en el norte / soy del sur

Poetry that considers migration and identity through formal experimentation with sonnets.

Jos? Felipe Alvergue’s en el norte/soy del sur, which translates to “in the north I am of the south,” is an exploration into the limits of the American sonnet, one that seeks to establish a stable sense of place, while opening vistas at each turn. Stitching together multiple sonnets into what he calls “sonnet essays,” Alvergue rides their turns–or “voltas”–that are guided by memories and photographs of his family’s migratory history between El Salvador and the United States.

The resulting text is a story of human geography that considers the coordinates of a long, continuous thought about what it means to be “of a place” as a defining characteristic of identity, when one is also “in a place” that sets strict limits on the political and historical potential of im/migrants. A deeply human documentary work that delves into one family’s migration across the hemisphere, en el norte/soy del sur hopes to give shape to the collective and often amorphous history of migration in the face of narratives that peddle spectacularized distillation and essentialism.

Author: José Felipe Alvergue
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Omnidawn
Published: 06/05/2026
Pages: 110
Weight: 0.47lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.30d
ISBN: 9781632432124
Language: English