My Own True Name

Adults and children alike have long admired Pat Mora’s extraordinary and diverse gifts. She has won awards and received acclaim for both her poetry (Borders, Chants, Communion, and other works) and her charming children’s books (Delicious Hullabaloo, Tomás and the Library Lady, The Desert Is My Mother, and many more).

Now, Arte Público Press is pleased to announce a major selection of new and previously published poems chosen by Pat Mora herself with young-adult readers in mind. Using the cactus plant as her guiding metaphor for our existence, she presents more than sixty poems grouped variously into “Blooms,” “Thorns,” and “Roots.” Each section opens with a graceful line drawing from artist Anthony Accardo, and the whole is prefaced by a whimsical and intimate introduction, “Dear Fellow Writer.”

My Own True Name, an anthology fifteen years in the making, is sure to be sought by deeply rooted and still-budding lovers of poetry.