José A. RodrÃguez
House Built on Ashes: A Memoir
University of Oklahoma Press
"A beautiful portrayal of a world seldom seen in American letters..." -- Sandra Cisneros
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Discovery Award winner from the Writers' League of Texas
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finalist - Lambda Literary Award
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finalist - PEN America-Los Angeles literary award
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finalist - Foreword INDIES book award
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finalist - International Latino Book Award
This American Autopsy: Poems
University of Oklahoma Press, August 2019
"In José Antonio Rodríguez's This American Autopsy, "a name begins the world" before encountering a string of endings--deaths, goodbyes, extinctions, changes in history, a grief beyond borders. This gorgeous book is full of lyric studies of family, fallible bodies, mutable love, failures of justice. Urgent and necessary, Rodríguez's poems interrogate the role of imagination in survival, where stories are written, and for who. If you've ever bitten a prayer (or wanted to), these poems are for you."
-- Traci Brimhall, author of Our Lady of the Ruins
"Rodríguez writes with a reverence for, and a profound sensitivity to, our senses of citizenship, identity, and belonging in this poetic investigation of a country."
--Sasha Pimentel, author of For Want of Water, in World Literature Today
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Backlit Hour
SFA Press/Texas A&M Consortium, 2013
“Beautiful, heartfelt, vulnerable. A humble voice, and because of this humility, filled with grace.” --Sandra Cisneros
“Such wealth of perception in these voluptuous poems…. This is a wondrous book to be absorbed and found by.”--Naomi Shihab Nye
"There are poets who seem to ride a current, a wave of ideas and sentiments so vital for our times. José does this in spades..." --Luis J. Rodríguez
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winner of 2011 SFA Press Prize in Poetry
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finalist - Paterson Poetry Prize
The Shallow End of Sleep
Tia Chucha Press/Northwestern UP, 2011
“…a marvelous collection of poetry, far-reaching and inspiring.”--Afaa Michael Weaver
"In these powerful and passionate poems, Rodriguez gives us an honest, unflinching portrait...of beginning a journey into America and into understanding how sometimes shame shapes us into the people we become." --Maria Mazziotti Gillan
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winner of Bob Bush Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters
