Yesenia Montilla

In the book's title poem, Yesenia Montilla asks the rhetorical question, "How do you not love yourself when you constantly survive your undoing just by being precious?" The book Muse Found in a Colonized Body answers this question by exploring the themes of love, resistance, and reclamation through a wide range of poems that address pop culture, history, and contemporary injustice. The poems in this collection are united by a central message of love, even in the face of oppression. As Rachel Eliza Griffiths writes, Montilla's poems "stitch our wounded identities, memories, and histories in defiant poems of revision and joyous reclamation." The poems uplift desire, affirm life, celebrate protest, and condemn the violent greed of imperial usurpation. Muse Found in a Colonized Body is a call to action for its readers to rise to the occasion of the book's profound care. The poems in this collection offer a powerful reminder of the importance of love, resistance, and reclamation in the fight for justice.