The White Islands / Las Islas Blancas

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“I only wanted to write about them, Narrate their fierce audacity, Their voyages through the channels of the Mediterranean.” With that stanza, a poetic journey begins in search of presence and absence among islands in the Mediterranean that for millennia were homes and then refuge for Sephardic Jews after the Alhambra Decree, the Expulsion. Inspired by her own journey to the Greek Islands, to Salonika, Rhodes, Crete, the Balkans, Agosín searches for the remnants of Sepharad. In her poems, we hear the rhythm of waves, the wandering, a life of exile on distant shores. We hear voices of Sephardi women—past and present—with the occasional intonation of Ladino at times, embraced with modern Spanish. We hear it in the voices of her Paloma, Estrella, Luna, in the fullness of their lives, loves, dreams, faith, hope. It is an evocative and sensual voyage to communities now mostly lost after the Holocaust. The White Islands is a lyrical world recovered and tasted with language and song, lament and joy, custom and prayer, longing and hope. It is a Sepharad that remains alive, vibrant with beauty, and with each exquisite poem, a lighthouse of remembrance.