Sonia Gutiérrez
Sonia Gutiérrez is the author of two full-length bilingual poetry collections, Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña (Olmeca Press, 2013) and Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma (El Martillo Press, 2024), recipient of an honorable mention for the ILBA’s The Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award—One Author—Bilingual, and the novel, Dreaming with Mariposas (FlowerSong Press, 2020), winner of the Tomás Rivera Book Award 2021, the International Latino Book Awards 2022, and the ILBA Book into Movie Awards 2023. She teaches composition, critical thinking and writing, and creative writing. Sonia Gutiérrez is currently working on her first illustrated book, The Adventures of a Burrito Flying Saucer and Sana Sana Colita de Rana: Poems to Not Perish / Sana sana colita de rana: Poemas para no morir, a bilingual poetry collection. She lives in the Californias. To learn more about Sonia Gutiérrez and her work, visit www.soniagutierrez.com.
Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma
Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma is a bilingual poetry collection, in English and Spanish, by the recipient of the Tomás Rivera Book Award Sonia Gutiérrez, with translations by Francisco Bustos. Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma received an honrable Mention, The Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award—One Author—Bilingual, from the International Latino Book Awards.
"Sonia Gutiérrez's poems dive into the blue/turquoise feathers of life along the border, within the cultural waves of Raza tumult and celebration; her poems strike the bone like drumsticks. These poems pat the heart like a mother's loving hand, lock arms with sisters and brothers like a fellow guerillista, she sings from the blood like the ocean waves the shore, she spirals her poetic magic until transformation occurs, and we are changed-bravo!"
—Jimmy Santiago Baca, author of No Enemies: Poems
"Sonia Gutiérrez writes visceral, magical poems of power and grace. She speaks to legacies, homage, and justice. The Spanglish translations weave beautifully with the English into a tapestry of important questions for our country and our time. Paper Birds: Feather by Feather is a gift of necessary heat, music, and ultimately, joy."
—Lee Herrick, Poet Laureate of California and author of Scar and Flower
"I once heard Juan Gregorio Regino, Mazatec poet, affirm: 'The true poet is a chjine, a healer,' this concept referred to María Sabina converges in a singular way the poetry of Sonia Gutiérrez, where the poet becomes the creator of songs of an entire wounded community by history, and her verses the balm, conjured words that permit the flight of birds in liberty."
—Susana Bautista Cruz, Indigenous languages advocate
"Diving into the pages of Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma means surrendering to the poetic richness woven by Sonia Gutiérrez. It is a captivating rhythmic journey, an immersion into tales that defy boundaries. Gutiérrez invites readers into a world where binaries dissolve, and we find ourselves comfortably inhabiting everything all at once-fronteriza life, Spanglish, nature and humanity, both ancient and modern ways of knowing and being. Her tongue is unequivocal, the stories and poems in Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma become an essential reading, not only for literature enthusiasts and Chicana Studies but a necessity for the next 500 years."
—Angélica M. Yañez, Ph.D., spoken word artist and editor of United States History from a Chicano Perspective
“In Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma, the feathers of Sonia Gutiérrez’s birds are poems, stories, histories, collected in this unique avant-garde collection of American poetry. Similar to Eduardo Galeano’s Trilogy of the Americas, Sonia Gutiérrez reminds us that the Americas fed the world when in dire circumstances, not in a microcuento but in detailed, descriptive full-blown poems that like birds extend their wings to us: ‘Centuries later, can you imagine the Irish and Italians without the Incan papa in their Irish stew and ruby red tomatl in Italian spaghetti sauce so far away from the infallible memory of the motherland? In Español, tomate Roma, in Italiano, pomodoro Roma, and in English, plum tomatoes.’ All this, so we can witness the perfect underside of their struggles in a new genre of poetry, what I call ‘native informant poetry,’ after Gayatri Spivak coining of ‘native informant,’ and then Renato Rosaldo’s use of the term to indicate that it is now the true native informants, that are informing, and I add, writing books. Her poem, ‘The Frontera’s Potato Eaters,’ is worth the price of entry to the full collection. There are intricate gems and unique contributions in this collection of writing from our internal colony.”
—Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Ph.D., author of ¿How Many Indians Can We Be? and Fresh as Lettuce: A Memoir
Buy Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma
“This is Chicana literature at its best. Sonia Gutiérrez captures and reworks the ethos, the languages, and the memory of an entire tradition of letters, oral tales, and experiences that have shaped and continue to shape the collective imaginary. As in her Tomás Rivera epigraph, Gutiérrez grows great big artistic arms to embrace humans, ghosts, and butterflies, and to present them to her audience in a beautiful ofrenda of must-read stories.”
—Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez, University of California, Merced
“Overflowing with tenderness, humor, hurt, and determination, Dreaming with Mariposas is the compelling story of the journey from childhood to young womanhood, to writing, and to self-actualization. Disarmingly vulnerable and poetic, Gutiérrez pulls no punches when it comes to the issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, education, immigration, addiction, and violence. Most strikingly, this is the voice of a young brown girl coming into her own—not powerless, not a victim—a young brown girl with clear vision, a willingness to fight back, and a powerful drive to speak.”
—ire’ne lara silva, author of flesh to bone and Cuicacalli/House of Song
“Sonia Gutiérrez captures dreams and memories with Dreaming with Mariposas, her latest literary collection. The poignancy of Dreaming wraps the reader in memories and wishes, and dreams, deferred and fulfilled. A Family of Butterflies forever traveling through dreams and reality.”
—Kim McMillon, Ph.D., Black Arts Movement, scholar and playwright
“Sonia Gutiérrez reminds one of our elders offering us blessings in our youth. These vignettes are like the energy that connects the synapses in our body and the emotions infused in them bring warmth to the soul; and as fleeting as a soft cool breeze, they offer a fragrance that is remembered, etched and made tangible. The memories and narratives told are unrelenting and nourishing, they provide a vulnerability in their confessions.”
—Gibrán Güido, co-editor of Queer in Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness
“Dreaming with Mariposas is a powerful telling of family cuentos. American stories that need to be read and felt down to the core of them. From the very first vignette we are compelled to continue listening to the dreams and struggles of the parents and children featured in these pages who are from our America—our Turtle Island. How being formed from humble but powerful beginnings, like the corn, beans, squash, and nopales, which they eat—and being of simple down to earth sustenance is powerful; because they, like these plants, are seeds that can flourish because of life visions which are seemingly impossible aspirations. The main characters grow their dreams from the earth, hard work, and above all hope. Dreaming with Mariposas is full of stories we all can relate to because it shows that despite all odds a person can and do reach their goals. In these poignant stories no one is left behind because as long as their dream-stories are told and retold all are remembered and we learn through their lives and struggles.”
—Odilia Galván Rodríguez, author of The Color of Light and co-editor of the award-winning anthology, Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice
“Sonia Gutiérrez carries the torch of her literary forbearers Tomás Rivera and Sandra Cisneros, powerfully and poetically capturing what it's like to grow up as a brown girl in America. Dreaming with Mariposas takes us from Idaho to Southern California, detailing the struggles and joys of a working-class immigrant family, and shows us with fresh eyes the lessons learned navigating childhood's difficult terrain. Gutiérrez pays homage to the classics of Chicanx literature, but this book is also a necessary update, a coming-of-age story for our time.”
—Maceo Montoya, author of The Deportation of Wopper Barraza
In 2013, Sonia's first book of poems, Spider Woman/La Mujer Araña, was published by Olmeca Press. The collection, Sonia writes, “evolved over endless spin cycles that spanned over twelve years,” and its release into the world was much like releasing a spider's web to the wind.
BOOKING
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