Of Color

Biographies & Memoirs

Bolina, Jaswinder

Community & Culture

Tantor Audio

In his debut essay collection, award-winning poet Jaswinder Bolina meditates on how race, as he puts it, becomes metaphysical: the cumulative toll of the microaggressions and macro-pressures lurking in the academic market, on the literary circuit, in the dating pool, and on the sidewalks of any given US city. Training a keenly thoughtful lens on questions that are never fully abstract-about immigration and assimilation and class, about the political utility of art, about what it means to belong to a language and a nation that brand you as other-Of Color is a bold, expansive, and finally optimistic diagnosis of present-day America.

Warm tenderness and fiery critique sit side-by-side in Bolina's English as A Second Language, a collection that skewers, laments, and celebrates America with intelligence, humility, and a disarming sense of humor. In Jaswinder Bolina's English as A Second Language and Other Poems, we are asked to imagine the tender and harsh realities of this world within a single breath-- a Steiff monkey resting next to a child in a crib and the tired hands of "a thousand /women in Sidi Bouzid" assembling the stuffed animal. Coated in an armor of wit and humor and steeped in the idiosyncrasies of language, English as a Second Language&nbsp;pits sentimentality against cynicism and the personal against the national. What remains is the kaleidoscopic image of the modern American condition. From elegy to persona, wide-ranging poems tell the story of a child of immigrants becoming a parent against the tumultuous backdrop of our politics and culture. Where the collection asks, "What chance do any of us have?," the poet finds hope, possibility. Bolina's musical poems zip across time, challenging the fixity of the book. Clues offer the possibility of an alternate reading, where backwards, a new emotional arc appears--dreamlike, the nostalgic origin story of a sleep-deprived parent tracing a path through language and history. Forwards, backwards, English as a Second Language skewers, laments, and celebrates America with intelligence and humility.

English as a Second Language and Other Poems

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Copper Canyon Press

This is a book about Americans. Not the ones brunching in Park Slope or farming in Wranglers or trading synergies in a boardroom; they are not executives or socialites. They are not the salt of the earth. Nor are they huddled masses yearning to breathe free. These are the others of the everyday, the Americans no one sees. These are the brown and bland ones who understand the good, tough money in working a double, who know which end of a joint to hit. They can find Karachi on a map. They know a shortcut to Ikea. They can land a punchline. These are their poems. In The 44th of July, Jaswinder Bolina offers bracing and often humorous reflections on American culture through the lens of an alienated outsider at a deliberately uncomfortable distance that puts the oddities of the culture on full display. Exploring the nuances of life in an America that doesn’t treat you as one of its own, yet whose benefits still touch your life, these exquisitely crafted poems sing in a kaleidoscopic collaging of language the mundane, yet surreal experience of being in between a cultural heritage of migration and poverty and daily life in a discriminatory yet prosperous nation. Both complicit in global capitalism and victims of the inequality that makes it possible, these are the Americans who are caught in a system with no clear place for them. Bolina opens the space to include the excluded, bringing voice and embodied consciousness to experiences that are essential to Americanness, but get removed from view in the chasms between self and other, immigrant and citizen.

The 44th of July

Omnidawn

Winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry Published by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University

Carrier Wave (Colorado Prize for Poetry)

Center for Literary Publishing

Poetry. "PHANTOM CAMERA searches for ways to escape the traps of autobiographical self-absorption while retaining the warmth and energy of personal narrative. Bolina's speakers are often melancholy and estranged, yet charmingly ironic about their estrangement. Drama—both funny and touching-arises from their efforts to stay safe while longing for human connection."—Mark Halliday

Phantom Camera

New Issues Poetry and Prose

In his debut essay collection, award-winning poet Jaswinder Bolina meditates on "how race," as he puts it, "becomes metaphysical": the cumulative toll of the microaggressions and macro-pressures lurking in the academic market, on the literary circuit, in the dating pool, and on the sidewalks of any given U.S. city. Training a keenly thoughtful lens on questions that are never fully abstract-about immigration and assimilation and class, about the political utility of art, about what it means to belong to a language and a nation that brand you as other-OF COLOR is a bold, expansive, and finally optimistic diagnosis of present-day America.

Of Color: Essays

McSweeney's

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bolina, Jaswinder. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bolina, Jaswinder

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bolina, Jaswinder. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Of Color

Of Color

English as a Second Language and Other Poems

The 44th of July

Carrier Wave (Colorado Prize for Poetry)

Phantom Camera

Of Color: Essays