Spilling the Light

De: Julián Jamaica Soto

Narrado por: Julián Jamaica Soto

The light must spill to shine. The thing you must be is yourself.

Intimate and uncompromising, Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto’s debut collection Spilling the Light, is a luminous offering to their communities and a defiant declaration of their worth in a world hostile to their queer, disabled, and brown being.

“America, is this freedom?” they ask. “I cannot prove to you that / I am a person,” writing boldly of identity, community, liberation, and erasure through a prism of tender moments and powerful reckonings. These are poems of broken hallelujahs and codes/witching, of hunger and fire, of hope and resilience. They are complex, tender, and empowering. They embolden us to become our truest selves, willing us to survive.

©2024 Julián Jamaica Soto (P)2024 Skinner House Books

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Rev. Soto’s book is a gift of lyric human realness. I have shared poems from this powerful volume again and again because they touch on something essential: that moment when you encounter words that snap your consciousness awake and make you say, ‘That’s IT!’ Words that make you say, ‘I know who needs to hear this.’ This is what language is for, and Reverend Soto uses it beautifully.”—Atena O. Danner, author of Incantations for Rest: Poems, Meditations, and Other Magic

“Spilling the Light is a book of life. With every poem, read once, twice, we are reminded of our fragile and beautiful existence. There is no escaping healing in these pages. Take it all in and be transformed.”—JeKaren Olaoya, author of All the Pieces Fit: Collage Poems

“This book does what the titles says: it spills light from every page. Rev. Soto carries a deep light within and when that light becomes word, it illuminates the world. We leave by feeling that we carry the sun inside of us.”—Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes, professor of worship, Union Theological Seminary