The Poet X

The Poet X (2018) by Elizabeth Acevedo is an award-winning YA novel-in-verse that just blew me away. The audiobook is narrated by the author, which I especially loved, as you hear the pacing and intonation as she intended.

Xiomara (pronounced See-oh-MAH-ruh) lives in Harlem with her parents and twin brother. They are 15 and Dominican, born to older parents, and their Mami is extremely religious. They don’t go to the same school, as her brother goes to a “genius school” and skipped a grade. She also describes herself as “unhide-able” with a “body [that] takes up more room than [her] voice.”

Xiomara is a writer, a skeptic in confirmation class, and is beginning to have feelings about boys, though her mother is so strict that she knows she can never do anything. She meets a boy, Aman, in biology class, and begins to see him in secret.

After her mother finds out she was kissing him on the train and punishes her, and Aman does not protect her when he witnesses the constant groping and harassment she’s subjected to, Xiomara withdraws into herself and her notebook. But her English teacher is finally able to convince her to go to poetry club, where she reads a poem and is finally listened to. She is able to go to a open mic with her brother and best friend, and writes constantly.

It almost feels like

the more I bruise the page

the quicker something inside me heals

But then her mother finds her journal, disaster. Xiomara runs.

And Aman is really there for her this time, as is her English teacher. And with the priest helping, she begins to make peace with her parents.

It’s fat-positive throughout, as Xiomara describes herself as thick, as taller than her father and bigger than Aman. Although this quote was not explicity about Xiomara’s body, it’s still fat-positive:

And I think about all the things we could be

if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.

I absolutely loved it and highly recommend it.