Between the Light / entre la claridad

The carefully crafted poems in Between the Light / entra la claridad highlight the centrality of family and culture that shape the identities of Mexican Americans, providing them with solid root structures that can also entangle them in the hardships and stereotypes of previous generations. Garza's strong voiced poems push against the outmoded ideas, behaviors, and thoughts that family, culture, and society try to wrap around her, forging her own "path / into the soft ground". This dynamic collection navigates temporal, emotional, linguistic and spiritual borders, borders that we must not ignore in a time when the geographical border demands all our attention, as we seek a space and time when "your ears / don't notice when the tongue speaking to you / slides over, flúido" and "dances where it wishes, map or no."