Redwork - Paperback

by Laurie Ann Guerrero (Author)

Laurie Ann Guerrero's expansive fifth poetry collection, REDWORK, is a meditation on a woman's role in work and family, ancestral wisdom, and the subversive nature of female art.

Interwoven with eight images of the author's intricate redwork embroidery--striking red thread on light textiles--these poems explore reproductive justice, violence, gender dynamics, internalized sexism, and mothers and mothering, bound by the belief that "a red thread ties me, like a vein, to all my mothers." From a paradigm-shifting slap at a Brownies troop meeting to eating a rattlesnake to a great-grandmother rising from her coffin, Guerrero's precise, visceral voice threads the imagery of embroidery through unexpected forms. Rhythmic stitches echo in her repetitions, leaving phrases that stay with the reader: "How quietly our trust began."

REDWORK is a love letter to the women who came before, a cry against gendered violence, and a celebration of the quiet revolutions of women around the world.

Author Biography

Poet, essayist, and visual artist, Laurie Ann Guerrero was born and raised in the Southside of San Antonio. Poet Laureate of San Antonio (2014-16) and Texas (2016-2017), her collections include Babies under the Skin (Panhandler, 2008), A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), A Crown for Gumecindo--a collaboration with visual artist, Maceo Montoya (Aztlan Libre Press, 2015), and I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake: New & Selected Poems (TCU Press, 2021). Guerrero holds degrees from Smith College and Drew University. She is an Associate Professor and the Writer-in-Residence at Texas A&M University-San Antonio.