Kind words:
“‘What danzirly poems!’ This is what I imagine the father in this book might say, using what he deems ‘the most glorious’ adjective ‘in the English language’ but in reality is a mishearing of the U.S. national anthem’s ‘dawn’s early.’ Nevertheless, this neologism, which the father applies to everything remarkable, describes perfectly a poetic language energized by what is simultaneously emergent and at the brink of extinction—when the speaker moves between origins and imagined futures, or a father denies his own immigrant hardship and cheerfully tells his daughter, ‘You are / American.’ This book is about interrogating the mold that shaped ‘the plastic / of my parents’ American dreams’ while worrying about its effects on the next generation, and it flips the script to show these molds’ destructive nature. The poems compose a fractured anthem that sings of connection and disconnection to place, identity, family, and language. To the tune of ‘you win, you lose, you win, you lose,’ this book’s anthem is ultimately about the immigrant’s struggle and desire to thrive, proclaiming proudly, ‘Por si las moscas, // we’re prepared / for anything.”
“In Danzirly, the landscape is often shifting: Colombia 1948, a present-day American strip mall, a plane landing in Beijing. With an eye on the past and an eye on the future, Gloria Muñoz steps boldly into the space between languages and wrestles with the complicated present. Muñoz is a cartographer of the sparks that arise from the friction of cultures rubbing together. We see a wide-range of poetic styles at work, but the emotional heart is a sonnet cycle that paints a portrait of Muñoz’ free-spirited grandfather. Join me in welcoming this powerful, new voice.
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This dazzling YA cli-fi written in prose and verse will speak to any reader struggling with the state of our world and how to understand their place in it.
"In outer space, no one will know me as the girl with the dead sister." Seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed Goth and aspiring writer Julieta Villarreal is drowning. She’s grieving her twin sister who died in a hit-and-run, her Florida home is crumbling under the weight of climate disaster, and she isn’t sure how much longer she can stand to stay in a place that doesn’t seem to have room for her.
Then, Juli is recruited by Cometa, a private space program enlisting high-aptitude New American teens for a high-stakes mission to establish humanity’s first extraterrestrial settlement. Cometa pitches this as an opportunity for Juli to give back to her adopted country; Juli sees it as her only chance to do something big with her life.
Juli begins her training, convinced Cometa is her path to freedom. But her senior year is full of surprises, including new friendships, roller skating, and first love. And through her small but poignant acts of environmentalism, Juli begins to find hope in unexpected places. As her world collapses from the ramifications of the climate crisis, Juli must decide if she’ll carry her loss together with her community or leave it all behind.
Told in gripping prose interspersed with poems from Juli’s writing journal, this genre-bending novel explores themes of immigration, climate justice, grief, and the power of communities
Danzirly is a striking bilingual poetry collection that fiercely examines the nuances of the American Dream for Latinx people in the United States. With a backdrop of stringent immigration policies, the #MeToo movement, and the increasingly tangible threat of climate change, this collection considers multigenerational Latinx identities in a rapidly changing country and world. Through the author’s Colombian American lens, the poems explore the intersections of culture, gender, history, and intergenerational grief.
Danzirly does not shy away from confronting traditional gender roles, religion, and anxieties surrounding climate change and the digital age. Gloria Muñoz addresses Latinx stereotypes and powerfully dismantles them in poetic form, juxtaposing the promised wonders of a life in America with the harsh realities that immigrants face as they build their lives and raise their families here. Winner of the Academy of American Poets’ Ambroggio Prize, this collection of poems is an unforgettable reckoning of the grief and beauty that pulses through twenty-first-century America.
Winner of the Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets
“In this utterly unique bilingual collection, Muñoz brilliantly negotiates two languages and the spaces between them, exploring the ever transient emblem of the American Dream through themes of lineage and loss, cultural and spiritual inheritance, assimilation, and racial and gender inequality.”
“But we are all on the brink of / something. Aren’t we?’ Gloria Muñoz’s Danzirly grapples with identity, place, and belonging; with the edges and borders and brinks where we find ourselves; with what we remember and what we do not want to remember; with what we speak and how we speak it; and with how the words we use shape the lives we live. This book is essential reading. ”
“Gloria Muñoz’s voice rings with an authenticity that occurs when tradition is brought into the service of intimate originality. What a joy to discover such an artist.”
“Somewhere between dazzling and dawn is a mondegreen that confuses survival and desire, love and devastation. Gloria Muñoz has written a book that confronts the myths that raised her and the painful negotiations forced by nation, family, and institutions. These poems shelter their subjects, even as they undo the knotted entanglements that bring them together.”
Kind words:
“The poems in this wonderful book make my heart hurt and make it sing, at once as elegies and love letters to her fellow humans tell the story of one woman’s coming of age in a broken-to-pieces world. Dreamy, crystal clear, engaged, vibrant and original.”
“At times lyrical, at times narrative, the poems in Your Biome Has Found You happen at the turbulent crossing of self, family, and culture. They are works of both passion and compassion and they mark the debut of a writer for whom art and moral citizenship are, blessedly, synonymous.”