Description
HOW TO WASH A HEART
Book summary
This work is the first Spanish translation of Bhanu Kapil, winner of the prestigious T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Through forty poems divided into five parts, the author explores the experience of an immigrant hosted by a white, middle-class couple. With a raw and poetic gaze, Kapil lays bare the fragility of hospitality, the anxiety of exile, and the invisible wounds of those living in precarious situations. A book that expands the boundaries of poetry to address the uncomfortable and the unresolvable.
What is it about?
How to Wash a Heart delves into the life of an immigrant who is taken into the home of a white, liberal, middle-class couple. Each poem functions as an episode that captures an intense emotional response to the excesses or transgressions of her host. The author examines how hospitality can become a veiled form of hostility, exposing the emptiness of certain gestures of inclusion and care. In tune with "broken heart" syndrome—the anguish and humiliation endured by an exiled person—Kapil constructs a poetry that remakes itself to accommodate uncomfortable truths about racism, violence, and the diaspora. It is a work that defies literary conventions to express what seems impossible to say.
Main themes
- The experience of immigration and exile in precarious conditions.
- The ambiguity of hospitality and its potential drift into hostility.
- Everyday racism and microaggressions in liberal contexts.
- The diaspora and the fragmented identity of those living between two cultures.
- The "broken heart" as a metaphor for the anguish and humiliation of the dispossessed.
Who is it recommended for?
This book is aimed at readers interested in contemporary avant-garde poetry that addresses political and social issues with lyrical sensitivity. It will also be of great interest to those looking for works that explore the migrant experience, structural racism, and the contradictions of inclusion from an innovative literary perspective. It is an essential read for lovers of poetry that challenges the boundaries of the genre.
What this book offers
- A poetic and raw look at the emotional fragility of the exiled person.
- A profound reflection on how hospitality can conceal power dynamics and exclusion.
- A work awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize, a benchmark of contemporary British poetry.
- A unique voice that expands the expressive possibilities of poetry to address the uncomfortable.
- An introduction to the work of a fundamental author of the Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom.
Technical specifications
- Author: Bhanu Kapil
- Publisher: Ediciones La Uña Rota
- Language: Spanish
- Subject: Poetry, plays, theatrical texts
- Collection: Libros Inútiles
- Publication date: March 2025
- Number of pages: 108
- Weight: 158 g
Editorial review
How to Wash a Heart is a work that transcends conventional poetry to become a lyrical testimony to the wounds of exile. The voice of Bhanu Kapil, recognized with the T. S. Eliot Prize, offers a necessary perspective on the contradictions of hospitality and racism in seemingly inclusive contexts. Her language, at once restrained and heartbreaking, invites a slow and reflective reading. It is a literary proposal of high value for those who seek poetry that does not avoid discomfort or the complexity of reality.