White Lipstick by Geri Digiorno

Al Young recommends White Lipstick, poems by Geri Digiorno: "With these pages—sparsely worded, richly lived—Geri Digiorno reminds us how entangled the delicate roots and tendrils of family and 'individual' identity can become. Her lovingly subjective subjects include kin and neighborhood, coming of age, friendship, betrayal, initiation, baptism, masquerade, transformation, sexual discovery and conquest, marriage and parenthood. Sketching poetically, Digiorno—at heart a realist unafraid to risk sentimentality—relives a working-class life begun in San Francisco's Noe Valley. In clipped, lowercase memoir-vernacular, she tells all. In so doing, she serves up clues to the meaning of life worldwide." (Red Hen)