How to Love the World by Elvira Basevich

In this time of reflection, we invite you to sit down with our 2019 [PANK] Books Poetry Contest Winner, How to Love the World by Elvira Basevich and selected by Trace DePass. Basevich’s words are as haunting as they are beautiful in this stunning meditation on trauma, resilience and hope.

Set just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, How to Love the World is at once a condemnation of the world, a daydream of America, and an unsent love letter—written and rewritten over the course of ten years—to a dead family. A meditation on intergenerational trauma, resilience, and hope, How to Love the World is written in the tradition of epic poetry and follows the author as she retraces her mother’s journey to New York City in the summer of ‘89. A Jewish-Uyghur refugee, the author is born along the way, marking the unclear boundary when the memory of a family becomes historical memory, loss the condition of a new beginning. How to Love the World casts refugee women and daughters as the rightful judges of the world and the world as the rightful home of all human beings.

Order How to Love the World Here.