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Cape Verdean Blues
The speaker in Cape Verdean Blues is an oracle walking down the street. Shauna Barbosa interrogates encounters and the weight of their space. Grounded in bodily experience and the phenomenology of femininity, this collection provides a sense of Cape Verdean identity. It uniquely captures the essence of “Sodade,” as it refers to the Cape Verdean American experience, and also the nostalgia and self-reflection one navigates through relationships lived, lost, and imagined. And its layers of unusual imagery and sound hold the reader in their grip.
96 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 12, 2018
26 people are currently reading
1300 people want to read
About the author
Shauna Barbosa
4 books20 followersShauna Barbosa is the author of the poetry collection Cape Verdean Blues. She was a finalist for PEN America’s 2019 Open Book Award and was a 2018 Disquiet International Luso-American fellow.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
April 10, 2018
Normally I sipped poetry. This one I gulped. I have no regrets.
October 12, 2018
“You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only the sun has come this close, only the sun.”
that shit is breathtaking bro
that shit is breathtaking bro
January 5, 2019
She’s expressed interesting times in her life. Enjoyed.
June 7, 2023
“You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only the sun has come this close, only the sun.”
“I knelt on my sun &
carpet burned knees”
“The moon is a hammock. A hammock is a moon.”
“I like how the bottoms of my feet feel
like silence. ”
“Put on a song that reminds you of nothing as you wash your hair with three conditioned conditioners. Untangle indecision.”
“A soft fog dims
all lights and chokes me. Please.”
“I would lick my own face
to taste the sea”
“It’s profoundly normal to become fragile while ordering coffee. The barista wants your money. The barista wants your name”
how can you not love poetry?
“I knelt on my sun &
carpet burned knees”
“The moon is a hammock. A hammock is a moon.”
“I like how the bottoms of my feet feel
like silence. ”
“Put on a song that reminds you of nothing as you wash your hair with three conditioned conditioners. Untangle indecision.”
“A soft fog dims
all lights and chokes me. Please.”
“I would lick my own face
to taste the sea”
“It’s profoundly normal to become fragile while ordering coffee. The barista wants your money. The barista wants your name”
how can you not love poetry?
December 27, 2023
This was quick witted and a little haunting and beautifully composed in every way. I also loved the Strology series.
*
I keep the window open in the event I need to summer language my mouth into prayer.
I like how the bottoms of my feet feel like silence.
I smile silence, shipwreck harsh seas.
She's yelling at me in Kriolu and I love how it sounds to be loved so fiercely in another language.
I need more metaphors for hard things to swallow.
Make skeleton picking your brave new hobby like gathering what's left of things fallen while you bathe. In bed with yourself, terror shall leave no part unkissed.
Your face is a strange place I visit when I need an alley to watch my back in.
I makePowerPoint presentations of your body. My little discoveries.
*
I keep the window open in the event I need to summer language my mouth into prayer.
I like how the bottoms of my feet feel like silence.
I smile silence, shipwreck harsh seas.
She's yelling at me in Kriolu and I love how it sounds to be loved so fiercely in another language.
I need more metaphors for hard things to swallow.
Make skeleton picking your brave new hobby like gathering what's left of things fallen while you bathe. In bed with yourself, terror shall leave no part unkissed.
Your face is a strange place I visit when I need an alley to watch my back in.
I makePowerPoint presentations of your body. My little discoveries.
February 8, 2019
A strong collection and an unusual POV. I was riveted at times.
April 20, 2020
This was absolutely intoxicating.
I loved Barbosa's seering rawness; each poem has a vein of delicacy and brute force.
In particular, I loved the Strology poems.
I loved Barbosa's seering rawness; each poem has a vein of delicacy and brute force.
In particular, I loved the Strology poems.
November 26, 2018
Shauna Barbosa’s debut book of poetry Cape Verdean Blues is a labyrinthine journey through her early life, the child of a Cape Verdean father and African American mother growing up in Boston. You can feel the aimlessness on the page as she navigates through both cultures as children of immigrants only can. One of my favorite poems in the collection, Broke, exhibits the back-and-forth between cultures in a bakery, where the author’s aunts and her Cape Verdean coworkers communicate in broken English. She acknowledges the barriers language creates with clarity, “It takes courage or will or common sense or common courtesy or respect to dare a language not your own.” She takes that courage when the aunt puts her grandmother on her phone. The grandmother speaks Kriolu and demands in her native tongue why doesn’t her granddaughter pay her a visit. Barbosa is only able to decipher a few of her grandmother’s words, but takes note that she loves “…how it sounds to be loved so fiercely in another language.”
It’s not just her identity as a Cape Verdean American that leaves her adrift in her introspection, but the pangs of growing into young adulthood. Welcome Back, a poem that pays tribute to Etheridge Knight’s similarly-worded poem, shows Barbosa at her most vulnerable. The whole gamut of adult worries is revealed line by line. “How’s your weight problem—-your eating problem?”, reveals the author’s struggle with weight and body image. “You still paranoid? Still bipolar? Still scared shitless? Still wanna die?”, pulls no punches in portraying Barbosa’s mental anguish. The melodrama of online relationships are on full display in the lines, “How’s your social network? Your / why / did / he / just / post / a / photo / of / his / girlfriend / knowing / I / would / see / it?”. The folly of romance is a recurring element in Barbosa’s work and further entangles her life path.
Being the child of immigrants myself, I can appreciate Barbosa’s genuine pride in her Cape Verdean heritage, proudly name-dropping luminaries from her culture such as singer Cesária Évora and revolutionary Amilcar Cabral. The tribulations and turbulence of Barbosa’s young adulthood are a common thread to most readers, as everyone has dealt with the struggle of self-perception. The story of feeling far removed from your ancestral home has been told countless times, but Barbosa’s confident voice despite being lost in herself makes Cape Verdean Blues an engrossing voyage into self-discovery.
It’s not just her identity as a Cape Verdean American that leaves her adrift in her introspection, but the pangs of growing into young adulthood. Welcome Back, a poem that pays tribute to Etheridge Knight’s similarly-worded poem, shows Barbosa at her most vulnerable. The whole gamut of adult worries is revealed line by line. “How’s your weight problem—-your eating problem?”, reveals the author’s struggle with weight and body image. “You still paranoid? Still bipolar? Still scared shitless? Still wanna die?”, pulls no punches in portraying Barbosa’s mental anguish. The melodrama of online relationships are on full display in the lines, “How’s your social network? Your / why / did / he / just / post / a / photo / of / his / girlfriend / knowing / I / would / see / it?”. The folly of romance is a recurring element in Barbosa’s work and further entangles her life path.
Being the child of immigrants myself, I can appreciate Barbosa’s genuine pride in her Cape Verdean heritage, proudly name-dropping luminaries from her culture such as singer Cesária Évora and revolutionary Amilcar Cabral. The tribulations and turbulence of Barbosa’s young adulthood are a common thread to most readers, as everyone has dealt with the struggle of self-perception. The story of feeling far removed from your ancestral home has been told countless times, but Barbosa’s confident voice despite being lost in herself makes Cape Verdean Blues an engrossing voyage into self-discovery.
August 23, 2018
"Nothing in its right place
but there we were
walking in the time of Daguerre
on water with our hands
on the mouths of our purses."
but there we were
walking in the time of Daguerre
on water with our hands
on the mouths of our purses."
January 7, 2019
Smart poetry about a young woman discovering herself through life and her relationships. In the process, she explores her experience as a Cape Verdean American and her femininity. A strong debut collection.
April 11, 2022
i rly enjoyed this! this is the first poetry collection i’ve read and i took my time with it and loved it in that way. favorites are: every year trying to get my body right, after finding a hair in my food at roxbury’s first gentrified cafe, and strology- libra
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September 13, 2019You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only / the sun has come this close, only the sun.
— Shauna Barbosa, from “GPS,” Cape Verdean Blues
The Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar said that “These words feel like experience. Some are personal, most are enlightening, but all connect. Connect on a higher level. A spiritual level.”
If this book is a rounded shape I would put it on a vinyl player and listen to it while sipping Porto. Pleasures, pains, and sweetness.
— Shauna Barbosa, from “GPS,” Cape Verdean Blues
The Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar said that “These words feel like experience. Some are personal, most are enlightening, but all connect. Connect on a higher level. A spiritual level.”
If this book is a rounded shape I would put it on a vinyl player and listen to it while sipping Porto. Pleasures, pains, and sweetness.
March 29, 2021
I'm on a mission to read more poetry.
This one was a miss for me.
While I enjoyed her use of imagery, the poems were very visual to me, I think she was trying too hard.
Word choices really didn't make sense, the abstraction was too far for me to follow.
Maybe my poetry palate isn't sophisticated enough?
Being someone in the technical workforce I read a lot of straight-forward text, that's why I read so much fiction, to keep my brain balanced.
Anyway, pass on this one.
This one was a miss for me.
While I enjoyed her use of imagery, the poems were very visual to me, I think she was trying too hard.
Word choices really didn't make sense, the abstraction was too far for me to follow.
Maybe my poetry palate isn't sophisticated enough?
Being someone in the technical workforce I read a lot of straight-forward text, that's why I read so much fiction, to keep my brain balanced.
Anyway, pass on this one.
December 3, 2022
Many readers have loved what Shauna Barbosa has accomplished here, but I’m sorry to say that I am not among them. The vast majority of poems in this collection were just too abstract for my taste, and the ones that weren’t were so simplistic it felt as though no effort had gone into them at all.
November 28, 2018
“And I know That She Feels Beautiful – Do We Have Cancer” – Shauna Barbosa
The title of this poem gives a sense of two ideas being mixed together. There is a she and an I, and we see that the I knows that the she feels beautiful. But in the second half of this title, the I is questioning whether we (they) have cancer. This immediately sets forward an idea that there are two forces that will be discussed here.
Barbosa first mentions them talking about her cervix and her decision to no longer perm her hair. We know then that the she mentioned must have cervical cancer and is thus losing her hair to chemotherapy.
In the next two sentences Barbosa paints this theme of togetherness while also contrasting it with ignorance. A woman at a salon in Roxbury tells the woman with cancer she is more beautiful with long black hair. This theme of ignorance is presented, as these hair stylists do not know the reasoning behind this woman choosing to no longer perm her hair. Barbosa says, “I told her they’re bitches, even though they’re my people.” Although, as Barbosa says, these are her people, these are the women she identifies most with, there is another level in understanding beauty that they do not relate to which drives them apart although they are similar.
Barbosa describes her hair as a curly Sierra Leone sunset. As readers, we get images of bright colors and wavelengths to run through this woman’s hair. The woman says when she takes a bath she feels where they have cut. There is this sense of intimacy that is given in the image of a woman sitting in a bath and feeling scars or wounds in an intimate part of her.
“We have a lot in common, although I have not felt my own.” In this sentence the I of the poem finally gives us the clue that she is more similar to the she than we might have thought. They may have the same cancer, but the I’s is not as far along as the she’s. She says, “Fingers move my unsettled hair around to hide the bald spots.” We are taken back to the setting of a salon, trying to beautify these women, and the I may not have lost much of her hair yet, but there are still clues to foreshadow.
Barbosa closes the poem by saying, “She said we look alike when we met for lunch today. The pain is back and I feel underdressed.” These last few sentences, I believe, are the heart of this poem. I sits with she and they are compared in appearance. She is deeper in her cancer while the I is seeing what she might become. When she says the pain is back, I question whether or not that is a physical pain from the cancer, or an emotional pain as I realizes what will happen the further life goes on. She feels underdressed, do women who have had cancer over dress? Is she wearing something to cover her loss of hair? The poem ends with the line, “A wave of bare elbows digging trenches in the tabletops,” and we get this sense of hopelessness, of boredom, of waiting for what will come to these women.
The title of this poem gives a sense of two ideas being mixed together. There is a she and an I, and we see that the I knows that the she feels beautiful. But in the second half of this title, the I is questioning whether we (they) have cancer. This immediately sets forward an idea that there are two forces that will be discussed here.
Barbosa first mentions them talking about her cervix and her decision to no longer perm her hair. We know then that the she mentioned must have cervical cancer and is thus losing her hair to chemotherapy.
In the next two sentences Barbosa paints this theme of togetherness while also contrasting it with ignorance. A woman at a salon in Roxbury tells the woman with cancer she is more beautiful with long black hair. This theme of ignorance is presented, as these hair stylists do not know the reasoning behind this woman choosing to no longer perm her hair. Barbosa says, “I told her they’re bitches, even though they’re my people.” Although, as Barbosa says, these are her people, these are the women she identifies most with, there is another level in understanding beauty that they do not relate to which drives them apart although they are similar.
Barbosa describes her hair as a curly Sierra Leone sunset. As readers, we get images of bright colors and wavelengths to run through this woman’s hair. The woman says when she takes a bath she feels where they have cut. There is this sense of intimacy that is given in the image of a woman sitting in a bath and feeling scars or wounds in an intimate part of her.
“We have a lot in common, although I have not felt my own.” In this sentence the I of the poem finally gives us the clue that she is more similar to the she than we might have thought. They may have the same cancer, but the I’s is not as far along as the she’s. She says, “Fingers move my unsettled hair around to hide the bald spots.” We are taken back to the setting of a salon, trying to beautify these women, and the I may not have lost much of her hair yet, but there are still clues to foreshadow.
Barbosa closes the poem by saying, “She said we look alike when we met for lunch today. The pain is back and I feel underdressed.” These last few sentences, I believe, are the heart of this poem. I sits with she and they are compared in appearance. She is deeper in her cancer while the I is seeing what she might become. When she says the pain is back, I question whether or not that is a physical pain from the cancer, or an emotional pain as I realizes what will happen the further life goes on. She feels underdressed, do women who have had cancer over dress? Is she wearing something to cover her loss of hair? The poem ends with the line, “A wave of bare elbows digging trenches in the tabletops,” and we get this sense of hopelessness, of boredom, of waiting for what will come to these women.
June 19, 2018
The first third or so of this volume is as good as any first book by a poet as I've read in a long time, comparable to Lila LongSoldier, Natlia Diaz. It tails off just a bit and I think it's possible Barbosa simply didn't have quite enough pieces to maintain the level. At any rate, the last half, focusing mostly on the complexities of her sexual/romantic relationships felt personal in a more limited sense, spending quite a bit of time on the complications deriving from cell phones and Facebook, neither of which is part of my mix.. It may be that readers in their 20s or 30s will find them equally compelling with the opening sequences. On which note, Barbosa embeds two sequences in the volume, one focusing s on the difficulties of translation (several titled "This Won't Make Sense in English"), the other on the astrological year ("Strology"). Neither struck me as her best work.
Those quibbles aside (and I feel like I've spent too much time with them given my basic strong admiration), Barbosa sings with a lyrical intelligence that echoes the great Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora, the lyrical subject of one poem. "Broke" juxtaposes a persona who's a student at Harvard with her relative cleaning a Cambridge coffee shop. Like Adrienne Rich's "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" it celebrates the fierce intelligence of "ungrammatical" speech, concluding: "Across the room, one woman mistakenly teaches another to say, I miss you, have a good day." From the Evora poem:
My current movements
are all pretend
darkness doesn't equal depth.
He's looking for mind, too.
Me too is not the same
as hang in there.
Or, from "Don't Leave Your Smart Phone at Home":
It had not occurred
to me to hit record
on vacation. I lugged
thirteen extra pounds
best explained as delirium.
Could not record
the waves is technology,
is experience. My
experience did not occur."
Favorite poems: "Making Sense of What We're Made For," "To the Brothers of Cesaria Ever," "How's It Going' Down." Close to that level: "Don't Leave Your Smart Phone at Home," "Taking Over for the '99 and the 2000," "The Genetics of Leaving," "Strology: Aries," and "An Email Recovered from Trash."
Those quibbles aside (and I feel like I've spent too much time with them given my basic strong admiration), Barbosa sings with a lyrical intelligence that echoes the great Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora, the lyrical subject of one poem. "Broke" juxtaposes a persona who's a student at Harvard with her relative cleaning a Cambridge coffee shop. Like Adrienne Rich's "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" it celebrates the fierce intelligence of "ungrammatical" speech, concluding: "Across the room, one woman mistakenly teaches another to say, I miss you, have a good day." From the Evora poem:
My current movements
are all pretend
darkness doesn't equal depth.
He's looking for mind, too.
Me too is not the same
as hang in there.
Or, from "Don't Leave Your Smart Phone at Home":
It had not occurred
to me to hit record
on vacation. I lugged
thirteen extra pounds
best explained as delirium.
Could not record
the waves is technology,
is experience. My
experience did not occur."
Favorite poems: "Making Sense of What We're Made For," "To the Brothers of Cesaria Ever," "How's It Going' Down." Close to that level: "Don't Leave Your Smart Phone at Home," "Taking Over for the '99 and the 2000," "The Genetics of Leaving," "Strology: Aries," and "An Email Recovered from Trash."
January 2, 2025
This was a very conflicting read for me.
Barbosa is immensely skilled when it comes to conveying imagery and setting a scene. Her writing does a great job at taking you wherever she’s at, so she gets some points there.
However, the bulk of these poems are so abstract and ambiguous that no one aside from Barbosa herself would ever fully understand what they mean. Many of the pieces in this book just read as being blurbs of incongruent thoughts, which doesn’t quite make for an enjoyable reading experience. Are they beautiful? Yes. Sensical or digestible? No.
Without being able to ascertain the meaning behind most of these pieces, I’m left very dissatisfied and unfulfilled after reading it.
There were some rather good pieces in here, though, and the good ones are *really* good.
Barbosa is immensely skilled when it comes to conveying imagery and setting a scene. Her writing does a great job at taking you wherever she’s at, so she gets some points there.
However, the bulk of these poems are so abstract and ambiguous that no one aside from Barbosa herself would ever fully understand what they mean. Many of the pieces in this book just read as being blurbs of incongruent thoughts, which doesn’t quite make for an enjoyable reading experience. Are they beautiful? Yes. Sensical or digestible? No.
Without being able to ascertain the meaning behind most of these pieces, I’m left very dissatisfied and unfulfilled after reading it.
There were some rather good pieces in here, though, and the good ones are *really* good.
December 29, 2024
I didn't really like this book at the beginning because it seemed too personal and too ambiguous; i couldn't understand the references and the choice of metaphors and symbolism. I realised further into it that i don't need to know, and that sometimes the best stories are those that are not always comprehensive. I like how intricate everything is and i like how i can feel the meaning behind the linguistic and vernacular choices without understanding it. It felt like reading the diary of someone in a different world
March 21, 2018
5+ out of 5.
An absolutely fantastic collection. You know how, with most poetry collections, you only want to read a few (if that) at a time? To avoid what my friend calls "the truffle problem" (delicious at first but you quickly get sickly-full)?
This collection is like listening to a great record: you want to keep going, well beyond what you'd expect your tolerance level to be. There is a flow and a groove and a musicality to this collection that I simply adored.
An absolutely fantastic collection. You know how, with most poetry collections, you only want to read a few (if that) at a time? To avoid what my friend calls "the truffle problem" (delicious at first but you quickly get sickly-full)?
This collection is like listening to a great record: you want to keep going, well beyond what you'd expect your tolerance level to be. There is a flow and a groove and a musicality to this collection that I simply adored.
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January 6, 2024I don't think this was the poetry book for me.
The imagery was so vibrant on the page, but I struggle with connecting the abstract glimpses to meaning. Every poem felt so personal and raw, but without my understanding of what things meant, I struggled with actually enjoying any of it.
I think this is really a "me" issue, because I could definitely appreciate the chewiness of the words and images, but I just have a hard time with the more abstract rhetoric.
The imagery was so vibrant on the page, but I struggle with connecting the abstract glimpses to meaning. Every poem felt so personal and raw, but without my understanding of what things meant, I struggled with actually enjoying any of it.
I think this is really a "me" issue, because I could definitely appreciate the chewiness of the words and images, but I just have a hard time with the more abstract rhetoric.
July 7, 2024
im done and i don’t want more i need it. if i could i would reread this book and feel exactly what i felt when i read it for the first time tenfold. this book was raw and vulnerable in such a powerful way that forces you to be vulnerable alongside. the usage of second POV was superb and just what this book needed to take it up a notch. i was there through the highs and lows, it felt like a real novel.
March 25, 2018
Greeted with the ocean from the moment a reader takes up this lyrical, witty hum of a debut, be prepared for poems that move like the light across a wave. Slick with the work of both longing and bodies Barbosa's poems embody a yearning that is as much a song as it is distance. This is a 2018 must read and a poet we should be grateful to live in the time of!
March 28, 2019
I read this collection of poetry for my AtW challenge. Although there are a few poems that are located in Cape Verde (the only requirement for the reading challenge), more poems were about the Cape Verdean immigrant experience in America, particularly in Boston. In contrast to many reviewers, I could not easily engage with the poems.
October 13, 2021
The nuanced writing of the beach, the islands of Cape Verde, the neighborhoods of Boston, the texture of hair, being black for checked boxes.. it was just so amazing to read.
I wanted to dissect every line of every page.
“To the Brothers of Cesária Évora” was my favorite and I will read it over and over.
Amazing. “…speaking Portuguese at the traffic stop don’t save you”
I wanted to dissect every line of every page.
“To the Brothers of Cesária Évora” was my favorite and I will read it over and over.
Amazing. “…speaking Portuguese at the traffic stop don’t save you”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 24, 2021
Nice collection, especially enjoyed, "when I say I want a baby, you say you miss me that much too," "self-proclaimed sad boy," "welcome back," "great general of impossible battles" "GPS," "there's something so deeply gratifying..." "an email recovered from the trash," and "self on the first day,"
July 12, 2023
really just not that great tbh. I bought this when I was having a crisis and had a load of study to do (something I have been doing since leaving cert when my mom thought that her kindle had been hacked because I had bought and read so many books) I was inevitably disappointed.
March 9, 2025
This debut poetry collection, recommended by Kendrick Lamar, was published 2018 when Shauna Barbosa was 30 years old. As I read I listened to Cesária Évora. Her song “Sodade” encapsulates the longing and nostalgia found in the pages of this slim volume.
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October 8, 2025I would always come across the line: “You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only the sun has come this close, only the sun,” online, and I found so incredibly moving, but unfortunately i didn't find the rest of the collection to be nearly as resonant.
March 18, 2018
My favorite poems were Broke and Strology Virgo.
July 16, 2018
Beautiful. I especially enjoyed the concept of the Strology poems for each sign.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews