Gravities of Center is an extraordinary testament to the self, and how the self is shaped from the experience of “otherness.” Her work is sharp and intelligent, defining and shattering.
Gravities of Center
Arkipelago Books Publishing, 2003
“Always mindful of the terrible past that still haunts her native country today, Reyes writes with urgency, but her poems contain an anger quite tempered by maturity and dignity. That past also haunts her own personal life in America: her poetry offers an acute look of what new ethnic identity means, but again, without sanctimonious complaints. Even when she writes about that other terrible topic, love, she is devastating in conveying loss, but without reaching for sentimental sympathy. At once tender and tough, her precise voice shatters us.” ~ Nguyen Qui Duc, Host/Producer, Pacific Time Public Radio
“Intelligent, energetic, and inventive, Reyes’s writing is nourished by the confluence of cultures at which she resides as an urban twenty-first century Pilipina American. Seen as both a post-colonial chronicle and an intimate exploration of self, community, and history, Gravities of Center hovers between conventionalpoetry or prose, bending the genres until what emerges is a work that will illuminate us like ‘garnet crystalline fire … burning, to light the way back home’ .” ~ Jaime Jacinto, author of HEAVEN IS JUST ANOTHER COUNTRY