Of Color by Jaswinder Bolina, Hardcover

Proceeds from sale of this book have been donated to 826NYC  who offer highly individualized creative writing instruction for over 4,000 young New Yorkers every year. Free programs throughout NYC empower young authors and develop crucial skills they need to thrive in the classroom and beyond.

In his debut essay collection, award-winning poet Jaswinder Bolina meditates on “how race,” as he puts it, “becomes metaphysical”: the cumulative toll of the microaggressions and macro-pressures lurking in the academic market, on the literary circuit, in the dating pool, and on the sidewalks of any given U.S. city. Training a keenly thoughtful lens on questions that are never fully abstract―about immigration and assimilation and class, about the political utility of art, about what it means to belong to a language and a nation that brand you as other―Of Color is a bold, expansive, and finally optimistic diagnosis of present-day America.

Praise for Of Color

“(T)hese companionable essays squeeze one’s arm with the firm, fraternal pressure of a trustworthy adviser.”
—Ron Slate, On the Sea Wall

“An excellent collection any year, but it feels particularly necessary in 2020.”
—Hippocampus Magazine

“Eminently readable… entrusts us with an honest conversation that we all should be having with each other.”
—Ploughshares

“Jaswinder Bolina’s insightful, raw and honest collection of brilliant essays illuminate the joys and pains of being a specific person Of Color and through his unique lens we also come to understand the universal ongoing story of America.”
—Wajahat Ali, author of The Domestic Crusaders and contributor to CNN and the New York Times

“Lyrically intelligent, exceptionally alert… A crucial addition to the growing canon of works about race in contemporary America.”
—Sarah Manguso, author of Ongoingness and 300 Arguments

“(M)oves from the polemic to the personal with the candidness and flair of a rollicking dinner conversation.”
—Aisha Sabatini Sloan, author of Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit

“(A) powerful and wise collection of essays, one that will make reverberations into how we look at this country in the future.”
—Cathy Park Hong, author of Engine Empire and Minor Feelings