This was an incredibly heartfelt book of poetry. Lozada-Olivia touches on standards of beauty, being an immigrant, feminism, and acceptance of self. Beautifully written.

I have listened to her slam poetry before and I love Button Poetry. This was a whole new experience-- I absolutely loved it and would love to hear it all performed too.

I have seen the hyped for Peluda by Melissa Lozada-Oliva on tumblr. I had the opportunity to read it on Netgalley before purchasing a copy for myself. It was hard to fall in love with this poetry, As a Latina, I am trying to find more books written by Latinos...the Jessica Jones poem was the best one in this book. I am so disappointed that I fell for the hype, and some poems were too obscure. I really wanted to relate...pero, este book no es para mi.

Memoir in poetry form. Issues ranging form racism to gender. While Lozada-Olivia's themes are common, her direction is different than the rest. I enjoyed her perspective and media connections. Two of the poems will stay with me for a long time. One about Jessica Jones that I even shared with my wife because it was SO incredibly on point, and another about a "would you rather" game involving a tail that truly put me in my place as a light-haired white woman (the last line of the poem is still stuck to me). Definitely worth your time.

A wonderfully written book of poems! The poems capture the confusion, understanding, misunderstanding, expecting, explaining and the essence of becoming. Each poem has something to say that you've probably not heard like this before. It's real, it's raw. It's a spectacular book of poetry. The poet doesn't go into simplistic prose and expects you to rise to the poetry itself. 
Wonderful poems.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me have a digital copy of this beautiful little book in exchange of an honest review. This will be the first of many.

I got to read this book by chance. I was browsing my newsfeed on Facebook one day some months ago, and this friend shared a video of a girl reciting poetry. It was powerful. The poem that the girl read was titled 'My Spanish' according to the video's title, but now I know that it is actually called 'You Know How to Say Arroz con Pollo But Not What You Are.' For some reason that video, that girl and that poem stuck with me.

Some time later, I logged into NetGalley after many months and started browsing the poetry section in particular and voila, there was Peluda by Melissa Lozada-Oliva in the Read Now tab (this is actually my first read from NetGalley and I haven't had any request approved so far, so having it in the Read Now tab felt like a blessing). I automatically knew that this was the book of the same girl of the video. I don't remember if it was mentioned somewhere in the video, but I just knew.

I read it in just an hour, and that's because I purposely read it slowly so that I could take it all in. I have to admit that I was impressed by how many feelings I felt while reading these poems. I didn't expect to like them so much. Many of them are about body hair, hence the title Peluda ('hairy' in Spanish), and how women go through life waxing their hairs to please society, but particularly how it affected the author, obvioulsy, since she says to be quite hairy and, on top of that, she belongs to a family of beauticians that always told her that beauty is pain and she should just put up with it. She's also latina, and she makes sure to show that part of her in her poetry. 

I truly believe her poems are outstanding, and it makes me think of all the people obsessed with Rupi Kaur's books when here we have much deeper and meaningful art. I do like Rupi Kaur, but her style is very simplistic and sometimes less is not more, sometimes we need to ink all our thoughts on paper and just let it all out. I felt passion in these poems. And that's the best kind of poetry that I can think of.

Maybe 3.5 stars
Wasn't my cup of tea. I tried to love this book but unfortunately I couldn't it seems like a good one, but maybe for someone else.

I really loved this book, and after reading it I plan on seeking out more of Melissa's work. New school poetry that is evocative and beautiful.

This book explores the relationship between  Latina identity, femininity, body hair, body image, and family. I didn't enjoy every poem in this book, but I did enjoy most of them. It's filled with powerful poetry with a dash of humor. Nice mix of poems that are read very personal to light enjoyable reads. Even though I didn't like every poem, I did like Melissa's writing style and I will be read more poems by Melissa Lozada-Oliva.

Everything I hoped it would be! I need more poetry exploring body hair, femininity, and diversity.

I don't know how to express how I felt about my reading experience of this collection. Intimate would be the word. It was like reading the author's memoir in verse. Fierce, honest and so very personal - all things which made me absolutely love every single poem in this collection, making it a struggle not to connect with every word. 

There were so many intricately woven themes explored in this collection from woman and their relationship with body hair, being an immigrant and the struggle of belonging, to the complexity of a mother-daughter relationship, racism, sexism and patriarchy as well as body stereotypes. The amount of diversity of themes in a mere 50 pages is definitely a feat for the author, not only because it is hard to do that but also because it is difficult for the reader to connect with all of them – something I didn’t experience while reading. I laughed, cried and experienced a plethora of other secondhand emotions wholly. 

Moreover, I felt that because a theme like women's relationship with body hair was explored in relation to the author's history, it made the reading experience of it much easier to relate to and just more focused. Admittedly, some poems did felt like prose shaped like poetry by the space between the verses which for a reader like me did affect my opinion. Nevertheless, I loved this collection from a poet who had a distinct voice and delivered such strong, fierce and intimate poetry along with a tad bit of much appreciated humour.

This book was not written for people like me. (The narrator is pretty emphatic about that, but I don’t want to give away delicious endings.) Still, I’m so glad I read it. 

Peluda means “hairy.” Mi peluda, my dark-haired girl? Or… hairy she-beast? I don’t speak Spanish, and I’m not sure how negatively or positively to construe “peluda.” The poet, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, explores negative views of herself, as a Latina with dark, thick hair (on her body as well as her head), but she’s also (re)claiming the word. 

The collection includes about twenty poems, a few of them straddling the line between prose poetry and micro-flash fiction. Some poems are written in second-person, letting readers see the world through the poet’s eyes. Through poems like “Origin Regimen,” Lozada-Oliva tells the story of an adolescent girl born to immigrant parents (from Guatemala and Colombia, if I remember correctly). Her Latinx parents worked first as house cleaners, then in beauty shops—styling, dyeing, and ripping out dark hairs. Peluda is a symbol for the narrator and her experience—she, a dark hair, to be ripped out. She, a source of much focus, shaping, and unfortunate disgust in a majority-white culture. 

There are so many layers to the metaphors Lozada-Oliva is working with. The book is just amazing. For example, in “You Use Your Hands So Much When You Talk," blue fluid is salon disinfectant is a swimming pool of disinfectant is a womb… (view spoiler)

One of the funniest poem titles was “Maybe She's Born With It, Maybe She Got Up Early.” "AKA What Would Jessica Jones Do?" imagines Jessica Jones as a powerful, solitary Latina instead of "once again... some angry white girl.” "My Hair Stays on Your Pillow Like a Question Mark" cleverly conveys, through the punctuation and spelling in its first two lines, that it is to be read in the voice of a valley girl (think Cher/Alicia Silverstone in CLUELESS). 

Some of my other favorite poems were "You Know How to Say Arroz con Pollo but Not What You Are,” "What If My Last Name Got a Bikini Wax, Too,” and the amazing “Wolf Girl Suite,” where Lozada-Oliva loosely retells the plot of an old movie, WOLF GIRL BLOOD MOON. I *loved* the ending of the suite, when (view spoiler).

The collection carries readers to right now, post-2016 US presidential election, with a last poem that highlights (view spoiler)

Bonus quotes from PELUDA, by Melissa Lozada-Oliva…

(view spoiler)

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This is a excellent, vibrant, sparkling introduction to an important new voice in American poetry. Lozada-Oliva’s poems are smart, brave, and funny. She makes us work for it, but her rewards are generous. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

peluda is such a moving work of poetry discussing femininity, immigration, and stigmas of body hair. While reading these passages, I could genuinely feel Oliva’s emotions and feelings. She truly has a way with words, stitching together bold sentences to create this luscious work of art.

I also really loved how Oliva integrated her Latina culture, how she acknowledged the issue of how people of color and / or immigrants are oppressed. To avoid this oppression, there’s this need to blend in and disown your roots, which is so horribly wrong, but is something that is prominent in our society. It’s works like this that are very eye-opening for those of us that don’t experience of oppression, and help raise awareness.

However, I’ll be honest in saying there were a few pieces I had trouble binding into an emotion or feeling, that I wasn’t quite sure what the writer was trying to say. But that’s the beautiful thing about writing (especially poetry) is that we all interpret the words in different ways. So even though I couldn’t quite decipher some of these passages doesn’t mean others won’t.

Overall, I found peluda to be such a gorgeous piece of work that gave me a lot of thoughts and ideas to ponder. If you’re in the need of some feminist, own voice poetry, then I highly recommend picking up peluda.

Peluda by Melissa Lozada-Oliva was quite an interesting read. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, as I had to google the meaning of the word “peluda” before I started reading. However, the book’s description and cover piqued my interest and I had to read it. As a woman, I could appreciate many of the poems, as they uncovered those coming-of-age stories many of us keep hidden in diaries. I also learned a lot about the author through reading these poems. I saw how society’s standards of beauty have such a profound effect on women at an early age. I sympathized with her as she confessed she’d prefer growing a tail over having hair on her body. I will admit that some of the poems messages were lost on me, as I had a hard time relating or understanding what the author meant. But certain poems, like “Mami Says Have You Been Crying” reeled me in and painted vivid pictures of Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s life for me. Her poems are honest, raw, and unfiltered and I commend her for sharing these thoughts with the world. I am glad that I was able to read an ARC of Peluda through Netgalley and I recommend lovers of modern poetry to check this out. I’m glad I kept an open mind and did so, as it was cool to see the perils of growing up from the lens of another woman different from myself. 

⭐⭐⭐🌟

I had never heard of this poet before, but reading this anthology made me search for videos of her performances online. This helped me appreciate this collection more as I was able to read these poems in her voice. The poems  are very relatable to me as a Latina, even if they are not my usual cup of tea.

A lot of the pieces in this collection are really good. Others didn’t strike me quite as powerfully though. The author’s authentic voice comes through really clearly through the seamless code-switching. The recurring topics of hair, beauty, femininity, cultural standards, and immigrant experiences tie all of the pieces together really well. Even though I am not Latina, I could still personally relate to a lot of these themes in many ways.

I have to confess that before reading this book, I had not watched any performance of Melissa Lozada-Oliva. I fixed that after finishing the book and starting this review and I can say that her written poems are as compelling as her live performances.
This collection is connected through one word "peluda" and I found it captivating and raw. I was able to connect to her poems as a latina, and as a woman, even if my experiences as both are quite different. As I was reading, I started to think about the latina construction under US centric parameters and if even that wasn't the author's intention it made my reading more profound and left me with the need to read more latina poets.

Great collection, my only complain is that was too short.

I started reading this book. with a hope to read something that was really relatable. It claims be writings of a hairy Latina girl. I hoped to find something deep, something meaningful...but I found the poems to be complex, without much reason...it did not have what it takes to had me turning pages to read more....