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About Virgin: Poems
Product Description Selected by Ross Gay as winner of the inaugural Jake Adam York Prize, Analicia Sotelo’s debut collection of poems is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young woman. In Virgin, Sotelo walks the line between autobiography and mythmaking, offering up identities like dishes at a feast. These poems devour and complicate tropes of femininity―of naiveté, of careless abandon―before sharply exploring the intelligence and fortitude of women, how “far & wide, / how dark & deep / this frigid female mind can go.” A schoolgirl hopelessly in love. A daughter abandoned by her father. A seeming innocent in a cherry-red cardigan, lurking at the margins of a Texas barbeque. A contemporary Ariadne with her monstrous Theseus. A writer with a penchant for metaphor and a character who thwarts her own best efforts. “A Mexican American fascinator.” At every step, Sotelo’s poems seduce with history, folklore, and sensory detail―grilled meat, golden habañeros, and burnt sugar―before delivering clear-eyed and eviscerating insights into power, deceit, relationships, and ourselves. Here is what it means to love someone without truly understanding them. Here is what it means to be cruel. And here is what it means to become an artist, of words and of the self. Blistering and gorgeous, Virgin is an audacious act of imaginative self-mythology from one of our most promising young poets. Review Praise for Virgin “Sotelo's best poems are first person . . . She relays experience without evasive disjunction or false coherence. Sotelo’s complicated ambivalence about men who ‘still love girls, but rarely admit it’ is disturbing and authentic.” ―New York Times “Sotelo’s virgins rage with heartbreak and humor . . . The speaker of Sotelo’s Virgin redefines vulnerability in a collection of poems that combine unrequited feelings, myth, fatherlessness, and heartbreak with a sense of humor, sensitivity, and feistiness.” ―BuzzFeed “Dazzling . . . [Sotelo] speaks to the heartache of crushes, relationships and a longing for freedom from the expectations amplified by religion and culture.” ―NBC News “[Sotelo’s] work challenges the two-dimensional feminine stereotype by infusing her female voices, including Ariadne’s, with intellect, wisdom and complications.” ―PBS NewsHour “Gorgeous . . . With candor and humor, Sotelo has given voice to women not often seen in the pages of American literature and has revealed in innovative ways the messiness that often characterizes relationships. Virgin heralds an important new voice in the world of poetry.” ―Houston Chronicle “ Virgin is the poetry of a purple Texas. . . . This smart and timely collection shows that we are in many ways already living in that world transformed, with all its promises and problems.” ―Texas Observer “ Virgin gorgeously, sensuously explores the pleasures and problems of the feminine experience. Sotelo’s language is as lush and hot as the inside of a woman’s mouth; her words can feel like a fever, like your eyes will blister if you stare too long at the page. . . . And what a pleasure to be hurt this way, with these words.” ―Nylon “ Virgin introduces readers to a young, Mexican-American feminist narrator who is sarcastic and unafraid, curious and self-discovering, and interested in everything from unrequited love and heartbreak to un-romanticized sex and the historically fraught terrain of virginity, and so much more. Analicia Sotelo dives headfirst into the complexities of the female experience and mind, and you’re going to love her for it.” ―Bustle “In this stunning debut collection, there’s a tension between witnessing and participating, the desire to be seen but also the desire to control that vision. Sotelo uses surprising language, insight, and wit to explore what it means to be Mexican-American as well as a young woman in a male-dominated world.” ―Rumpus “[A] sexy, magical volume of poetry, in which Ariadne and Theseus and Persephone appear to reflect and
