each one crafted with compassion, clarity, and urgency.
With Whitmanesque scope yet firmly grounded in Mexican American identity and borderlands experience, P?rez’s poetry bridges the personal and the political, reminding readers of the power of words to bear witness, resist injustice, and cultivate hope. Paper america is both an introduction to one of Texas’s most vital poets and a career-spanning testament to the necessity of art in difficult times.
Author: Emmy Perez
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Texas Christian University Press
Published: 03/31/2026
Series: Tcu Press Texas Poet Laureate #21
Pages: 113
Weight: 0.73lbs
Size: 9.32h x 6.37w x 0.62d
ISBN: 9780875659657
Language: English
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