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Rosa's Einstein
Rosa’s Einstein is a Latinx retelling of the Brothers Grimm’s Snow-White and Rose-Red, reevaluating border, identity, and immigration narratives through the unlikely amalgamation of physics and fairy tale.
In this full-length poetry collection, the girls of Rosa’s Einstein embark on a quest to discover what is real and what is possible in the realms of imagination, spurred on by scientific curiosity and emotional resilience. Following a structural narrative arc inspired by the archetypal hero’s journey, sisters Rosa and Nieve descend into the desert borderlands of New Mexico to find resolution and healing through a bold and fearless examination of the past, meeting ghostly helpers and hinderers along the way. These metaphorical spirits take the shape of circus performers, scientists, and Lieserl, the lost daughter Albert Einstein gave away.
Poet Jennifer Givhan reimagines the life of Lieserl, weaving her search for her scientist father with Rosa and Nieve’s own search for theirs. Using details both from Einstein’s known life and from quantum physics, Givhan imagines Lieserl in a circus-like landscape of childhood trauma and survival, guided by Rosa and Nieve.
In this full-length poetry collection, the girls of Rosa’s Einstein embark on a quest to discover what is real and what is possible in the realms of imagination, spurred on by scientific curiosity and emotional resilience. Following a structural narrative arc inspired by the archetypal hero’s journey, sisters Rosa and Nieve descend into the desert borderlands of New Mexico to find resolution and healing through a bold and fearless examination of the past, meeting ghostly helpers and hinderers along the way. These metaphorical spirits take the shape of circus performers, scientists, and Lieserl, the lost daughter Albert Einstein gave away.
Poet Jennifer Givhan reimagines the life of Lieserl, weaving her search for her scientist father with Rosa and Nieve’s own search for theirs. Using details both from Einstein’s known life and from quantum physics, Givhan imagines Lieserl in a circus-like landscape of childhood trauma and survival, guided by Rosa and Nieve.
- GenresPoetry
84 pages, Paperback
First published February 19, 2019
3 people are currently reading
942 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Givhan
24 books584 followersJennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and Indigenous poet and novelist from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices. Her novel Salt Bones is coming this July 22, 2025 from Mulholland/Little, Brown.
She holds a Master’s degree from California State University Fullerton and a Master’s in Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College. She is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Rosa’s Einstein (University of Arizona Press), and the novels Trinity Sight and Jubilee (Blackstone Publishing), which were finalists for the Arizona-New Mexico Book Awards and won The Southwest Book Award. Her newest poetry collection Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press) and novel River Woman, River Demon (Blackstone Publishing) both draw from her practice of brujería. Her latest novel was chosen for Amazon’s Book Club and as a National Together We Read Library Pick and was featured on CBS Mornings. It also won an International Latino Book Award in the Rudolfo Anaya Latino-Focused Fiction category.
Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, POETRY, TriQuarterly, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, Salon, Ploughshares, and many others. She’s received the Southwest Book Award, New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize, Phoebe Journal’s Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the Pinch Journal Poetry Prize, and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize.
Givhan has taught at the University of Washington Bothell’s MFA program as well as Western New Mexico University and has guest lectured at universities across the country. She was the 2024 Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at The University of New Mexico.
She would love to hear from you at jennifergivhan.com and you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for inspiration, prompts, and real talk about the publishing world and life as a mama writer.
https://www.instagram.com/jenngivhan/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEs...
https://www.facebook.com/jenn.givhan.3/
She holds a Master’s degree from California State University Fullerton and a Master’s in Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College. She is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Rosa’s Einstein (University of Arizona Press), and the novels Trinity Sight and Jubilee (Blackstone Publishing), which were finalists for the Arizona-New Mexico Book Awards and won The Southwest Book Award. Her newest poetry collection Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press) and novel River Woman, River Demon (Blackstone Publishing) both draw from her practice of brujería. Her latest novel was chosen for Amazon’s Book Club and as a National Together We Read Library Pick and was featured on CBS Mornings. It also won an International Latino Book Award in the Rudolfo Anaya Latino-Focused Fiction category.
Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, POETRY, TriQuarterly, The Boston Review, The Rumpus, Salon, Ploughshares, and many others. She’s received the Southwest Book Award, New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize, Phoebe Journal’s Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the Pinch Journal Poetry Prize, and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize.
Givhan has taught at the University of Washington Bothell’s MFA program as well as Western New Mexico University and has guest lectured at universities across the country. She was the 2024 Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at The University of New Mexico.
She would love to hear from you at jennifergivhan.com and you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for inspiration, prompts, and real talk about the publishing world and life as a mama writer.
https://www.instagram.com/jenngivhan/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEs...
https://www.facebook.com/jenn.givhan.3/
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 18, 2022
It was ok! Had some real good parts but it had some things that I couldn't make complete sense of.
May 10, 2019
I am not creative enough for this book. The words are beautiful, and I believe this is probably wonderful for the kind of poetry/verse book it is. I just can’t follow it or grasp onto what it means. The cover is absolutely gorgeous.
December 1, 2025
Rosa's Einstein is a stunning collection of poems by Jennifer Givhan. The collection is a lyrical, Latine retelling of the Brothers Grimm tale, “Snow White and Rose Red,” blended with story of Lieserl (Albert Einstein’s forgotten daughter). The text blurs the edges between the scientific and the fantastical, offering whispers of hope and healing in a harsh world.
"I believe in the conservation
of bird wings, in tiny packages of light
and their insistence on shining
in the resurrection of dying things."
— from “Lieserl Contemplates Resurrection”
"I believe in the conservation
of bird wings, in tiny packages of light
and their insistence on shining
in the resurrection of dying things."
— from “Lieserl Contemplates Resurrection”
May 7, 2019
I was excited to win this book from Goodreads.
I enjoy both poetry and science, so it sounded intriguing.
But, I just don’t get it...
I tried several times.
I enjoy both poetry and science, so it sounded intriguing.
But, I just don’t get it...
I tried several times.
August 19, 2019
I have heard more than one scientist say the more we learn the weirder it gets, and Rosa's Einstein is a gorgeous in how it plays between science and magic, blurring the lines and creating bigger truths.
Using the mythology of fairy tales, specifically Rose Red and Snow White as well as history and imagined history about Einstein's long lost daughter, Givhan seamlessly creates a narrative that dances both in desert circuses and quiet rooms of scientists and children. Givhan will engage with every part of your brain without becoming inaccessible. This collection will resonate and continue to speak to the mysteries of lore, science, childhood and female friendship with every read.
In the poem Sighting Jennifer Givhan closes the poem with:
a glimpse into the other/world is enough
(you haven't left me alone)
These words reflect my own satisfaction as a reader with the collection's ability to give glimpses and new insight into both familiar and unfamiliar characters. Givhan recreates and re imagines the landscape of both desert and science and leaves the reader with both a sense of camaraderie and the echo of loneliness of, Lieserl, Einstein's missing daughter as an imagined life is returned to one of many women science, history, and fathers forgot.
Using the mythology of fairy tales, specifically Rose Red and Snow White as well as history and imagined history about Einstein's long lost daughter, Givhan seamlessly creates a narrative that dances both in desert circuses and quiet rooms of scientists and children. Givhan will engage with every part of your brain without becoming inaccessible. This collection will resonate and continue to speak to the mysteries of lore, science, childhood and female friendship with every read.
In the poem Sighting Jennifer Givhan closes the poem with:
a glimpse into the other/world is enough
(you haven't left me alone)
These words reflect my own satisfaction as a reader with the collection's ability to give glimpses and new insight into both familiar and unfamiliar characters. Givhan recreates and re imagines the landscape of both desert and science and leaves the reader with both a sense of camaraderie and the echo of loneliness of, Lieserl, Einstein's missing daughter as an imagined life is returned to one of many women science, history, and fathers forgot.
May 14, 2019
I tend not to do well with high-concept poetry collections, and this is about the highest concept I’ve seen yet. Still, I enjoyed many of these poems individually, and that was worth something to me.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews