By Jenise Miller
From: LibroMobile Voices

If you’re seeking a place not found on a map, you need someone who has been there to show you. In “Living on Islands Not Found on Maps,” mother, poet, and teacher Luivette Resto is an adept guide, leading us with vulnerability to places of personal truth. The collection navigates the multiple ways legends arise in our personal story: through people we remember, in our family and beyond, because of their indelible actions; through family folklore that walks the line of history and mythology; and through symbols, like on a map, that give meaning to our journey.

The book’s cover, designed by Jasmine Preciado, displays soft, rich browns, greens, and yellow, mirrored by waves in the cover image’s hair and earrings. I thought, “I want those earrings”– large, sunray hoops, the kind some folks taught were unbecoming for young girls. But, the girls where I’m from knew and wore them better and those hoops on the cover felt like an invitation to converse with someone familiar. We catch a glimpse of her in The Bronx in “All Day Every Day,” a round-the-way girl “getting ready for a night out, searching for your favorite hoop earrings and Boricua red lipstick.” There is no eye beneath the cover image’s perfectly arched brow, perhaps indicating that the insight the woman offers is beyond what we think we see or know.

The collection is divided into two sections. The first section largely explores the people and places we are from, the second, who we become. In the first section, Resto declares, “You don’t come from the Bronx. The Bronx comes from you… It isn’t trying to kill you so you can justify leaving it behind.” There are certain places I associate with swag. New York is one. When I say New York, I mean Brooklyn, Harlem, the Bronx, Queens – places I learned in hip hop songs that described corners, alleys, and hard-soft people like where I’m from. I understand what it’s like to be from a place as real as it is mythical, pride inscribed in how you say and claim it. Read Rest of Review Here