Love Cake

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Poetry. LGBT Studies. Asian American Studies. In these poems, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores how queer people of color resist and transform violence through love and desire. Remembering and testifying about the damage caused by the racial profiling of South Asian and Arab people post 9/11, border crossings and internal and external wars in Sri Lanka and the diaspora, LOVE CAKE also documents the persistence of survival and beauty--especially the dangerous beauty found in queer people of color loving and desiring. LOVE CAKE maps the joys and challenges of reclaiming the body and sexuality after violence, examining a family history of violence with compassion and celebrating the resilient, specific ways we create new families, take our bodies back, love, fight, and transform violence.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, Feminism, Disability, LGBT, Race, Book Club

97 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Toronto and Oakland-based poet, writer, educator and social activist. Her writing and performance art focuses on documenting the stories of queer and trans people of color, abuse survivors, mixed-race people and diasporic South Asians and Sri Lankans.

Reviews

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily my favorite of Piepzna-Samarasinha’s works so far, and emblematic of their unique ir/reverence — living inside that slash — when it comes to heady and heavy subjects of sexual abuse, domestic violence, colonialism, and generational poverty, among other things. This is in many ways her philosophy and politic and poetic practice in its rawest and most beautiful form, a mix of poems and near-manifestoes documenting what it means to grow up and sideways as a mixed femme crip survivor piecing together a future.

[Ally Ang · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked some of these poems but there was a lot of overly familiar imagery. Also, why does she use so much AAVE when she’s a Tamil and white person from Worcester Mass?

[Jocelyn Schartiger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this book a 2.5 star rating. I chose this book as an opportunity to read work by a poet from a background that I am not super familiar with. I enjoyed getting an insight into a different perspective, but ultimately, the poetry was not my style.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Cake is divided into five parts: "serendib", "the kunju suite", "what is left", "coda: Sri Lanka 2009", and "remyth"...

from "serendib"...

1.
Left our teardrop
we grow green chilis and curry leaf in balcony pots
in -35 degree
Toronto and Montreal winters.

2.
When I flew the 27 hours home
for the first time at 31
I expected nothing
and the red earth just opened
right
up.

3.
Sneaking down the hallway
of the refugee Kennedy and Ellesmere highrise
to do it in the stairwell with the cute Jamaican boy next door
sleeping with your favourite cousin at the wedding
not getting married till late or at all
and
you still love your folks
you still love you.

4.
Discovering you can make cutlets out of Bumble Bee tuna from the bodega
and ship Rainbow Sauce, good tea,
seeni sambol, Maldive fish, jaggary and hopper molds
to all the unlikely places in the world
where Sri Lankan be, including:
St Paul, Minnesota
Las Vegas Connecticut doctor-lawyer town
and Thunder Bay, Ontario.

5.
Me learning how to cook Sri Lankan food at 23
from cookbooks in the library
taking a name researched in books
I don't know for sure is mine
bu know for sure is not
the Dutch East India employee
who raped - I'm sorry, "married"
- my great-great-great-great-
grandmother
who
I know
is mine
unquestionably.

6.
Black August
chopped bodies
thick straight black hair burning
Smell of tropical meat rotting
and a thousand-year library in ashes.

I am eight
I am in Worcester, Massachusetts
in my parents' backyard
playing behind the peeling white-planked garage
near the arbour vitas and the compost pile
reading tall stacks of library books in a hammock
a Lankan, a Tamil child
blessedly alive.

7.
Now that the island hemorrhaging
we need every drop of diaspora
all those pure bloodlines?
just rivers
mushy in the wetlands
jungle streams spilling down mountain to one sea.

8.
My grandmother's
bared ankles
her glare
straight at the camera eye
her mixed-race woman's
aching slit fast legs
mango booty running fast
in my body I standing
her life in mine
one surviving bombed out
lovely
palm tree.

9.
My father lost his tongue
but we make do with this one.

- Sri Lankan resiliency miracle love poems 1-9, pg. 7-9

from "the kunju suite"...

when we rock we rock earth to earth
belt buckle to pussy

out bodies prayers to keep us here
and when we pray we sing

there is this earth underneath it all
our cells spit molecules of home

when you say I love you
it's on purpose
when you say I promise
I believe you

- rock, pg. 25

from "what is left"...

1.
no more smoke and ashes
honey welling up
the centre of my palms

2.
yes I'm an affirmative action dater
bu why would I spit in Oshun's face?
that would be really, really stupid
don't you think?

- palms full of Oshun, pg. 57

from "coda: Sri Lanka 2009"...

& it's a lie. I want to write sri lanka
instead I take a shower/I check my
voice mail/I make my bed/I
make my bad chicken curry.
Watch The Real News and BBC World Service South Asia/Sri Lanka
on internet. Repost. Sleep with someone unworthy of me.

bad dreams later. unsent email. bravest I know
fleeing. quarter million camp concentration resettlement
they don't even know their names
I say I'm trying to write you
old sore
emerald
sister writes: my darling,
sister, how are you? when I can sleep,
my dreams are filled
with shattered bodies these days.
How do we survive this?

- I say I'm trying to write about Sri Lanka, pg. 84

from "remyth"...

We own this house. or we don't own it,
but I've lived here forty years now.
we made additions. fixed the hole int he roof. had time, stories and bread.
I lived to be an old woman and am still hot
nobody own anything
but I had time to put down roots
and just live here.
just
live:
We just live here.

In the city of my imagination,
I get to be surprised.
I get to not know
how the story ends.

In the city of my desire
nothing is perfect. oceans rose
people died. people we loved and needed,
they died. not how we wanted them to.
perhaps the water stopped three blocks from my house
because we made sea dislikes and magic
and I jog by oil scented salt water every morning.
or I didn't make it and I am a ghost that speaks to my grandchild
who is living in toxic water like Farallon island tiger sharks
still diving and grinnning next to cold war nukes dropped thirsty years ago:
I look at her mutated, beautiful, persistent smile.

In the city of my desire
my diaspora settles like a nervous stomach after a ginger beer
in the best tradition of my people,
and I can see them whenever I want.
to where roots stretch denrons
They are allowed to grow
to flourish
and something new comes
beyond the breaking open of empire
and the IMF bloody wound crust.

The city of my desire
is my body
I spent so long learning to love this crip body
altered by trauma capitalism bled into my mother's stem cells
bu things happened:
my parents before dying are accountable for my childhood
old carpet soaked rust belt toxins out of soil
I got to rest as long as I needed
so did every else
whose bodies falling apart in the last days of desire
and I limp and jog
I and we the someones
who didn't die

The city in which I adore you
is tricky. complicated.
broken before we breathe it.
all we have. our own genius,
two or three things I know for sure, how genius we are raising $5,00 at a house party
how tragic the inside of heart set on fire
it's like arguing over monogamy versus polyamory -
no matter how much I get irritated and compose brilliant Scorpio emails
lambasting a lover's dumb ass, I know I can't get married.

The city where I love you
is only this: love storm. broken toxins.
halfassed brilliant solution. oya wind. unknown child.
my feverish tremoring body
who had time to lie on a couch and write this best poem
of cages crumbled sea walls holding
drawing the maps crooked bleeding ink
of the city we breathe towards cherished
buoyant dream I reach for
with you, kindred
in this city where we live and desire, now
body brown filled with broken gratitude
breaking bread open breath

- the city of my desire - after amir rabiyah and li young lee, pg. 95-97

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

From my review in BITCH magazine: "If you haven’t read any of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha’s incredible feminist essays, you are missing out. Her poetry is as unflinchingly political as her nonfiction, but it also touches on more personal territory of her life as a queer disabled femme Sri Lankan artist. LOVE CAKE is a natural continuation of the themes from her 2006 debut collection, Consensual Genocide: racism, colonial occupation and resistance (“Hurricane”), sex, surviving abuse (“The Best Daughter”), and the importance of community (“sweetest thing/tierra sagrada"). With memorable references to literary icons Cherríe Moraga, bell hooks, and Sonia Sanchez, LOVE CAKE easily convinces readers that Piepzna-Samarsinha’s writing should be shelved right beside them."

[Emory Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leah shares personal history and exploration of self in this great collection of poetry. There are celebrations of people of colour, freedom and bodies.

Content warnings: If you want to read this, please be aware that there are themes of sexual assault/r*pe and that it contains some sexual content as well.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75

I liked that the writing style was more raw and straightforward; not so much bullshit, not flimsy and vague as poetry can be (although I enjoy that style as well sometimes)
There was raw beauty and power and freedom and life in these poems, and I enjoyed it

[Yas Necati · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly beautiful exploration of the relationship between love, war and identity. Brought me to tears more than once.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never felt more attached to a book of poetry in my life.

[K. L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay content. Not my most-loved style.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed these poems! I connected to her story even though her story is not mine. I usually don't enjoy poetry mainily because I never understand the allusions and what I'm supposed to take literally versus figuratively. I didn't have that problem with Love Cake. The poems were lyrical and straightforward. The descriptive words were relatable descriptions. I was there loving and struggling. Protesting and processing. Analyzing and educating. Emotional visibility is how I think of it. Queer of color experience made visible. So very good!

[Niya · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poet maintains a wonderful rawness to her work that comes through the lyricism of her work. This collection is a wonderful melange of observations of how power, violence and emotion etch themselves and communicate through the body. It takes what is usually percieved as the "other" experience - that of a very conventionally marginalized person (female, POC, queer) and presents it in a way that is relate-able without sanitizing it for consumption. It's the sort of collection that inspires the reader to create something for themselves.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are at all familiar with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's work then it will come as no surprise to you that this book of poetry is brilliant, sometimes funny sometimes heart wrenching and always always working your heart open as you read.

[Liz Latty · Rating 5 out of 5]

fierce femme fall out and get the fuck back up poetry. your life will be better for having read it.

[Rabbit {Paint me like one of your 19th century gothic heroines!} · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting and well-written book of poetry. It is narrative and definitely raw when it comes to the author's life.

[ACRL]

Read by ACRL Member of the Week Kenny Garcia. Learn more about Kenny on the ACRL Insider blog.

[Avatara Smith carrington · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was really a good read and truly interesting...

[Vrinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting collection with a unique perspective. In large part, not really my style though.