When My Brother Was an Aztec
(Paperback, Main)
Publishing Details
When My Brother Was an Aztec
By (Author) Natalie Diaz
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
5th October 2022
18th August 2022
Main
United Kingdom
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards)
811.6
Physical Properties
Paperback
112
Width 156mm, Height 205mm, Spine 9mm
170g
Description
When My Brother Was an Aztec is a work of courage and invention - one that foregrounds the particularities of family dynamics and individual passion against the backdrop of Western mythologies and a deeply rooted cultural history. Natalie Diaz's arresting debut explores a brother's addiction and its devastating effects on a household, while offering a political critique of our nations and their pasts. It acknowledges absences and uncomfortable silences, as well as conjuring vivid voices and presences, from Antigone and Houdini to Huitzilopochtli and Jesus.
Stolen cowboy boots, violins on fire; a mariachi band playing in the bathroom, a black bayonet carried between the shoulder blades; the beauty of busted fruit, the sight of hellish visions - Diaz both revels and reveals through her distinctive use of language and imagery, bringing to life every intimate and communal encounter, blooming abundance from scarcity. The result is a wrenching portrayal of sacrifice, want, despair and fortitude that feels truly transformative.
Reviews
'She is a poet who understands tradition but is not beholden to it. She is a poet who will help us write into the future as she excavates the past and interrogates the present.' - Adrian Matejka, Poetry Society of America
'Her work is a kind of confession, but also an assertion.' - Spectator
Author Bio
Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, won an American Book Award. Her second, Postcolonial Love Poem, won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the T. S. Eliot Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow, as well as a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellow.
