When You Don't Know Who You Are

"Alinda Wasner has long been known as one of Detroit's finest poets, and this stunning, stark and deeply felt collection shows us why. Readers can see an experienced poet at work with her craft exploring the very essence of her own being and her own unique past. The poems in When You Don't Know Who You Are are filled with brilliant poetic sensibilities that will allow readers to grasp the poet's painful memories as she faces the buried ghosts of her past. Ms. Wasner's poetry allows us to feel, question and consider our own reality and who we really are. Through this poetic journey, we see our own journey as we 'swim into someone else's dreams.'" -M. L. Liebler, author of I Want to Be Once. "In When You Don't Know Who You Are, Alinda Wasner takes on questions of identity and the meaning of family. These poems glow with clarity and a willingness to use imagination to uncover the truth. In "Faith," the narrator questions the Bible, the adoption story she's been told, and the myths of loss. In the title poem, Wasner shows the adopted adult as she experiments with alternative identities. Every casual contact wants to know her ethnicity, and it's painful because she doesn't know the answer. Yet the narrator has to admit not being tied to a single story leaves room to 'make things up.' It's this longing to know the truth and also to find 'a God / who can take two halves of a baby / and put them together again' that gives these poems their strength and makes reading them a pleasure." -Dawn McDuffie, author of Bulky pick Up Day and Flag Day in Detroit