“Agosín takes up a sacred flame, a solemn trust, in this audacious book of journeys, this dreamy, precise, urgent, and heartrending Jewish testament.”

Edward Hirsch, author of Gabriel: A Poem, president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

“I’ve read Agosín’s stunningly beautiful poems with tears in my eyes and with awe in my heart. At once a lament about the loss of Sefarad and a celebration of all that lives on in word and song and women's memories, this book is a unique testament to a people, a culture, and a seascape. Marjorie Agosín is the best Jewish Latina poet writing today and these poems are a gift to all readers who are traveling, as she puts it, ‘through ambiguous geographies.’ If you read only one poetry book, read this one, it will make your spirit soar, I promise you.”

Ruth Behar, author of Traveling Heavy: A Memoir in between Journeys

"The White Islands / Las Islas Blancas evokes the vibrancy of those banished Sephardic communities, especially of the women, who carried their faith, language, and traditions, along with a profound love of life, to their new homes. Rich in metaphor and euphony, this bilingual compilation, beautifully translated from the Spanish by Jacqueline Nanfito, consists of individual lyrical gems, yet reads like one long narrative poem."

Bárbara Mujica | Washington Independent Review of Books

"Las islas blancas / The White Islands is an imaginative act of witness, evoking pity and terror, the inhumanity of men, the beauty of nature, and the tragedies of the Jewish people."

Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas

"This collection allows the read er to take on that feeling of being a stranger, opening the reader’s mind to that of the poet herself. This transferable numinousness makes for powerful, open work. Ultimately, these poems are prayers, archipelagic, of remembrance — and prayers for a new home, shining white, found at sea."

Jewish Book Council