The poetry collection offers a blend of warmth and sharp critique, exploring the complexities of America. Through intelligent and humble verse, Bolina addresses various themes, combining celebration with lamentation, all while maintaining a disarming sense of humor. This multifaceted approach invites readers to reflect on the nation's intricacies in a thought-provoking manner.
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.