Author Description

Inspired by her Polish American heritage and her first visit to her family's homeland in 1996, Linda Nemec Foster's stunning new collection poignantly reflects on the immigrant experience -- an experience of loss and discovery, of ambivalence and pride, of deep tragedy and redemption. Foster's own ethnicity as the daughter of second-generation immigrants from Poland is colored by America's somewhat disinterested view of the "other" Europe -- only recently emerged from history's dark shadow -- and of a country that for a hundred years did not exist as a political entity. In the book's opening poem, "The Awkward Young Girl Approaching You," she struggles with this sense of ethnic identity: "Who will speak for the dispossessed, / those who come from nowhere, / whose birthplace cannot be found / on any map . . . ?" Foster's attempts to reclaim an ethnic heritage, to search for herself in the mirror of her family's history, resonate throughout her verse.