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Layla Benitez-James photo

Layla Benitez-James

Layla Benitez-James is the author of God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode but He Had to Make Sure, which won Cave Canem’s Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. She was a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for translation.

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unrecognizable female sitting on the carpet in domestic room and making heart symbol on her belly

Lyric of the Body

Poet Layla Benitez-James writes about the imagery of motherhood, consumption, and hyphenated existence in Carribean Fragoza’s Eat the Mouth That Feeds You, the December California Book Club selection.