Everything is Returned to the Soil/ Todo Vuelve a la Tierra by Briana Muñoz (June 28, 2021)

Publishing date: June 28, 2021

“Everything is Returned to the Soil is a bilingual, full-length poetry collection of poems on the spiritual, political, and cultural realms. Reading Briana Muñoz’s poetry is like following her as she reclaims her Indigenous culture, recounts moments growing up wedged in-between two borders, all while breaking long existing patriarchal structures within her existence as a woman of color.”

Briana Muñoz is a writer from Southern California. Raised in San Diego, she spent a lot of her time at her mother’s Mexican folklore dance classes and at ranches where her father trained horses into sunset. She is the author of Loose Lips, a poetry collection published by Prickly Pear Publishing (2019). Her work has been published in the Bravura Literary Journal, LA BLOGA, the oldest Chicana Chicano Literature blog in history, the Poets Responding page and in the Oakland Arts Review, among others. In the 2016 publication of the Bravura, she was awarded the second-place fi ction prize. Her poem “Rebirth” was featured in the Reproductive Health edition of the St. Sucia zine. Briana’s work was one of ten chosen for The Best of LA BLOGA from 2015. When she isn't typing away, she enjoys Danza Azteca, live music, cats, and thrift shopping.

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Everything is Returned to the Soil/ Todo Vuelve a la Tierra

Briana’s Everything is Returned to the Soil lets the conviction of her dreams, fantasies, heartaches, darkness, prayers and experiences mirror the human side of all of us, her Poetry paints the ancestry and pain of society.

- Juan Cardenas, Executive Director of Los Angeles Poet Society, Teacher with California Poets in the Schools, and author of The Beat of an Immigrant Chicano

Briana Muñoz’s book, Everything is Returned to the Soil/ Todo Vuelve a la Tierra, is a collection of poetry that documents heartache like only a well-tongued Poet can. The extremities of mind, body, and spirit, are all fed through the grinder, smoothed out, and laminated for us to see.

You can feel it in Briana’s poems, and recollections of love, that pierce like an unwanted thorn between the eyes. Her sensual language shows us how fierce the exchange of love can be and how the scars belong like bandages. If you exorcise away the torment of thoughts, songs, clothes, scents, and the hard-on memories of once love – this book will take place of the razor over your arm, and toast you with a double shot, and a finger to your ex-lover.

Jump into this book and empower yourself away from the drunk-dial, sloppy text, or lonesome one-nighters. Muñoz’s book is medicine for the freshly wounded. It is also a beautiful homage to ancestry, madre tierra, and the freest feminine spirit!

Briana writes with such strength, and honors her lineage with her breath, blood, and ink. Poems like Elvira, which is an intimate vignette of grandmother to granddaughter exchanges, and an undertone of resentment for the impact of the patriarchy and colonization that white wash our families, painting over our cultura. Poems like, For my Mother, a life of the party woman, has such strong spirit, and Ancestral Wounds could be its own manifesto as she takes us on a journey to decolonize her past. Briana is unafraid to speak, unafraid to shed saliva, and unafraid to use her tongue.

- Jessica M. Wilson, MFA, Founder of Los Angeles Poet Society, Poet, Activist, Educator

Briana Muñoz’s poetry wants to jump off the pages and dance. All sorts of dances — from traditional ceremonial Danza to dirty dancing. She has no problem juxtaposing sin with the sacred. And should she? Life is all of it. This book is a journey, a look into the depths of want with no disclaimers. Of people living ordinary lives and striving for the best lives they can get. We travel LA streets, visit its iconic neighborhoods and landmarks, go to the southern border with Mexico, even to La Habana. Throughout all of it, there is a profound reverence for ancestors and what they have to teach us as Indigenous peoples. At the same time, there’s a fearless look at the complexities of women who are willing to be exactly who they choose to be. Cultural and societal shackles be damned. I was lucky to curate Briana’s first book Loose Lips which I thought was bold, raw, and beautiful. Everything is Returned to the Soil is more of the same powerful poetry, only with more punch and more conviction. ¡Ajuua y Adelante!

- Odilia Galván Rodríguez, author of The Color of Light: Poems for the Mexica and Orisha Energies

Briana Muñoz’s poetry confronts social injustices while proving that emotional vulnerability is a requisite for true strength, rather than a hinderance. There is a quiet tenderness in her words as she examines the everyday moment, or reflects on her identity, that contrasts with a building tension of inner conflict and acceptance that explodes on the page in a rush of beauty. This collection warrants multiple reads to experience the complexity that lies beneath the layers of meaning.

- Zachary Jensen, Poet, Writer, Translator, and Editor