Receta, the exciting debut collection by Mario José Pagán Morales, is a story of becoming a poet. This poet. Boricua and part of a proud tradition of Nuyorican poets before and around him. The expressive line breaks and easy movement between English and Spanglish are reflective of the poems' settings: the constant journeying of mind, spirit, and body to and from Guayanilla and Ponce, Puerto Rico, Philadelphia and New York City. The Bronx.

The title refers to a recipe, but the flavor expands beyond a single bite: the cocina is lovingly rendered, of course, and also the streets and sacred rivers and forests of Borikén. There is a generous heart behind these poems in which no one in the community is forgotten or judged harshly for being human. History amplifies the colonizer, but in striking, visceral imagery Morales invokes voices from the sites of struggle. Here, even the abandoned buildings and trash heaps speak, albeit in whispers, of lives that matter(ed).