Overview

Told through a series of interlinked narrative poems in alternating voices of family members, Stories We Didn't Tell relates the struggles of a family of homesteaders and ranchers who work for cattle barons on the Great Plains. Set in the early to mid 1900s, their difficulties are many, given the social and economic constrictions of the time, the environmental challenges presented by the region in which they live, and the far-reaching impact of two world wars. The stories begin with twelve-year-old Adah who, in 1901, comes home seriously upset after her day of work as a laundry girl and maid at a house in the small town of Crawford, Nebraska. As time moves on, Adah and her family work to find a way out of prescriptive roles that offer few alternatives. In our own era of economic challenges and rising awareness of gender oppression, these poems reveal how determination and resilience during hardship can work to transform possibilities.

Full Product Details

9781962082754

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Anna Citrino's astonishing new book is the story of a family of poor homesteaders on the Great Plains that spans both world wars. The story is told through poems, arranged into chapters, that carry the reader along with as much narrative suspense and immersion as any traditional novel . . . I left knowing a great deal more about my own story and believing that destiny is based in human rights, not in the supernatural."" -Linda Hillringhouse, author of The Things I Didn't Know to Wish For ""Anna Citrino has created something truly special. This epic tale of family and survival in the Great Plains is exceptional."" -Erica Wright, author of All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned ""I loved reading this book; I was drawn into the characters, the lives they lived, the difficulties they experienced, as well as the beauty they found in the ugliest moments of their lives. What a wonderful book!"" -Maria Mazziotti Gillan, winner of the American Book Award ""Citrino's exquisitely crafted poems follow members of one family over nearly a century as they navigate experiences from the mundane to the tragic to the transcendent . . . The result is a work that is simultaneously gentle and piercing, a profoundly moving look at the extraordinary depths of ordinary people."" -Ginny Kubitz Moyer, author of A Golden Life ""Our family stories are part of our history, and the struggles of our ancestors are imprinted on each of us. Stories We Didn't Tell gifts us with an epic of an ordinary family and shares with us their extraordinary lives."" -Kathleen Willard, author of The Next Noise Is Our Hearts

Author Information

Anna Citrino grew up in San Diego County, California. She received her MA from the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont and taught abroad in Turkey, Kuwait, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India, and the United Kingdom. Her work has appeared in Bellowing Ark, Canary, Indelible, Juniper, Lips, Main Street Rag, Paterson Literary Review, Poppy Road Review, Spillway, and Still Point Arts Quarterly, among numerous other journals and anthologies. Citrino is the author of two chapbooks, Saudade, and To Find a River, as well as two books, A Space Between, and Buoyant. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. Citrino is an avid walker, scuba diver, and bicyclist. Currently, she lives in Sonoma County, California, where she's learning to draw trees and is working with her husband, Michael, to make their backyard garden a wonderland of beauty and food to share with others. Find her on Instagram at ajcitrino and read more of her writing at annacitrino.com.

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