Handspun Rosaries

By Dina Klarisse

Moving through memories of growing up as a Filipina American immigrant and her reflections on woman's place in a society still dripping Christian-centric values and reeking of colonial heritage,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sampaguita Press LLC
• Release date: Sep 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985771237

Book preview

Further Praise for

HANDSPUN ROSARIES

"A reclamation of what we truly find sacred within and for ourselves leaving behind the strict rules and beliefs of institutionalized faith, and in some cases leaving behind family beliefs in the process, Dina Klarisse’s Handspun Rosaries personalizes prayer in this breathtaking collection of poems. Klarisse draws out the beauty of spirituality where Faith, Hope, and Love are not exclusive to a specific religion, and where we, even spidergirls and Sirens, are God in our own image, where Asian supermarkets are just as much churches, and we arrive at knowing our true worth. Reminiscent of Lucian Blaga and Rainer Maria Rilke but this time brought to our knees by a Brown demigoddess’ voice, Klarisse’s poems are our new litany of holy prayers to memorize."

—ELSA VALMIDIANO, author of We Are No Longer Babaylan

"In Dina Klarisse’s Handspun Rosaries, the speaker grapples with thorny questions of faith and over 19 poems, crafts a creed that is different from her family’s but is just as potent, a doctrine built from the delights of grocery stories, the seemingly effortless strength and glamor of ates, the creative power of myth-making and storytelling, and most importantly, the urgency and mysteries of love."

—ANNA CABE, Co-Fiction Editor at Split Lip Magazine, 2018-2019 Fulbright Fellow in the Philippines

"Fiercely tender and introspective, Handspun Rosaries meticulously explores the mythos of folk Catholicism and the nuances of an indigenized Filipinx identity. With spunk and clarity, the poet Dina Klarisse calls out from the diaspora, ‘across unbelieving and forgetting,’ to invoke family and the allegory of home. This book merits our careful reading to find between the ‘lacquered talons’ and ‘holy carbs,’ an ‘inheritance of burden and love.’"

—AILEEN CASSINETTO, author of The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow

"In Handspun Rosaries, Dina Klarisse carefully, intentionally, and lovingly shows us how to pray on our own terms. The poems in this collection invite us to (re)consider our relationship with God and what connects all of us, by watching mass from the rafters with spiders, mixing the eucharist with sinigang in our bellies, and writing love letters to what is holy in