About the Author

JP Infante is the author of On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue and Aquí y Allá: un retrato de la comunidad Dominicana en Washington Heights. He is the winner of The PEN America Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and Thirty West’s Wavelengths Chapbook contest. His writing has appeared in Kweli, The Poetry Project, and elsewhere. He has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from the NY State Writers Institute, PEN America, and The Center for Fiction. He holds an MFA from The New School. Currently, he’s an organizer and facilitator for the Liberation Program at the Brotherhood-Sister Sol, a non-profit in Harlem that has served Black and Latinx youth with wrap-around services for almost 30 years.

Reviews

“These paragraphs remind me that growing up often seems like an initiation into secrets—just learning them but understanding which ones to share and which ones to keep.”

—Yuka Igarashi, executive editor of Graywolf Press

“JP Infante captures the complexities of addiction, homelessness, mental illness, and racial identity through the lens of a son whose mother is dedicated to one thing; survival. On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue is a lesson in snapshot vulnerability and introspection. Infante moves us rapidly through short scenes condensed with an emotional precision that forces us to slow down and contend with our own disasters. Whether on the tip of a tongue, or an iceberg, the magic in this book is in what lives underneath, every word that has yet to be said.”

—Elisabet Velasquez, author of When We Make It: A Nuyorican Novel

“In ‘Without a Big One,’ JP Infante provides the reader with a glimpse at the impact of incarceration on black and brown families. This powerful short story also touches upon issues of love, poverty, education, and mental health, all through the lens of one young child in Washington Heights.

Prison reform and prison abolition are receiving increased mainstream attention, and as readers, we see the harm done to the family at the center of ‘Without a Big One.’ Community intervention has its place. Cages do not. Infante's art helps to move us away from these cages and closer to a more just and equitable society."

—Laura Pegram, founding editor & publisher of Kweli Journal.

“It is a rare feat to personify a city as grand as New York. Seeing it through the gritty realism lens of lived experience, JP Infante has done this twice. This book can illuminate a digital billboard or be stapled onto a light pole.”

—Josh Dale, editor-in-chief of Thirty West Publishing House

Review of On The Tip Of Your Mother’s Tongue by JP Infante by Sarah Pisak of Glass Poetry Press