One-Bedroom Solo
​by Sheila Maldonado

One-Bedroom Solo is a free spirited, rhythmic poetry collection by Sheila Maldonado with a wide range melody. At times, her poetry is serious and painfully profound. Other times it is casual, relaxed and even silly. She speaks without holding back, from her Honduran heritage and the bleak sociopolitical reality of immigration to Juan Luis Guerra's popular bachata song, Quisiera ser un pez. 

The author's voice resonates with tunes of identity, roots, belonging and family. She speaks of a border that divides her people, and a waiting revolution, both personal and social. But not everything is so critical or consequential. Maldonado also delves in other everyday topics in a light tone such as: a conversation about lotion, the unfound parking spot and of course, her bedroom. 

In One-Bedroom Solo, the reader will find a liberating harmony that begins in New York and echoes wide and deep in the "crack of the mind". Note after note, Maldonado teaches us how to deal with the commotion of a vast metropolis and the noise of the spirit through the song of a self-determined woman, dancing herself to victory. 

Sheila Maldonado (Coney Island, New York) teaches creative writing for The City University of New York and through Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her poems have appeared in Rattapallax and Callaloo, among others. 

One-Bedroom Solo is a publication by Fly By Night Press. Click here to purchase. 

Reviewed by
Gerald A. Padilla
4/4/2017

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