Angel & Hannah: A Novel in Verse

By: Ishle Yi Park

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Synopsis: The sweeping, unforgettable story of an interracial couple in 1990s New York City who are determined to protect their love against all odds—a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet&“Triumphant . . . sensuous, tender, and faceted like cut glass.&”—Cathy Park Hong, award-winning author of Minor FeelingsHannah, a Korean American girl from Queens, New York, and Angel, a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn, fall in love in the spring of 1993 at a quinceañera: under a torn pink streamerloose as a tendril of hair—lush—his eyes. Darkluminous. Warm. A blushfloods her. Hannah sucks in her breath, but can&’t pull back. Music fades. A hush ~he&’s a young buck in the underbrush,still in a disco ball dance of shadow & lightTheir forbidden love instantly and wildly blooms along the Jackie Robinson Expressway. Told across the changing seasons, Angel & Hannah holds all of the tension and cadence of blank verse while adding dynamic and expressive language rooted in a long tradition of hip-hop and spoken word, creating new and magnetic forms. The poetry of Angel and Hannah&’s relationship is dynamic, arresting, observant, and magical, conveying the intimacies and sacrifices of love and family and the devastating realities of struggle and loss.