Owlfeather Collective is pleased to announce the publication of Rooting, a bilingual edition of Marianela Medrano’s selected poems.

The poems enter into the sensual and spiritual layers of Medrano’s life in a woman’s body. She explores painful scars and sacred memories, her rooting in and uprooting from her Dominican motherland and Taino heritage.

Inside the sternum
underneath the wing, I penetrate myself,
the same ripped and tattered soul I left behind….

The collection moves from longer, historically and culturally interwoven poems, to a delicate sequence of “Key” poems.

Shadow and light,
the word settles into the bodies.
At the intersection
it opens a sacred space.

In Rooting/Des/arraigar, Dominican poet Marianela Medrano offers an array of poems that traverse diasporic paths of memory, pain, desire, and love….Be it the recounting of a fledgling poet’s discovery of her own voice or the full-throated celebration of the Divine Feminine found in the mythic landscapes of Taino goddesses and gods, the poems of Rooting/Des/arraigar firmly anchor their author among the best of her generation.

Christopher A. McGrath, Grand Valley State University

Marianela Medrano is a Dominican writer and poet with a PhD in psychology, living in Stamford, Connecticut. Her individual publications include: Oficio de Vivir (Buho, 1986), Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza (Buho, 1987), Regando Esencias/The Scent of Waiting (Alcance, 1998), Curada de Espantos (Torremozas, 2002), Diosas de la Yuca (Torremozas, 2011), Prietica (Alfaguara, 2013).

Proceeds from the sale of this book support GraceWorks, Inc.

To buy Rooting, you can send a check made out to GraceWorks, Inc. for $18 (includes shipping and handling) to GraceWorks, 6 Rushmore Circle, Stamford, CT 06905. You may also order it online at www.graceworksinternational.org. Go to “Support” and donate $18. The transaction will automatically issue you a receipt for your tax files as well as provide GraceWorks the address to mail you the book.