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Maps for Migrants and Ghosts
Language as key and map to places, people, and histories lost
For immigrants and migrants, the wounds of colonization, displacement, and exile remain unhealed. Crossing oceans and generations, from her childhood home in Baguio City, the Philippines, to her immigrant home in Virginia, poet Luisa A. Igloria demonstrates how even our most personal and intimate experiences are linked to the larger collective histories that came before.
In this poetry collection, Igloria brings together personal and family histories, ruminates on the waxing and waning of family fortunes, and reminds us how immigration necessitates and compels transformations. Simultaneously at home and displaced in two different worlds, the speaker lives in the past and the present, and the return to her origins is fraught with disappointment, familiarity, and alienation.
Language serves as a key and a map to the places and people that have been lost. This collection folds memories, encounters, portraits, and vignettes, familiar and alien, into both an individual history and a shared collective history—a grandfather’s ghost stubbornly refusing to come in out of the rain, an elderly mother casually dropping YOLO into conversation, and the speaker’s abandonment of her childhood home for a second time.
The poems in this collection spring out of a deep longing for place, for the past, for the selves we used to be before we traveled to where we are now, before we became who we are now. A stunning addition to the work of immigrant and migrant women poets on their diasporas, Maps for Migrants and Ghosts reveals a dream landscape at the edge of this world that is always moving, not moving, changing, and not changing.
For immigrants and migrants, the wounds of colonization, displacement, and exile remain unhealed. Crossing oceans and generations, from her childhood home in Baguio City, the Philippines, to her immigrant home in Virginia, poet Luisa A. Igloria demonstrates how even our most personal and intimate experiences are linked to the larger collective histories that came before.
In this poetry collection, Igloria brings together personal and family histories, ruminates on the waxing and waning of family fortunes, and reminds us how immigration necessitates and compels transformations. Simultaneously at home and displaced in two different worlds, the speaker lives in the past and the present, and the return to her origins is fraught with disappointment, familiarity, and alienation.
Language serves as a key and a map to the places and people that have been lost. This collection folds memories, encounters, portraits, and vignettes, familiar and alien, into both an individual history and a shared collective history—a grandfather’s ghost stubbornly refusing to come in out of the rain, an elderly mother casually dropping YOLO into conversation, and the speaker’s abandonment of her childhood home for a second time.
The poems in this collection spring out of a deep longing for place, for the past, for the selves we used to be before we traveled to where we are now, before we became who we are now. A stunning addition to the work of immigrant and migrant women poets on their diasporas, Maps for Migrants and Ghosts reveals a dream landscape at the edge of this world that is always moving, not moving, changing, and not changing.
- GenresPoetry
110 pages, Paperback
First published September 9, 2020
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65 people want to read
About the author
Luisa A. Igloria
14 books21 followersLUISA A. IGLORIA (previously published as Maria Luisa Aguilar-Cariño) is poet and Associate Professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program and Department of English, Old Dominion University. Her work has appeared or will be forthcoming in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Poetry East, Smartish Pace, Rattle, The North American Review, Bellingham Review, Shearsman (UK), PRISM International (Canada),The Asian Pacific American Journal, and TriQuarterly.
Various national and international literary awards include the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize for Juan Luna's Revolver (University of Notre Dame Press), the 2007 49th Parallel Poetry Prize (selected by Carolyne Wright for the Bellingham Review), the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize (selected by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser for the North American Review); Finalist, the 2007 Lynda Hull Memorial Prize in Poetry (Crazyhorse); Finalist, the 2007 Indiana Review Poetry Prize; the 2006 National Writers Union Poetry Prize (selected by Adrienne Rich); the 2006 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize (Crab Orchard Review); the 2006 Stephen Dunn Award for Poetry; Finalist, the 2005 George Bogin Memorial Award for Poetry (Poetry Society of America, selected by Joy Harjo); the 2004 Fugue Poetry Prize(selected by Ellen Bryant Voigt); Finalist, the 2003 Larry Levis Editors Prize for Poetry from The Missouri Review; Finalist, the 2003 Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press); the first Sylvia Clare Brown Fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation (2007); a 2003 partial fellowship to the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg; two Pushcart Prize nominations; a 1998 Fellowship at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Lasswade, the Midlothians, Scotland; and the 1998 George Kent Award for Poetry.
Originally from Baguio City in the Philippines, Luisa is also an eleven-time recipient of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in three genres (poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction); the Palanca award is the Philippines' highest literary distinction. She has published 10 books including JUAN LUNA'S REVOLVER (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry); TRILL & MORDENT (WordTech Editions, 2005; Co-Winner of the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Awards in Poetry); ENCANTO (Anvil, 2004); and IN THE GARDEN OF THE THREE ISLANDS (Moyer Bell/Asphodel, 1995.
Various national and international literary awards include the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize for Juan Luna's Revolver (University of Notre Dame Press), the 2007 49th Parallel Poetry Prize (selected by Carolyne Wright for the Bellingham Review), the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize (selected by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser for the North American Review); Finalist, the 2007 Lynda Hull Memorial Prize in Poetry (Crazyhorse); Finalist, the 2007 Indiana Review Poetry Prize; the 2006 National Writers Union Poetry Prize (selected by Adrienne Rich); the 2006 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize (Crab Orchard Review); the 2006 Stephen Dunn Award for Poetry; Finalist, the 2005 George Bogin Memorial Award for Poetry (Poetry Society of America, selected by Joy Harjo); the 2004 Fugue Poetry Prize(selected by Ellen Bryant Voigt); Finalist, the 2003 Larry Levis Editors Prize for Poetry from The Missouri Review; Finalist, the 2003 Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press); the first Sylvia Clare Brown Fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation (2007); a 2003 partial fellowship to the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg; two Pushcart Prize nominations; a 1998 Fellowship at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Lasswade, the Midlothians, Scotland; and the 1998 George Kent Award for Poetry.
Originally from Baguio City in the Philippines, Luisa is also an eleven-time recipient of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in three genres (poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction); the Palanca award is the Philippines' highest literary distinction. She has published 10 books including JUAN LUNA'S REVOLVER (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry); TRILL & MORDENT (WordTech Editions, 2005; Co-Winner of the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Awards in Poetry); ENCANTO (Anvil, 2004); and IN THE GARDEN OF THE THREE ISLANDS (Moyer Bell/Asphodel, 1995.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 3, 2022
again, a really great collection that grapples with both personal and collective history/memory.
favorites - maps for migrants and ghosts, photograph 1959, we don’t live in the light, self-portrait with beetles in sugar, if i call love who will answer, synecdoche, prodigal, caravan, half-life, north, dead woman’s float, material, a reparation, self-portrait reconstructed with heirloom beads, yolo, five remedies for sadness, dream landscape at the edge of this world,
favorites - maps for migrants and ghosts, photograph 1959, we don’t live in the light, self-portrait with beetles in sugar, if i call love who will answer, synecdoche, prodigal, caravan, half-life, north, dead woman’s float, material, a reparation, self-portrait reconstructed with heirloom beads, yolo, five remedies for sadness, dream landscape at the edge of this world,
December 26, 2020
I'm always moved by Igloria's poetry; its major subjects are migration, language, and place, explored through lush sensory detail. Many poems in this beautiful volume focus on loss, particularly what it means to remember aging loved ones across great distances. A haunted, lovely collection.
July 28, 2024
Reviewed for Virginia Living magazine.
www.virginialiving.com/culture/bookma...
Currently the Virginia Poet Laureate, Luisa A. Igloria's latest collection discusses some of the current problems of today with past remembrances (though one should always be careful not to immediately conflate the narrator with the author). Her poems are accessible and lovely, but also haunting. They are not afraid to dive into serious topics. What strikes one most is the way myth is infiltrated into the poems. The poems can seem so modern, dealing with events and scenes that one readily recognizes, but then there is this almost magical aspect (something Lorca or Garcia Marques or Borges or Arundhati Roy) that ultimately comes from discussing a different culture and era. These more "exotic" poems also fit well into the idea that cultures migrate and that their heritage, like a benign ghost, also travels along, becoming a part of the American landscape—or wherever the immigrant decides to settle. Luisa A. Igloria has crafted a stellar collection that sings true and shows a myriad of emotions and walks of life.
www.virginialiving.com/culture/bookma...
Currently the Virginia Poet Laureate, Luisa A. Igloria's latest collection discusses some of the current problems of today with past remembrances (though one should always be careful not to immediately conflate the narrator with the author). Her poems are accessible and lovely, but also haunting. They are not afraid to dive into serious topics. What strikes one most is the way myth is infiltrated into the poems. The poems can seem so modern, dealing with events and scenes that one readily recognizes, but then there is this almost magical aspect (something Lorca or Garcia Marques or Borges or Arundhati Roy) that ultimately comes from discussing a different culture and era. These more "exotic" poems also fit well into the idea that cultures migrate and that their heritage, like a benign ghost, also travels along, becoming a part of the American landscape—or wherever the immigrant decides to settle. Luisa A. Igloria has crafted a stellar collection that sings true and shows a myriad of emotions and walks of life.
October 18, 2022
For so long, I have buried poetry in the busyness of life. I recently discovered Louisa A. Igloria, and this book is a treat in more ways than one. In her, I recognize the language of my very own hometown, and of the poetry that I am beginning to discover again.
March 3, 2024
I love this book. Intimate, beautiful poems tackling painful and personal subjects. Am going to read more Igloria based on how strong this is.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews