Hermana Luivette Resto Publishes her first book “Unfinished Portrait”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Nicole Dominicci

Vice President of Public Relations

PublicRelations@lambdapichi.org

Latinas Promoviendo Comunidad/Lambda Pi Chi Sorority, Inc. ("Lambda Pi Chi"), a NALFO member organization, is proud to announce that Luivette Resto, an Hermana of Lambda Pi Chi, today released her first collection of poems entitled "Unfinished Portrait." On its first day of release the compilation is already listed as number six on the Amazon list of Hot New Releases in Caribbean and Latin American Poetry. "We are very proud of Luivette. She has worked hard for many years to make her dream of publishing her work come true, and we celebrate in her accomplishments as a writer, a mother, and a woman," says Quisaira A. Whitney, National President of Lambda Pi Chi.

The book has already received favorable praises:

"The poetry of Luivette Resto is a revelation: brave, honest, angry, intimate, political, [and] irreverent. The poems burn with a clarity born of experience, vivid and tactile as a Taíno tattoo on the shoulder. The poet insists on her unique humanity and her Puerto Rican identity in the same breath, the girl from the Bronx with a Cornell education, demolishing the ignorance of professors who condemn bilingualism or intellectuals who want to learn new Spanish commands for the housekeeper. Resto translates untranslated lives, which she recognizes as the stuff of poetry: the immigrant, the farmworker, the dancer, the unborn child.But these are more than barrio broadsides. Here we find sonnets and odes in praise of enchiladas and cuchifritos, the echoes of poetic ancestors from Pablo Neruda to Julia de Burgos. This is a memorable and timely debut. Welcome, Poet." Martín Espada, author of The Republic of Poetry and Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002

"Look no further. Contrary to the title of Luivette Resto's debut collection of poetry, the portrait she paints is not only complete, but painfully accurate; the facts from Che to Z(apata), where East meets Left, brown defies white and accents refuse to be quietly swept under the academiclectern. Powerful, bold and unapologetic -- this is a book that deserves our utmost attention." Michele Serros, author of Chicana Falsa and Honey Blonde Chica

Luivette Resto is a graduate of Cornell University with a BA in English Literature with a concentration in U.S. Latino Studies and a Masters in Fine Arts holder from University of Massachusetts at Amherst in Creative Writing.

###

The first Latina focused sorority founded at an Ivy-league institution, Latinas Promoviendo Comunidad/Lambda Pi Chi Sorority, Inc. was established on April 16, 1988 at Cornell University. Comprised of undergraduate, graduate and professional women, Latinas Promoviendo Comunidad/Lambda Pi Chi Sorority, Inc. seeks to unify women through the promotion of community service programs that highlight the contributions of women and people of color with an emphasis on the Latina and offer opportunities for academic and professional advancement to members of historically under-represented groups.

For further information visit our website at www.lambdapichi.org or email us at info@lambdapichi.org.