First Laugh

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist. She is the author of, most recently, To Change the World: My Years in Cuba; Their Backs to the Sea; My Town; and As If the Empty Chair/Como si la silla vacía, all collections of poems and photographs.

• A Few Words about These EssaysThe American PeoplePumping GasFlying BackwardsBigger, Better, BestRace and Racism: The 2008 ElectionThe Cell RemembersRolling EyesRemembering MotherFirst LaughPircing the WallsOñate's Right FootCan Poetry Matter?Words for El Corno EmplumadoThe Living Silence of a Place like Kiet SeelBetrayalCrystal's GiftThe Place Where Color SoundsMy Losses

"[First Laugh] is a great contribution to the field of 'new journalism' and literary nonfiction. The essays are grounded in concrete experience as well as a lifetime of research. The style is exquisite, the prose of a skilled poet: spare, concise, and clear."—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 "These essays come to us from the American Southwest, a terrain of rock, sand, and here and there a tree whose roots have found water. Margaret Randall is herself a weather-beaten survivor of revolutionary upsurge in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua. She looks out across the American desert from a place that is close to the heart of reality."—Staughton Lynd, coauthor of Stepping Stones: Memoir of a Life Together "Randall is a sincere, poetic, and compelling narrator, and her latest collection offers something for everyone."—Publishers Weekly