Update on The Weight of Knowing

Howdy. If you keep tabs on this website, you might notice the change in my debut piece.

I’ve decided to pause on releasing The Weight of Knowing as my debut work. I do believe in this book, and I will release it in its entirety one day.

The Weight of Knowing uses poetry to explore the topics young adults grapple with as they set the stage for the rest of their lives. The poems are inspired by my life and contain universal young adult themes including hometown aches, exploring identity, finding lifelong companionship, understanding family trauma, building community, and sustaining oneself financially.

The book was comprised of 5 collections with the themes home, family, work, love, and self. Instead of releasing the book as 5 collections, I’ve decided to release one collection from the book as my debut piece.

In re-reading The Weight of Knowing in its final stages, I felt compelled to release the “home” section as its own work.

I read my previous 22 page book proposal that I had submitted to a literary agent last year and recognized the “home” section was the one I described most passionately compared to other sections. There were also clear intentions with that section to represent more than myself.

Given the political climate and acts against immigrants in the United States, I could not ignore the feeling that I needed to release poems I had written about my experiences as a Mexican-American woman from a border town in Texas.

I am in the final stages of the self publishing process. Traditionally, most poets self publish their short debut collection before releasing a lengthy book of several collections.

I am striving to have physical copies of my debut collection available by April. These last few weeks I have been working on a book cover and finalizing the Spanish translations in the book.

The collection will be available as a physical copy of 46 poems. A few poems will be in Spanish or have Spanish phrases. I could see this topic being the basis of a longer book in the future, but this feels like the right time to release what I have so far.

Thank you for following me on this journey. Thank you for supporting me.

I am so excited for y’all to read what I’ve been working on for the last year!!