In his debut essay collection, award-winning poet Jaswinder Bolina meditates on “how race,” as he puts it, “becomes metaphysical”: the cumulative toll of the microaggressions and macro-pressures lurking in the academic market, on the literary circuit, in the dating pool, and on the sidewalks of any given U.S. city. Training a keenly thoughtful lens on questions that are never fully abstract―about immigration and assimilation and class, about the political utility of art, about what it means to belong to a language and a nation that brand you as other―Of Color is a bold, expansive, and finally optimistic diagnosis of present-day America.
“(A) powerful and wise collection of essays, one that will make reverberations into how we look at this country in the future.”
— Cathy Park Hong
“(M)oves from the polemic to the personal with the candidness and flair of a rollicking dinner conversation.”
— Aisha Sabatini Sloan
“Lyrically intelligent, exceptionally alert… A crucial addition to the growing canon of works about race in contemporary America.”
— Sarah Manguso
“Jaswinder Bolina’s insightful, raw and honest collection of brilliant essays illuminate the joys and pains of being a specific person Of Color and through his unique lens we also come to understand the universal ongoing story of America.”
— Wajahat Ali
“Eminently readable… entrusts us with an honest conversation that we all should be having with each other.”
— Ploughshares
“(T)hese companionable essays squeeze one’s arm with the firm, fraternal pressure of a trustworthy adviser.”
— Ron Slate, On the Sea Wall
