Love(ly) Child

"A vibrant collection of confessional, polemical verses." -Kirkus Reviews

Love(ly) Child is a thought-provoking collection of poetry that delves into themes of identity, love, and self-discovery. Each poem is a journey into the complexities of the human experience navigating sensitive topics with honesty and vulnerability. With a unique blend of personal anecdotes and social commentary, Love(ly) Child offers a captivating exploration of life's highs and lows, leaving a lasting impact on those who immerse themselves in its pages.

""Violence was an artform." Thus writes poet Emanuel Xavier about growing up while fiercely witnessing and surviving the terrorism that lurks in the family, the streets, and sexual encounters. In Love(ly) Child - his most powerful work yet - anger cuts through memory and propriety as he methodically dismantles cultural platitudes: love, care, safety, and innocence. Specters of family brokenness, colonialism, desolate cityscapes, outlaw love, and AIDS haunt these poems. Here DEI stands for "disenfranchise, exclude, and ignore," and death hovers over these poems like the stillness of a quiet city night that is always vanquished by the hope of dawn. In Love(ly) Child, Xavier reminds us that as dire as our pasts may be, "Compassion is our only inheritance/ bold to love what we cannot hold." -Michael Bronski

"In 'Autonomous' the poet writes, "Maybe I lived too fast & my soul / is as old as my presence is young." This book is indeed the work of an old soul, of the writer as Witness, as the "dream for all our angels who never had this/moment." The poems wrestle with issues of race, sex, trauma, and survival while growing up an abused queer brown kid in New York. But there are also joys here, found in close friendships, chosen family, and memory. Stunning, raw, and beautiful, Love(ly) Child continues Emanuel Xavier's remarkable career as poetic truth teller." -Reginald Harris

"Xavier's fierce verses blaze across the page like a Willi Ninja duckwalk! These words Dip, Pop, Loft and Spin in the Nuyorican poetry tradition, letting the reader know that this griot speaks truth, always representing for la gente! Pa'lante!" -Shaggy Flores, Author of Obatala's Bugalu: A Nuyorican Book of Sights and Sounds

Born in Brooklyn, Emanuel Xavier lives in New York City. One of the first openly queer spoken word poets to emerge from the Nuyorican Poets Café slam scene, he helped open the doors for LGBTQ+ poets of color to take centerstage and speak their truths.