Alabanza

Alabanza is a twenty-year collection charting the emergence of Martin Espada as the preeminent Latino lyric voice of his generation. 'Alabanza' means 'praise' in Spanish, and Espada praises the people Walt Whitman called 'them the others are down upon': the African slaves who brought their music to Puerto Rico; a prison inmate provoking brawls so he could write poetry in solitary confinement; a janitor and his solitary strike; Espada's own father, who was jailed in Mississippi for refusing to go to the back of the bus. The poet bears witness to death and rebirth at the ruins of a famine village in Ireland, a town plaza in Mexico welcoming a march of Zapatisto rebels, and the courtroom where he worked as a tenant lawyer. The title also pays homage to the immigrant food-service workers who lost lives in the attack on the World Trade Center. Espada celebrates the American political imagination and the resilience of human dignity. Alabanza is the epic vision of a writer who 'is one of the handful of American poets who are forging a new American language, one that tells the unwritten history of the continent, speaks truth to power, and sings songs of selves we can no longer silence' (Russell Banks).