Driving Without a License

* Winner of the 2014 Kundiman Poetry Prize
* Late Night Library's August 2016 Book Club Selection
* Featured on NBC News' list of emerging Asian-American writers to read
* Featured as a "Top Poetry Pick" and "Don't-Miss" poetry title by Library Journal * Featured as a must-read book for 2016 by Brooklyn Magazine
The best way to hide is in plain sight. In this politically-charged and candid debut, we follow the chronicles of an undocumented immigrant speaker from the Philippines over a twenty-year span as she grows up in the foreign and forbidding landscape of America.
"It stands far apart from most first books, and from most books of autobiographical or narrative poetry, for the unpredictable vigor in its rhythmically irregular lines, especially in its depictions of youthful adventures." -- Stephen Burt, The Los Angeles Times
"Through her variety of lines, of old and new forms, and of voices adopted and inhabited, Joseph, herself Filipina-American, does justice to the raw emotions around immigration with verve." -- Publishers Weekly
"As she guides us through constant fearfulness...and unimaginable hurt...Joseph blends everyday anxieties with deeper ones, avoiding outright reportage for smarter inflection. The tensions of visiting the immigration lawyer's office, for instance, are seen in the mad drive away. VERDICT: A gifted writer's view on an all-American issue." -- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal From "Ivan, Always Hiding":
 
I strained for the socket
as you pulled me,
bare legs against your legs
 
in the windowless dark. The room,
snuffed out,
 
could have been no
larger than a freight car,
no smaller than a box van;
 
we couldn't tell anymore, the glints
in the shellacked floor, too,
 
were dulled. This is like death, you said,
always joking. I slid my head
into the crook of your neck,
 
and didn't disagree.
JANINE JOSEPH was born and raised in the Philippines and Southern California. Her poems and essays have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets, Best American Experimental Writing, Zocalo Public Square, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. Her commissioned libretti for the Houston Grand Opera/HGOco include What Wings They Were: The Case of Emeline, "On This Muddy Water": Voices from the Houston Ship Channel, and From My Mother's Mother. She holds an MFA from New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston, where she was a poetry editor for Gulf Coast. Janine is an Asisstant Professor of Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University.