Languages, First and Last

Seven years later, Lauren Scharhag delivers this follow-up to her debut collection, West Side Girl & Other Poems. Again, she focuses on family, femininity, and Latinx identity, as well as bodies, illness, and caregiving. These poems come from a more mature perspective, exploring what it's like straddling divides white and non-white, American and foreign-born, healthy and unhealthy, middle-class and barely scraping by. Most of all, these poems explore what we inherit and what we leave behind.