I'm an American-born child of an immigrant, so while my experience is somewhat opposite to the narrator of this collection, I still found it was something I could connect with strongly. This is a collection of hard-hitting yet accessible poetry that weaves together themes of immigration, identity and motherhood in a unique way. There's a heavy emphasis on language, which rang true to me as it's often a point of contention and disconnect between immigrant parents and children.

This one was not for me.
Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

My thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book to review. This was a beautiful collection, mostly focused on themes of family and immigration. It is a stunning collection, very moving, and obviously deeply personal.

3.5 stars

Heartfelt poems about the immigrant experience. Beautiful, musical language in free verse form. Several of the poems are bilingual, English and Portuguese.

[What I liked:]

•The language is very musical and fluid, accented and syncopated. You can really tell how much music & rhythm has influenced this poet’s writing, & it is so striking and wonderful to experience.

•These poems are full of life, of beauty and joy & sorrow & family. They touch on missing home, on finding a place of safety, on navigating the familiar & unfamiliar. They are authentic & have much to say.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•Many of the poems have significant sections of text in Portuguese. While I could still enjoy and appreciate reading (trying to!) the words aloud for the rhythm & sound, I couldn’t understand a lot of the content since I don’t speak Portuguese. This made the collection in some ways inaccessible to me, & limited my ability to engage with the poems fully.

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

Muchas gracias Netgalley por el envío de una copia avanzada a cambio de una reseña honesta.

Este poemario tiene unas raices muy arraigadas a la naturaleza, la esencia del ser humano y de uno mismo en cuanto a la cultura.

Si bien, los temas que abordaba eran muy interesantes, a mí particularmente no logró encantarme. La lectura me resultaba pesada por momentos y no me transmitía el sentimiento que esperaba encontrar entre sus páginas.

poetry is such a powerful source of literature.
Ananda Lima tackles topics of motherhood while also talking about being an immigrant in America very nicely.
Thank you Netgalley and Black Lawrence Press for the e-copy.

I really enjoyed this book and appreciates Lima's unique writing style. I think some of these poems would be great for students to analyze in high schools!

Thank you to Books Go Social and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Eloquent and elusive, Ananda Lima's Mother/Land is a meditation on motherhood, motherland and Mother tongue. Flowing effortlessly between Portuguese and English, the book takes place in a liminal space between Brazil and America. As a new Mother myself, I deeply related to Lima's worries of not being rooted in either culture enough & how that would impact her parenting. A great debut collection!

A wonderful collection of poetry, easy to read and very likeable. A good start in the genre, browsing different subject from the hardest to the funniest.

One for the coffee table.

Not the performative coffee table that things go to die in dusty, display hell, but the one where you put books you want to wear out and hope your guests will too.

I appreciate the language, the representation, the spirit of migrants past and aspiring hopefuls. The exploration of the home we choose to let our dreams rise in the east of and our realities set west in.

I’ve read this once and I already know I’m going to have to come back to NetGalley to update this review as I find new meanings in each independent page of the collection.

Christmas stocking definite. I might also have to add this to the books I buy for new moms. Thank you!

This debut poetry collection follows an immigrant mother of an American child. These poems question what it means to be an immigrant and a mother, what defines motherland, the role of language, and how they clash and transform over time and place. Although Brazilian Portuguese appears throughout the collection, it did not hinder my reading flow. Lima's notes at the end of the collection also contextualize Brazilian cultural references, news, texts, and other media that a poem used, referred to, or responded to. Above all else, Lima’s poetry collection takes great care to not simply reduce the speaker as a mother or to her immigrant identity. This thought-provoking collection is a great addition to the growing number of works by Brazilian authors (including those residing in the United States and other countries).

I think the author did a good job at telling a story with her poems
I really liked the use of Portuguese in her poems and although I do not speak Portuguese, it added another dimension of realness to the poems.

3.5 stars

Thank you to BooksGoSocial for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Mother/land is a beautiful poetry collection exploring the interplay between motherhood and immigration, commenting on legacy, ancestry, belonging, and the distinction between a place and a home.

The imagery is gorgeous, but while I could see how well-selected each word was, I engage with the poems emotionally. This was vastly improved in the second act, which included some favourites such as PB&J and What I think about when I think about gravitational waves.

The collection builds to a crescendo with ‘Mother Tongue’ which is raw, vivid, and vulnerable. The third act continues in the same fashion with Cleaning the Colonial, When they come for us on the 7th train, and Bee. The order of each poem was very well organised and built an incredibly cohesive arc throughout the collection of seeking a different life, being excluded from the American dream you were sold, the relief of watching your children be accepted but losing the part of them that ties them to your ancestors, and grappling with motherhood in a harsh world that threatens the protection of childhood. Thee blend of English and Portuguese further supported this in the most stunning way.

MOTHER/LAND by poet Ananda Lima is a beautiful exploration of motherhood and the migrant experience through English and, sometimes, Spanish. Lima uses two languages to construct a deeply moving narrative about the hardship of being a parent in a hostile land you aren't sure you belong to despite laws, borders, and blood.

An interesting dissection of language and identity within the context of life as an immigrant mother. The success of poetry depends almost entirely on whether you click with the poet’s style, and that’s a wholly subjective thing. So while I have no specific complaints about this collection, per se, it hasn’t become a new favourite either. That said, there are a few gems to be found, and those who see their own experiences reflected in Lima’s will likely find it a considerably more powerful read.

Thank you to the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

A really beautiful collection of poems. Some of them were perhaps a little abstract and hard to follow, which isn't usually a problem in poetry, seeing as it's not a narrative form, but I found that some of them were trying to tell me a story I couldn't quite grasp; perhaps that's the point, as our life experiences are so different. Lima's language is absolutely wonderful, though, at once elegaic and euphoric, and her use of both Portuguese and English in the same poems is a really interesting way of weaving together the dual facets of her identity. I would recommend reading this one slowly.

dnf

I wanted to like this one after reading all the fantastic reviews, but unfortunately I felt myself losing interest with every poem.

book given in exchange for an honest review

This collection of poetry is very different than I have ever read before. However, the language that it is written in was absolutely breathtaking. I felt as if I was right there with the narrator in their home country and going through each situation side by side with them. I highly recommend this poetry collection to anybody!

This is a solid collection from Ananda Lima, exploring life as a mother and immigrant to the US from Brazil. The mix of English and Portuguese was nicely done. Some of the poems - PB&J, Mother Tongue, and Toast to America - are particular standouts. Thanks to Black Lawrence Press for making a digital ARC available through NetGalley..

A prize-winning collection from Ananda Lima, Mother/land explores the way becoming a parent and an immigrant impact our identities. Lima weaves together English and Portuguese to tell stories about what we carry with us from the past, what happens when a new life (physical and metaphorical) arrives to push out the old and the feelings of discombobulation, joy and loss this brings. The result is a confident, skillful collection that gives a personal twist to a universal story.