Letters to My Father by Juanita Kirton

Juanita Kirton does not hold back in Letters to My Father. Her raw words illuminate the page through a trail of darkness. Here is a poet who digs deep. Lines like, “winter stayed another 20 years” stopped me, made me catch my breath. How does one forgive? She uses language so close to the bone, I felt as if I were on the motorcycle with her in the poem titled, “Back Seat.” Read this new collection and be prepared for Kirton’s words to linger a long time.

–Julie Maloney, Director of Women Reading Aloud.

This powerful collection of poems delves deeply into how profoundly the fearful and shame-filled silences we hold imprison and shape us. These are brave and courageous poems that turn the silence of despair into the found voice of a female spiritual warrior whose victorious struggle renders us all the stronger for having been allowed to witness it.

–Michael S. Glaser, Poet Laureate of Maryland 2004-2009

Juanita Kirton‘s compelling poetry collection, Letters to My Father, delivers the story of stark betrayals and the important medicine of truth by describing the haunting abuse that so shaped her growing up years. A decided courage brands the language and reveals the mark of the stories that mold and hold her, until her own utterance can re-form and rise. She becomes her own pride, mothers herself and the shame of the young girl recovers in painting the full picture, unafraid of the loss and grief. The child and the poet still carry a capacity for love, and Kirton breaks a barrier—denial and judgment fall before her–and she arrives into hope holding her Black son with tenderness, remembering protection offered by others who acknowledged her needs and how the roots of wholeness shattered in earlier histories can become a different kind of prayer that is strong and righteous, “I still pray for a black sons and fathers.” She takes in the gift of being alive: “Securely she takes the unknown path/ slow motion is not her devotion…”

From “generations of brown sugar blood,” Juanita Kirton is ready to sing alongside “female spiritual warriors/standing in the hard truth of radical justice,” and Kirton declares her pained and joyful utterance with a gentle defiance and pride that feeds her poems and awakens us to the power of her speech.

—Beatrix Gates, author of Dos and In the Open