$15.00

In stock (can be backordered)

ISBN: 978-1-955239-44-8
Reviews & Media

A Love Letter

Publication Date: February 2023

Description

In June of 2023, Black Lawrence Press welcomed numerous existing and forthcoming Nomadic Press titles to our catalogue. A Love Letter was originally published by Nomadic Press.

A Love Letter has the power to speak through time as did my beloved aunt who left a paper trail to show she kept me in her thoughts. She drafted an Advance Directive, purchased some modest burial insurance, and protected a few memories that might have otherwise been forgotten. So, a love letter euphemistically captures how she chose to say goodbye and go with grace. My wish is in many ways to reciprocate her love with this little book – a rememory – reflecting on where I was as she left this world, where I am now, and where any one of us might be in the future.

Listen to the introduction here:

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Praise

A Love Letter is a profound and gorgeously rendered tribute to a person, to a place, and to life itself. I really enjoyed the vivid characters and the sensitivity and elegance of Carmen Kennedy’s writing.
—Vendela Vida

A Love Letter is the reader’s honor of being brought into the sharp tenderness of a loved one’s transition. To enter this room also offering your mind to the various mirrors of embrace. To walk down the predatory nodes of a medical system serving capital and rage along. In a few pages, you are years changed.
—Tongo Eisen Martin

A Love Letter’s lyrical vignettes place witness pinnacle as the speaker both chronicles and begets introspection. We observe cyclical mourning and cyclical hope. In these pages, we gather empathy as a cure for our human condition, with passages like, ‘this journey is eminently finite and someone’s departure can seem abrupt if you miss as little as a day, week or month.’ Praise this work that allows us to look into another’s eyes and see something beautiful.
—Daniel B. Summerhill

About the Author

Carmen Estela Kennedy Saleh

Carmen is a writer and a perennial learner, so you can find her rooted in discussions with bright students as easily as you can find her planted behind a good book. In fact, she says she sees her name on a few of these and has sown seeds of her work in the Themis and Acacia journals, respectively; proudly reaped a James D. Phelan Literary Award; a Solas Award in the Category of Culture and Ideas; and in 2023, she debuted A Love Letter which was honored by Small Press Distribution as a bestseller in May and June of that same year. A Love Letter steps you into the sharp tenderness of a loved one’s transition. San Francisco Poet Laureate emeritus, Tongo Eisen Martin wrote, “Its pages expose your mind to the various mirrors of an embrace while walking you down the predatory nodes of a medical system that serves capital and rage with equal measure. In a few pages, you are years changed.” This love letter should make you uncomfortable. It should confront you with humanity. And it should animate your cry for care that is both cost free and comprehensive – care that follows the body from inception to interment. It is as life affirming to honor the body’s return as its arrival, which is why this little book attempts to document some of the most graceful aspects of a goodbye. Carmen tells us, readers, “A Love Letter captures where I was when my beloved aunt left the world, and where I am now, and where any of us might find ourselves in the future.”

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