The Poet X

Xiomara Batista, a young Latinx in Harlem, finds she can only speak of her true experiences and her true feelings in the poetry she writes constantly in her notebook.

Xiomara and her mother conflict over religion and Xiomara's desire to have a boyfriend. Xiomara is closed off from most of her teachers and fellow students at the high school. Her twin brother gives her a notebook and encourages her to write about her experiences and her feelings, and Xiomara does this, and here in the notebook, Xiomara discovers her gifts.

This is a beautiful story of a daughter and her mother as they navigate the difficult waters of leaving a child-adult relationship and moving toward an adult-adult relationship. It's the story of a girl trying to find her own voice, trying to do and say the things that seem right and true for her.

And it's all told in free verse.