MAMA SAPPHO: Poems con Sabor a Caló

AUTHOR: Dr. Osa Hidalgo de la Riva 

MAMA SAPPHO:  Poems con Sabor a Caló is a collection of poetry written during the 1970s by a XxicanXx  lesbiana Osa (Dr. T. Osa Hidalgo de la Riva), between her teen years and early twenties.  Originally entitled WITH POEMS as GUNS, several of the poems in this collection were performed on tour with her lesbiana poet sister Liz, at some of the first battered women’s shelters, women’s cafés, and bookstores throughout Aztlán, the U.S. Southwest.  In 1980, the MAMA SAPPHOmanuscript came together as the author’s creative thesis for one of the three master’s degrees she would complete before receiving her Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Southern California. Published in book form 38 years later, the MAMA SAPPHO poems are joined by the author’s Poetic Afterword, an essay that reads as fierce manifesto. A truly timeless—or, time-expansive—collection, MAMA SAPPHO could have read as contemporary poetry in any of the four decades it has traversed since taking its thesis form, and will surely read as such in its book form for the four decades to come.