I Offer My Heart As A Target / Ofrezco Mi Corazon Como Una Diana

Description

Presented in both English and Spanish, the two parts of I Offer My Heart as a Target / Ofrezco Mi Corazon Como Una Diana offer the reader distinct tones both powered by perseverance. In the first part of the book, Johanny Vazquez Paz identifies herself as a survivor, her body a war-ravaged battleground. In part two, Paz examines the effects of displacement; her hold on her history and Spanish language is challenged, compromised by the pressures of assimilation in the English-speaking United States. From the 2018 winner of the Prize Paz for Poetry, I Offer My Heart As A Target is a book of victory over that which has defeated many.

Johanny Vazquez Paz is the author of Sagrada familia (winner of the International Latino Book Award, 2015), Querido voyeur, and Streetwise Poems/Poemas callejeros. She won first prize in the poetry category in Northwestern Illinois University's Consenso Literary Contest of poetry and short stories, and second prize in the short story category. She coedited the anthology Between the Heart and the Land/Entre el corazon y la tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest and her work has been included in the anthologies City of the Big Shoulders, Ejercito de rosas, En la 18 a la 1, and The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, among others. She currently teaches at Harold Washington College in Chicago, Illinois.