Your Sun, Manny
Your Sun, Manny: A Prose Poem Memoir
by Marie Harris
The poet has produced a powerful narrative of the life of a Puerto Rican boy who lived the first fourteen years of his life in institutions and foster homes but then was adopted by the author and her husband and brought to New Hampshire. How Manny and his new community deal with the possible, the impossible (like spelling), and the hoped for (a real job) is at the heart of the tale that is heartbreaking and heartwarming.
This is the second book in our Marie Alexander prose poetry series. In Your Sun, Manny, Marie Harris has created a prose poem memoir that reveals in touching detail her story of adopting and caring for Manny, a child who was abused and neglected until he was fourteen, when Harris and her husband made him a part of their family.
About the Author
Marie Harris' first book, Raw Honey, was published in 1975 by the groundbreaking cooperative press, Alice James Books. Your Sun, Manny (1999, 2010) is her fourth collection.
With Kathleen Aguero, she edited a collection of essays on American poets (A Gift of Tongues, Univ of Georgia Press, 1987) which was called "A valuable, even indispensable book on writing outside the mainstream of American poetry...Outstanding." (Choice) The accompanying anthology (An Ear to the Ground, 1989) was hailed as "one of the most important books of the decade" by The Bloomsbury Review. Called "sorrowful and subversive" by Publisher's Weekly, "it was cited as on the the ALA's Notable Books of 1989. If you can only purchase one poetry anthology this year, make it this one." (Booklist)
Harris is the author of two children's books, G is for GRANITE and Primary Numbers, (Sleeping Bear Press, 2002, 2004) and the The Girl Who Heard Colors (Penguin, 2013). She is working on a book for young readers about the life and times of Amy Beach, America's first female composer.
A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, she was NH Poet Laureate from 1999-2004 during which time she co-produced the first-ever gathering of state poets laureate. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.
Visit the author's website.
Accolades
“Take this book to your heart and carry it away. The beauty and expressiveness of the author’s words will renew your faith in the possibility of using language to capture experience and make it glow with meaning.”
“This is a complex story of hard-earned successes and brilliantly achieved failures, a story full of humor and wisdom and love.”
“Marie Harris is that rare writer, an innovator whose originality serves to make her tale at once richer and more accessible.”
“Undergraduate social work students in my HBSE course love Your Sun, Manny, a quick and easy read that resonates long and deep with core content across the foundation social work curriculum. We mine it all semester long!”
“I have used Your Sun, Manny in my MSW Family Therapy classes for the past 11 years, and have discovered new wisdom and a depth of material to teach from with each reading. This eloquent narrative offers a way for students to enter in and viscerally experience easily accessible lessons about the strength and flexibility of children and the families and communities that hold them. Your Sun, Manny addresses issues of diversity, poverty, racism, the foster care system, adoption, and the development of empathy and compassion to name but a few.”
