I Am Montana: Student Reflections on Identity and Place, Vol. 3
Edited by Nicole Gomez and Dave Caserio
Who are you? It is a question we ask of strangers when we first meet and of ourselves, whom we’ve known the longest. Some of the voices represented in this significant and compelling anthology are incarcerated; some are high school students working one or two jobs. Some are cherished in their families and some are in danger. Many have had an unimaginably tough life. Yet this does not define them. Their words, instead, speak to the power of the human spirit, a spirit that rejoices in sunlight, friendship and home-cooked meals, that is vulnerable to loss and betrayal, that is alternately afraid and more hopeful and courageous than seems possible. It is not an easy time to be a human being, old or young. But there is no better time to be a poet. Who are you? “I’m real,” one of these young poets writes. “I’m impactful.” – Melissa Kwasny, former Montana Poet Laureate and author of Pictograph and Reading Novalis in Montana