American Radiance

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, American Radiance, at turns funny, tragic, and haunting, reflects on the authors experience immigrating as a child to the United States from Ukraine in 1991. What does it mean to be an American? Luisa Muradyan doesnt try to provide an answer. Instead, the poems in American Radiance look for a home in history, folklore, misery, laughter, language, and Princes outstretched hand. Colliding with the grand figures of late 80s and early 90s pop culture, Muradyans imagination pushes the reader forward, confronting the painful loss of identity that assimilation brings.