1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize winner.

The Water Between Us is a poetic examination of cultural fragmentation, and the exile's struggle to reconcile the disparate and often conflicting influences of the homeland and the adopted country. The book also centers on other kinds of physical and emotional distances: those between mothers and daughters, those created by being of mixed racial descent, and those between colonizers and the colonized. Despite these distances, or perhaps because of them, the poems affirm the need for a multilayered and cohesive sense of self. McCallum's...

Lyrical and well-crafted, this collection of poetry presents some of Jamaican poet Shara McCallum s best work. While touching upon various topicsincluding migration, identity, family relationships, motherhood, mental illness, storytelling, folklore, and myththese poems transform the most painful and sometimes mundane details of life into works of terrible and satisfying beauty. Emotionally engaging and intellectually stimulating, this compilation celebrates the poetics of both the Caribbean and of North America."