"if you ask me if i am fluent in Spanish i will tell you my Spanish is an itchy / phantom limb - reaching for words & only finding air"

"did you know: that after we die
our hair still grows?

picture: a field of skulls with rock & roll mullets
picture: pubes over bones
picture: a blanket of hair tucking us in, forever."

3.5/5

I really enjoyed this collection. I adore getting a look into backgrounds different to my own. I don’t have much knowledge about that Latina culture so a lot of the Spanish words and phrases went over my head. Despite this, the raw heart Lozada-Olivia pours into each poem still hits me in the chest, still resonates with me because, despite the cultural differences love, feminism, body hair and wanting to fit is universal for young women. Ultimately this collection is about what it’s like to be human.

This is a collection I will read over and over again. Highly recommend.

This poetry book is SO GOOD! The whole thing was this unapologetic look at what it means to be a first generation American and living in a world where cultures combine and touch your life to where your parts become nothing else, but human. However, Peluda is so much more then that. It is about being comfortable in your own skin and not being ashamed of who you are, even letting out your inner werewolf and being unafraid of being feral every once in a while.

There was one single poem that made this poetry book so much more to me and that poem was “You Know how to say Arroz Con Pollo but Not What You Are”. I finished this poem and I cried. I cried because even though her situation is the complete opposite of my own it felt like she got it.. got me. It was everything I had ever wanted to say, but in different words.

As it was World Poetry Day today I will share this poem with you all in full.

You Know how to say Arroz Con Pollo but Not What You Are

If you ask me if I am fluent in Spanish I will tell you

My Spanish is an itchy phantom limb: reaching for a word and only finding air

My Spanish is my third birthday party: half of it is memory, and the other half is a photograph on the fridge is what my family has told me

If you ask me if I am fluent I I will tell you that

My Spanish is a puzzle left in the rain

Too soggy to make its parts fit so that it can look just like the picture on the box.

I will tell you that

My Spanish is possessive adjectives.

It is proper nouns dressed in pearls and bracelets.

It is are you up yet. It is there is a lot to do today

My Spanish is on my resume as a skill.

My Spanish is on his favorite shirt in red mouth marks

If you ask me I will tell you

My Spanish is hungrier than it was before.

My Spanish reaches for words at the top of a shelf without a stepping stool

is hit in the head with all of the old words that have been hiding up there

My Spanish wonders how bad is it to eat something that’s expired

My Spanish wonders if it has an expiration date

If you ask me if I am fluent in Spanish I will tell you that

My Spanish is the smell of Windex, the tearing of paper towels, the flushing of toilets, the splash of a mop

My Spanish bites on a pencil in the corner of a classroom and does not raise its hand

My Spanish cancelled plans with you so that it could watch movies

My Spanish is my older sister’s sore smile at her only beauty pageant

My Spanish is a made up story about a parent who never came home

My Spanish is a made up story about a parent who never came home and traveled to beautiful places and sent me post cards from all of them

My Spanish is me, tracing my fingers along every letter they were able to fit in

My Spanish is the real story of my parent’s divorce

Chaotic, broken and something I have to choose to remember correctly

My Spanish is wondering when my parents will be American

asking me if I’m white yet

If you ask me if I am fluent in Spanish I will try to tell you the story

of how my parents met in an ESL class

How it was when they trained their mouths to say

I love you in a different language, I hate you with their mouths shut

I will tell you how my father’s accent makes him sound like Zoro

how my mother tried to tie her tongue to a post with an English language leash

I will tell you that the tongue always ran stubbornly back to the language it had always been in love with

Even when she tried to tame it

it always turned loose

If you ask me if I am in fluent

I will tell you

My Spanish is understanding that there are stories that will always be out of my reach

there are people who will never fit together the way that I want them to

there are some letters that will always stay silent

there are some words that will always escape me.

This poem is gorgeous, emotional, and full of so much raw truth. I know it is not one that would make most people cry, but for me after I first read it I was an emotional mess. I am someone who was born only being seen as a typical white girl to outsiders. However, I was adopted and raised into a Spanish family. I grew up in a way not connecting to any specific culture and so I don’t really feel like anything but a human being (I don’t really believe I can claim any specific culture or that I should claim one). However, I grew up hearing Spanish around the house and listening to mariachi music at fairs and eating tamales, pupusas, and huevos con chorizo. More then anything else I learned how to speak Spanish in the way of food, but I never became fluent and can understand far more then I could ever say. But for me it was the end of this poem that really got to me. There will always be words I don’t understand and so many stories that I will never hear and it felt like a great loss to me and the tears came. This poem was beautiful and in so many ways it broke my heart.

All of the poems in Peluda are filled with power. This is one of my favorite poetry books I have ever read and I hope that so many others find the beauty in it that I did.

I really enjoyed this book of poetry. It was real, making you understand a life you don't live just a little, to understand others struggles. The flow was great, everything fitting perfectly together. It didn't try to be bigger than itself like some poetry does. It was simply honest. It tells a story of an immigrant family, stories that we need more than ever right now, in all forms. The wording was perfect. Sometimes poetry that use a lot of swears do it just to do it. This wasn't the case. It simply fit. I highly recommend this for poetry lovers or people who just want another view point. The last poem in the collection will hit you like a ton of bricks after it's slowly worked up to through the other poems.

I wi;; save my review until I have a copy of this book

Melissa Lozada-Oliva's Peluda plays with the stereotypical ideals of femininity by juxtaposing the typical with the atypical of the feminine voice and body image. The title, itself, reveals one of the more important motifs in her poetrybook. In a show of self-love, Lozada-Oliva often references with an air of indifference how 'peluda', (meaning "hairy" in Spanish) her body is; yet, her indifference is also marked with a tinge of acceptance. Another recurring theme is the Latina immigrant experience. Once satirized negatively, Lozada-Oliva attempts to cast light on these hardworking individuals whose rights in America have usually been non-existent. From stories of her parents, to even her own stories as a strong-minded, self-loving, unapologetic Latina "mami", Lozada-Oliva definitely have made her imprint as a Latina feminist whose lexical voice will hopefully inspire others to do the same or give a voice to those who cannot.

I don't read a lot of poetry, but I knew I had to get this one. I've loved watching videos of Melissa Lozada-Oliva's spoken word performances on YouTube, finally feeling represented by her words and stories. My Spanish captures exactly how I feel about feeling like I'm not fluent enough at my native tongue, and Bitches makes me laugh as I think of all the brilliant women in my family. Peluda didn't disappoint. Melissa has a way with mixing humour and emotion, so that I didn't know whether I wanted to laugh or cry at her words.

Peluda explores so many topics in its 21 poems. In a single poem, you'll find explorations of Latina identity, beauty and femininity, class and family relationships, all seen through the lens of the immigrant experience. 'Peluda' is Spanish for 'hairy', and Lord, being hairy is one thing that I can relate to. I initially thought that the poems would simply be humorous, but Melissa takes a simple feature, hair, and uses it as a vehicle to show so much more. It is about owning your identity, even though you struggle with it, and know that other people don't understand it. It's about the girl who is ashamed of her thick, black body hair, and who has to shave to look and feel acceptable, and is criticised for being superficial by her white friends who let their own body hair grow as a political statement, but not only that. It's also about wanting to shorten your name, to have a whiter name, less Latino, less immigrant, about your identity not being wholly your own but consisting of your family and their experiences. Even though the poems discuss the struggles of the Latin-American immigrant experience, it isn't about being ashamed. It's about fighting to feel proud, no matter what other people say or how they act, seeing the beauty through the struggle, and seeing the beauty in the struggle.

I love finding chances to read #ownvoices literature, but finding literature that captures my own experiences as a Colombian girl, growing up in the UK, has always been difficult. I have never found a book that captures so many emotions as these poems have. I have honestly never felt so represented since I watched In The Heights, and it made me get teary-eyed quite a few times just at the feeling of seeing myself in these poems. If you are looking for #OwnVoices authors to add to your reading list, I could not recommend this enough.

I cannot recommend this collection enough. The poems are beautiful and fun to read, filled with humour and emotion. I can't wait for my own copy to arrive in the mail so that I can show this to everyone who will listen!

This poetry collection is FANTASTIC - truths about the impossibility of trying to contort yourself into the societal ideal; of the battle between wanting to accept the things that make you who you are, and wanting to erase all traces of them in order to fit in; of the complex struggles of femininity, of culture, of history - all delivered with beautiful honesty and biting wit.

An amazing book of poetry that focuses on beauty, immigrants (and being a minority), feminism, and so much more. Lizada-Oliva has a way of writing that reaches out and pulls you into her experiences as a Latina woman living in America.

Exceptional poetry collection! Her writing illuminates the immigrant experience with depths of emotion. She evokes the trauma of colonialist white supremacist xenophobic misogyny!