Margaret Randall is a feminist poet with a long history of social activism (in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, as well as the United States). More than 150 published books reflect her personal experience and generational struggles. She has also translated much poetry by others. In Mexico, she co-founded El Corno Emplumado, a bilingual journal that published more than 700 writers from 35 countries. Returning to the US in 1984, the government ordered her deported, claiming her writing subversive. She won her case in 1989. Among her recent awards are the Poet of Two Hemisphere Prize (Quito, Ecuador 2019) and the 2020 George Garrett Award given by AWP.

My Life in 100 Objects is a nonlinear inventory of the self by beat-expressionist-become-revolutionary poet Margaret Randall. Her sense of objecthood is elastic: the expected possessions, yes, writing accoutrements, but also places, photographs, books, art, monuments, artifacts. A medal, a fake passport, a court brief from when the INS tried to deport her. An underused treadmill. She puts it all out there and lets it all in. Even as they stretch all the way back to her childhood in the '40s, or her young adulthood in the '60s, her stories have never been more of the moment: who gets to come to this country, who gets to love whom, and every other hard-won freedom still at stake today. - Garrett Caples, Editor, City Lights Spotlight Randall's hope was to show us 'how the objects and places that move us breathe their life into ours.' In this, she certainly succeeds. A heartwarming celebration of the author's compelling life. (Kirkus Review)

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet with a long history of social activism (in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, as well as the United States). More than 150 published books reflect her personal experience and generational struggles. She has also translated much poetry by others. In Mexico, she co-founded El Corno Emplumado, a bilingual journal that published more than 700 writers from 35 countries. Returning to the US in 1984, the government ordered her deported, claiming her writing subversive. She won her case in 1989. Among her recent awards are the Poet of Two Hemisphere Prize (Quito, Ecuador 2019) and the 2020 George Garrett Award given by AWP.

My Life in 100 Objects is a nonlinear inventory of the self by beat-expressionist-become-revolutionary poet Margaret Randall. Her sense of objecthood is elastic: the expected possessions, yes, writing accoutrements, but also places, photographs, books, art, monuments, artifacts. A medal, a fake passport, a court brief from when the INS tried to deport her. An underused treadmill. She puts it all out there and lets it all in. Even as they stretch all the way back to her childhood in the '40s, or her young adulthood in the '60s, her stories have never been more of the moment: who gets to come to this country, who gets to love whom, and every other hard-won freedom still at stake today. - Garrett Caples, Editor, City Lights Spotlight Randall's hope was to show us 'how the objects and places that move us breathe their life into ours.' In this, she certainly succeeds. A heartwarming celebration of the author's compelling life. (Kirkus Review)

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet with a long history of social activism (in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, as well as the United States). More than 150 published books reflect her personal experience and generational struggles. She has also translated much poetry by others. In Mexico, she co-founded El Corno Emplumado, a bilingual journal that published more than 700 writers from 35 countries. Returning to the US in 1984, the government ordered her deported, claiming her writing subversive. She won her case in 1989. Among her recent awards are the Poet of Two Hemisphere Prize (Quito, Ecuador 2019) and the 2020 George Garrett Award given by AWP.

My Life in 100 Objects is a nonlinear inventory of the self by beat-expressionist-become-revolutionary poet Margaret Randall. Her sense of objecthood is elastic: the expected possessions, yes, writing accoutrements, but also places, photographs, books, art, monuments, artifacts. A medal, a fake passport, a court brief from when the INS tried to deport her. An underused treadmill. She puts it all out there and lets it all in. Even as they stretch all the way back to her childhood in the '40s, or her young adulthood in the '60s, her stories have never been more of the moment: who gets to come to this country, who gets to love whom, and every other hard-won freedom still at stake today. - Garrett Caples, Editor, City Lights Spotlight Randall's hope was to show us 'how the objects and places that move us breathe their life into ours.' In this, she certainly succeeds. A heartwarming celebration of the author's compelling life. (Kirkus Review)