Description
Costume Jewelry
Book Summary
Costume Jewelry is a poetry collection that bursts forth to defy the conventions of language and identity. Juana Dolores Romero Casanova, a performing artist and poet, constructs a work where class struggle, glitter, and lyrical violence intertwine in a dialectic of oxymorons. This bilingual edition, translated into Spanish by the author herself, allows the reader to immerse themselves in a unique poetic universe, where exacerbated rhymes and suburban lexicon collide with classical turns of phrase, offering a literary experience that is both a jewel and a wound.
What is it about?
The collection is presented as a chain of vertebrae-jewels, a circulatory system where seemingly opposite facets coincide: blood and rubies, gold and mud, crucifixion and prostitution. Through poetry that transitions between violence and softness, the author explores the condition of a lumpen-proletarian class, using costume jewelry as a metaphor for the residual and the brilliant. The poems, written from a heart that is at once in love, hysterical, happy, and afraid, address contradiction as a form of resistance, offering the other cheek and the neck for love, but also for capital love.
Main themes
- The dialectic of the oxymoron as a way of assuming and celebrating contradiction.
- Class struggle from a lyrical and subversive perspective, with a mix of suburban lexicon and highbrow terminology.
- Identity as a fragmentary construction, caught between migrant heritage and contemporary culture.
- Violence and tenderness as forces that traverse the lyrical body, in a play of opposites that do not exclude one another.
- Costume jewelry as a symbol of the residual and the valuable, of the artificial and the authentic in the class experience.
Who is it recommended for?
This book is aimed at readers interested in contemporary poetry that breaks the mold, and at those who seek a voice that engages with politics, identity, and language from a radical and uncompromising perspective. It is also recommended for students of literature, cultural criticism, and performing arts, as well as anyone who wants to explore how poetry can be a battlefield where the classical and the suburban, the beautiful and the violent, collide.
What this book offers
- A poetic experience that defies traditional categories, fusing exacerbated rhymes with street and learned language.
- A profound reflection on contradiction as a creative and existential engine, expressed with a unique and powerful voice.
- The opportunity to access the work in its bilingual version, with translation by the author herself, which enriches the understanding of the original text.
- A lucid and emotional look at class identity, migration, and love in the capitalist context, from a feminist and communist perspective.
Technical Data
- Author: Romero Casanova, Juana Dolores
- Publisher: Ediciones La Uña Rota
- Language: Spanish
- Subject: Poetry
- Collection: Libros Inútiles
- Publication date: November 2025
- Number of pages: 104
- Weight: 153 g
Editorial Review
Costume Jewelry is a poetic proposal that leaves no one indifferent. Juana Dolores Romero Casanova demonstrates a command of language that oscillates between the classical and the marginal, creating a work that is at once a jewel and rubble. Her ability to articulate contradiction as a form of affirmation, rather than paralysis, makes her a necessary voice within contemporary poetry in Spanish. Ideal for those seeking a reading that discomforts, moves, and challenges.