I thoroughly enjoyed the concept and content of these poems grappling with what Cortez refers to as "Afrofronterism" or "Afropioneerism" - a way of looking at her past and ancestry by imaginative and sci-fi esque means akin to how Afrofuturism deals with the future. A great concept, I just felt unsure of whether it needed to be represented in poetry as opposed to another form of literature.

This poetry collection was absolutely stunning. There were various formats in which the poems were told. She manages to tell the poems about the past with a feeling of immediate urgency. It was an enduring collection that made me step out of myself. The language was lyrical and I found myself rereading the same poems over and over again. This really felt like an intimate collection that questions life on various levels of experience and identity we as readers may or may not understand.

A quote that has stuck with since reading this collection is the first line in the poem, "I Have Learned to Define a Field as a Space between Mountains" says, “If I remember a field where I stroked the velvety hound’s-tongue and cracked its purple mouth from stem and it is not a memory, then what we’re the limits of the field?” Incredible. Rio Cortez is an Afro-Latinx writer we need to all be paying attention to.

Beautiful and interesting poetry. I love the author's exploration with the topic of afrofrontierism. Overall, I highly recommend this book.

I am rather stunned with what Rio Cortez has done in this collection. I can count on my hands the number of times poetry has made me feel like I have stepped inside of a time warp. I found myself stumbling back into this time and space each time I put this collection down. This is an essential piece of work for the Black literary canon.

Most of the poems in this collection are about Cortez’s ancestry. She calls them Afro-pioneers as they are some of the first Black people in the West. A lot of the poems are rooted in artifacts, the things that have been left over from her ancestor’s lives. However, there is an imagined history here as well, a little magic added to these poems and I think that’s what makes this collection special. This magical realism creates vivid imagery of the land, the animals and people.

However, this collection does not neglect this time that we are living in. Cortez touches on some very timeless topics–motherhood/womanhood, love, ritual, mundanity. These poems felt so tender. I felt the need need to sit with them or they would break or fall apart. These poems, these meditations force you to slow down.