ALL WE ARE TOLD NOT TO TOUCH explores the places and moments where we are told danger exists: the rogue waves of the ocean, the unwelcoming side of a border, a street where girls are forbidden to play and the implacable grief surrounding a brother's death, among others. Each poem unfolds with a desire for what is out of reach. The poet's travels and meditations come to life in both urban and rural spaces such as San Francisco, Paris, Barcelona, as well as in villages in France and Mexico. All are interconnected points of the spiritual, physical and sensual journeys required to love and heal.
“This is a mesmerizing collection, a multi-sensual turning of voices, idioms, and languages as we travel, take flight, sense our lives, bodies and the possibility of intimacy and love. Yet, we move at every turn, we visit, for a moment, we notice the shores, the child, la abuela, the street, the play of things that appear and dissolve around us as we approach. There are emergencies, killings, graves, and ashes to be swept from cemetery markers. Culture, ancestry, history, the acrid daily news of violence and the geographies of day-to-day life merge into these conversations, perhaps whispers to the self, a self on fire, a self that envelops the larger multiple body. Is it love? Perhaps love, perhaps, if it can be touched. I am moved by this collection, in particular by its blurred lenses, senses, its arousals, its lures, its boldness and daring. Incredible, a new accomplishment. Bravissimo del Toro, Bravissima!”
- Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the United States, Emeritus
“In All We Are Told Not to Touch, Leticia Del Toro has expertly and seamlessly brought together distinct cultural and linguistic strands of poems...each in English and Spanish, draws essence, shape color and meaning from the culture that feeds it. Distinct yet equally powerful in its circular motion. No easy task but superbly achieved by the poet. Felicitaciones, Leticia.”
- Lucha Corpi, Author of Confessions of a Book burner
“In All We Are Told Not to Touch, Leticia Del Toro offers us poems as fresh as jicama, burning sugarcane, and a fishing village at dusk. Like the bougainvillas that take root and bloom memories all around us, she guides us along mysterious shorelines and into lonely cemeteries, where we honor the living and the dead. These poems let us touch ‘what dreams some women may have’ before they are gone.”
- Juan J. Morales, Author of The Handyman's Guide to End Times
Café Colima explores the bond of sisterhood in Richmond, California. While Arcelia and her sister Selene lost their parents at a young age, the girls are fortunate enough to grow up in a secure, loving environment with their grandparents Mamá Luz and Abuelito Gil, at the center of their lives. Mamá Luz owns a beloved Mexican bakery which the sisters find to be both a burden and a blessing. Arcelia works dutifully alongside her grandmother as she is expected to, while Selene seeks independence in a difficult, suburban community. Both sisters view the world with spunk and wild enthusiasm until the circumstances of their lives begin to erode their bond. When Selene tragically suffers an untimely death, Arcelia takes comfort in being the reliable, steady presence at her grandmother’s side. Time seems to stand still as long as pan dulce is selling and business is thriving, until a friend from the past arrives and causes Arcelia to question the mystery of her sister’s death. What will ultimately take Arcelia away from Café Colima to venture on a journey all her own?
“A moving and powerful story about sisterhood, grief, loss, and picking up the pieces without completely losing one’s self.”
- Edwidge Danticat
“In Café Colima, Leticia Del Toro precisely and authentically captures a Bay Area landscape and human-scape that I can’t remember seeing before. Her characters, well drawn and multifaceted, the Café (a character in its own right), have done what only the best literature can, deepen my relationship to a place I already love.”
- Pam Houston
“'Cafe Colima' announces a brilliant new storytelling talent that has come into her powers—a moving story of mixed love and grief, as a young woman lost in the enduring mysteries of her sister's death faces the last one: how really letting go of her can feel like the greatest part of the loss. Del Toro possesses a lyrical economy, a canny knowing, and an ear for the subtle music hidden in the ordinariness of love."
- Alexander Chee