Pan de Alma - Paperback

by Marcella Prokop (Author), Naomi Ramona Schliesman (Artist), Alesandra Bell (Designed by)

Pan de Alma is a reclamation of identity and heritage. In this award-winning chapbook, Colombian-American Marcella Prokop navigates the streets of Bogotá, Cartagena and other cities, exploring the complexities of cultural and personal identity. In "Hunger," she confronts privilege by examining desire and dependence (Moonlight sugars our pale skin/ And I know again, in new ways/ the freedom and fullness/ of my young, foreign body"). In "Omayra's Eyes," she views the vastness of the universe through the eyes of a dying child ("Look into those eyes/and know what it is to endure/as if the soul were a penny/searching the depths for a peaceful bottom"). Whether she's contemplating her experience as a tourist or wondering what it means that "Colombians are Americans, too," Prokop celebrates abundance and agency in the face of absence and expectation, exploring connections to place and people across time and space. The poems in this collection layer language and myth and "national sabor" to set a resplendent table for readers hungry to know Prokop's heartland as more than a country of US interventions and violence.