Overview

Fresno, California, may be the nation's breadbasket, but it is also a food desert to some who call it home. Summer temperatures find their niche in the triple digits, and resilience makes its name in the fields and on the streets . . . it pours from the mouths of the children. But dignity, all too often, comes with a price tag. The last $5.48 left on the food stamp card or the $200-plus it costs to ship over plant cuttings from Ecuador. Because even nature isn't immune to commercialism. Peel back the price tags and recall the meaning of worth in Kadupul Flower, a social-environmental justice collection from debut poet Kimberly Vargas Agnese. Social and environmental justice converge in the intersectional work of Kadupul Flower. The poetry collection is distinctive in its uniting of several themes. The set deals with poverty including homelessness as well as racism, sexual assault, and ecological justice. The collection is, at its heart, about dignity, but the theme of dignity extends beyond the typical concept of 'human' dignity to encompass 'environmental' dignity, as well.

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Reviews

""Kadupul Flower is a poetic memoir and a call for a 'whole' interconnection with nature, ancestors, family, self, and migrant realities in the San Joaquin Valley. It is also a flow of kindness, cultural search, and familia harmony. Vargas Agnese evokes the familiarity of day-to-day life through symbolic images like the scrappy hummingbird, friendship-forging Skittles, and resilient flowers. An exquisite, tender tapestry of our lives: bold realities in the Valley, on Earth, within nature and beyond. . . . ¡Viva Kimberly Vargas Agnese!"" --Juan Felipe Herrera, MacArthur Fellow and United States Poet Laureate Emeritus

""Kadupul Flower is a poetic memoir and a call for a 'whole' interconnection with nature, ancestors, family, self, and migrant realities in the San Joaquin Valley. It is also a flow of kindness, cultural search, and familia harmony. Vargas Agnese evokes the familiarity of day-to-day life through symbolic images like the scrappy hummingbird, friendship-forging Skittles, and resilient flowers. An exquisite, tender tapestry of our lives: bold realities in the Valley, on Earth, within nature and beyond. . . . ¡Viva Kimberly Vargas Agnese!"" --Juan Felipe Herrera, MacArthur Fellow and United States Poet Laureate Emeritus ""Kadupul Flower is as strong and sensitive as the blossoms of forgiveness and hummingbirds of hope discovered in these poems. A beautiful and powerful collection."" --Margarita Engle, Young People's Poet Laureate Emeritus and author of Wild Dreamers ""Kimberly Vargas Agnese is a true seer. The people who populate Kadupul Flower are given full color and dignity in poem after graceful poem. This marvelous book is engaged with its community and the justice it deserves, honoring the culture and the land along the way. Fresno comes alive: concrete, canal, chocoyote. We're reminded that 'nobody owns the sky.' I love this book."" --Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate

Author Information

Kimberly Vargas Agnese, author of Kadupul Flower, received Advance Praise endorsement from United States Poet Laureate Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera, Young Peoples Poet Laureate Emeritus Margarita Engle and California State Poet Laureate Lee Herrick. Kadupul Flower appeared on the 2025 CLMP list for Hispanic Heritage Month, as well as new release lists from The Philly Chapbook Review, Latinx in Publishing and Conchas.y.cuentos. During its opening month, the book achieved a third-place ranking on Amazon's Hispanic American Poetry New Releases list, and also ranked on the Hispanic American Poetry Bestseller list. The title was selected as the 2025 Book of the Month for the Nature Literature group on GoodReads and has been reviewed by various online outlets. Kimberly makes her home in the smoggy California Central Valley. She spends her time cultivating a young food forest called Meadow Arc, praying, and writing advocacy poetry. A former creative writing instructor, language arts educator, literacy coach and special education teacher, Kimberly served as the founding editor of Jordan Journal. She has been welcomed into several venues for speaking and reading, including the 2025 Fresno Writers Summit and An Awakenings Foundation Reading Night. Plus, she has been invited to lead workshops at UC Merced, Sanger West High School, and the Fresno County Public Library. Kimberly was recently spotlighted on Latino Book Review and The Asian Talks, and also garnered a ""Block Beat"" mention on Fresnoland. Kimberly appears as a featured author on NativeAmericans.org and has been interviewed in Black Fox Literary Magazine, The Rappahannock Review and Hotel by Masticadores. Over forty of Kimberly's poems, and two short stories, appear in sundry literary journals and anthologies, including Common Ground Review, Shift Magazine, Anacua Literary Arts Journal and Unstamatic: Newsprint. Kimberly's full-length collection, ""Red String on a Saguaro Cactus"" was named a finalist for the 2022 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, awarded biannually by the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. To read more of her work, please visit www.kimberlyvargasagnese.com.

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