The Bronx Years by Christine Baldino O’Hanlon

The Bronx Years, Christine Baldino O’Hanlon’s first poetry collection, is filled with vitalità.

The poems portray the author’s childhood and coming-of-age in a 3-generation Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. Christine’s poems capture the confusion and contradictions of a childhood between cultures, and that of a neighborhood and community as it changes. Vibrant and veering, this collection poses fundamental questions about the immigrant experience: What are ancestors? What does it mean to leave? Who are we meant to become? These lush and honest poems are unforgettable.

–Nathalie Handal 

The Bronx Years, Christine Baldino O’Hanlon’s tour de force, is a collection of poems that taps into the heart’s need for roots, family and freedom. Her poems are rich with the generous spirit of experience and tell a completely American tale that tracks a family’s movement from Italy to the great borough in New York City, The Bronx. The beautiful tension in the book lives in the clear love of the shops and homes and energy of places like Arthur Avenue alongside a desire, on the speaker’s part, to leave, to explore, to make anew. In this way, The Bronx Years is the quintessential American story. Christine is a master poet of the heart and the head, of the street and the wide-open spaces of family, love and hope.

–Matthew Lippman, Author of Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful