A review by bisexualbookshelf
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Díaz

emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.5

Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem is a collection that aches and pulses, alive with longing, grief, and defiance. It is a book that moves like water—eroding, sustaining, and shape-shifting—demanding that readers sit with the contradictions of survival and desire. Diaz’s poems weave together the personal and the political, exploring the aftermath of colonial violence on Indigenous communities while fiercely reclaiming love, body, and language. The result is a collection that is both a love song and an act of resistance, refusing to let Indigenous bodies be reduced to relics or statistics.

The relationship between body and land is central to this collection, often blurring into one entity. In Mojave thinking, Diaz reminds us, the words for body and land are almost identical, making their destruction indistinguishable. Her poetry renders the wounds of colonialism tactile—rain, blood, rivers, and cracked earth appear as motifs, reinforcing the deep connections between identity, environment, and historical trauma. Yet, amid the loss, there is also an insistence on pleasure, on the sacredness of touch. The body, often framed as a site of violence in colonial history, is here rewritten as a site of love, agency, and transformation.

Diaz’s language is breathtaking—both sparse and lush, sharp yet fluid. Her poetry moves between declarative, fragmented lines and sweeping, lyrical imagery, creating a rhythm that mimics the contradictions she navigates. She layers striking metaphors—maps as ghosts, America as a clot of clouds, a lover’s body as a lake-glint—crafting a landscape that is both haunted and radiant. The tension between visibility and erasure runs through these poems: the weight of existing in a country that seeks to erase Indigenous presence while simultaneously consuming its image.

Postcolonial Love Poem does not offer easy resolutions. Instead, it carves space for survival as an act of creation, for love as both a reckoning and a refuge. Diaz challenges the reader to hold grief and joy in the same breath, to witness history without turning away, and to recognize that language itself can be an act of reclamation. This collection is a masterwork of lyricism and defiance—a necessary read for those willing to step into its river and be changed by the current.

📖 Recommended For: Readers who appreciate lyrical, visceral poetry exploring colonialism, desire, and survival; those drawn to works that intertwine body, land, and language; fans of Ocean Vuong.

🔑 Key Themes: Erasure and Survival, Love and Intimacy, The Body as Landscape, Indigenous Identity and Resistance, Water and Transformation.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings