Blue Corn Tongue

2025 Southwest Books of the Year In a voice that is jubilant, irreverent, sometimes scouring, sometimes heartfelt, and always unmistakably her own, Amber McCrary remaps the deserts of Arizona through the blue corn story of a young Dine woman figuring out love and life with an O'odham man. Reflecting experiences of Indigenous joy, pain, and family, these shapeshifting poems celebrate the love between two Native partners, a love that flourishes alongside the traumas they face in the present and the past. From her ethereal connection with her saguaro muse, Hosh, to the intricate tapestry of her relationships with Dine relatives and her awakening to the complex world of toxic masculinity, McCrary brings together DIY zine aesthetics, life forms of juniper and mountains, and the beauty of Dine Bizaad to tell of the enduring bonds between people and place. Journeying from the Colorado Plateau to the Sonoran Desert and back again, Blue Corn Tongue invokes the places, plants, and people of Dine Bikeyah and O'odham jewed in a deeply honest exploration of love, memory, and intimacy confronting the legacy of land violence in these desert homelands.