I am not sure how to convey the power of this poetry collection. I can tell you that once I picked up Love Cake, I could not put it down until I finished every poem, even though I sometimes had to read through my tears. Upon finishing, I immediately had to call a femme friend to read her a poem that reminded me of her.

These poems demand that I feel everything more intensely–including grief and rage–but in return, they give me back something I didn’t know I was missing: an expansive sense of possibility. The morning after I read this collection, I woke up from my sleep with a feeling of anticipation, remembering that I had been given an unexpectedly precious gift that I will carry deep inside me. The gift of this poetry collection is nothing less than a roadmap to what liberation can look like for queer people who survive personal and collective trauma.

Describing border crossings that she experiences as a queer working class person of color, Leah Laskshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha gives voice to the involuntary incursions on her body: child abuse, colonialism, racism, and war; as well as her voluntary crossings of boundaries: leaving her family of origin, rediscovering her roots in Sri Lanka, and reclaiming her body. She maintains a tension between oppression and healing throughout, in poems that leave no doubt about her power as a survivor, healer, and activist.

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