Mi'ja

Mi’ja is a new voice for old wounds, a time machine we are all invited to enter to reclaim the genius of our youth, an opportunity to revisit the loneliness and wonder of things we could see and understand only as children. At once heartbreaking and hilarious, Mi’ja chronicles the first nineteen years of the life of poet laureate, acclaimed playwright, and educator Magdalena Gómez—a life not meant for a child, nor is this book. It is fairytales and bestiaries in ceiling cracks; mythologies on the fire escape; realities of how the smallest acts of kindness can conquer despair. This book will reward you with revelations and celebrations of your own life; it may help you remember or perhaps even discover your truest, most honest self.. “Mi’ja belongs on your bookshelf between I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The House on Mango Street. Pure passion, pure life, pure New York City. We thrill watching the narrator survive, thrive and tell her tale. Brilliant!”—Lisa Aronson-Fontes, PhD; psychologist, professor, Fulbright scholar, global speaker and author of Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your Intimate Relationship and Child Abuse and Culture: Working with Diverse Families.“Magdalena Gómez’s searing honesty excavates what is dishonest within us. What she allows us to witness here is catharsis—hers, and ours—we will not carry the weight of abuse and oppression on our chests any longer. We will sing, and our liberation will terrify tyrants.”—Diana Alvarez, PhD (a.k.a. Doctora Xingona) award-winning poet, songwriter, and opera composer, Quiero Volver: A Xicanx Ritual Opera “Don’t miss the numerous creative and syncopated renderings and re-mixings of the Boricua Spanglish of the time, a treasure trove of New York Puerto Rican history reanimated by the ear and flow only a poet and performer like Gómez could bring...Gómez has long been a bridge between the foundational Nuyorican poets of the 1960s and 1970s and younger generations of poets and performers. Mi’ja is another kind of bridge: her “memoir noir” combines poems and dream records with vivid yet often raw and painful prose remembrances of growing up in the Bronx during a time of transition with parents steeped in old ways. She watches the borough transform and fray without losing its sense of struggle or its defiant humor, just as Gómez never has.”—Urayoán NoelAssociate Professor of English, Spanish, & Portuguese / Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Spanish & Portuguese at NYU; Latinx Project Faculty Board Member. “Gómez unflinchingly shares how adult physical and verbal violence warps a child’s ability to love and causes psychological wounds with no statute of limitations. Her lyric grace renders so many painful moments into riveting vignettes and unforgettable imagery. Gómez’s skillful crafting of this memoir immediately earns its rightful place alongside contemporary memoirs such as Grace Talusan’s The Body Papers, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, and Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House.“—María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado, MFA, MA; multilingual Boricua poet Pushcart Prize nominee. “Funny, painful, wickedly smart, and the definition of real.”—Bob Spivey, PhD, Founder of SEEDS, a Revolutionary Activist Art Group.