Carmen is a writer and a perennial learner, who is as at-home in spirited discussions with her students as she is subdued behind a good book. These activities bring life to her work which has been honored with a James D. Phelan Literary Award and a Solas Award for her writings in the category of Culture and Ideas. Her writings are in the Themis and Acacia journals, respectively. And Carmen wrote A Love Letter, published in 2023, which was honored by Small Press Distribution as a bestseller in May and June of that same year. Stay tuned for her forthcoming work in the Blacklandia anthology and in the anthology of Black Cultural Futurism: Ifá, Indigenous African Beliefs, and Black Survival.
Carmen’s book, A Love Letter, steps you into the sharp tenderness of a loved one’s transition. San Francisco Poet Laureate emeritus, Tongo Eisen Martin wrote, “Its pages expose your mind to the various mirrors of an embrace while walking you down the predatory nodes of a medical system that serves capital and rage with equal measure. In a few pages, you are years changed.”
This love letter should make you uncomfortable. It should confront you with humanity. And it should animate your cry for care that is both cost free and comprehensive – care that follows the body from inception to interment.
It is as life affirming to honor the body’s return as its arrival, which is why this little book attempts to document some of the most graceful aspects of a goodbye. Carmen tells us, readers, “A Love Letter captures where I was when my beloved aunt left the world, and where I am now, and where any of us might find ourselves in the future.”
See more of Karen Bankhead at https://linktr.ee/ettamaetv.
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Carmen Estela Kennedy Saleh 