gmadad

For my father Mill, his mother Neoma, and her mother Emaline.

To the Spirit, the Light, the Universe, for carrying me in hope. To loved ones, especially my mom Peggy and partner Tom, for support. To Deena M. Tyler, Chey Davis, and the Women Writers circle of Lansing, Michigan, for insights. To Gloria Anzaldúa and Anaïs Nin, for your lives and works. To Susan Griffin, for inspiration from A Chorus of Stones: The Private Lives of War.

Hope at the Center explores consequences of migration traced through my father's family, tenuous and tender relations across generations. And so a bloodline flows across land and time, regardless of proximity or secrets. The collection wrestles legacies of separation from a position of hope: Despite absence, denial and death, a resemblage of memory and self is possible.

These poems emerge from "the migration project", which I began in 2005 simultaneous to "the land project". Hope at the Center then is a sibling to my collection the land, once called DeWitt released in 2009. Both projects are rooted in North America, also known as Turtle Island. In Hope at the Center, I share experiences as a mixed-race Cherokee descendant on a joyful, painful, life-long journey to learn the story of my ancestors.