This Is What Happened in Our Other Life

The first time I was inside a woman,
I was confused.
I didn't recognize her, or myself.
I thought I was swimming, but in air.
Maybe flying, underwater.

    From "Legacies"

At last, the first collection of poems from the Pulitzer Prize and Lambda Literary Award winning Cuban-American author Achy Obejas! 

The poems in This Is What Happened In Our Other Life form a handbook of desire, navigating a course through the often-rocky landscapes of loving and living, while also charting the complexities of identity as the author explores her relationship to her lovers, her roots, her history, herself. 

As in her novels, Obejas' poems are often concerned with memory--the physical memories of the body, the ache of wanting--and of finding a way home again.

Achy Obejas is the author of the novels Days of Awe (Ballantine) and Memory Mambo (Cleis) and the short story collection We Came All the Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (Cleis.).  She is also the editor and translator of Havana Noir (Akashic).  She received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry in 1986.