In these opening verses of
Lineage of Rain (
Haymarket Books, £7.99), Salvadoran poet and educator Janel Pineda begins her mesmerising story, one of Salvadoran migration, diaspora and the US-sponsored civil war that fuses the personal with the communal and the political with everyday life.
Each poem in this powerful pamphlet sings its own beautiful tune, taking the reader on a journey of discoveries and redemption, from El Salvador to Los Angeles and back. There are moving family narratives where women take centre stage, as in Rain, where the grandmother Tana passes down stories and memories to her granddaughter.
These female voices are weavers of stories, fighters against patriarchal authority and revolutionary in their own actions. Always survivors, they retell histories that look to the past, present and future.