Starlenie Vondora

Things I Never Said is a collection of free verse and prose poetry that explores life - specifically after it has been reset several times. Told initially from the perspective of a child, this novel chronicles the upbringing of one girl as her environment, family, and cultural identity changes over the course of eighteen years. Throughout the three sections - Afterbirth, Afterlife, and Rebirth - the speaker details the trials and tribulations of her journey while in foster care, after reuniting with her birth parents, and after severing the ties between herself and her biological family members at fifteen years old. Things I Never Said captures gratifying and gut-wrenching moments in one survivor's life as she is exposed to physical and sexual violence, mental illness, loss, isolation, and neglect. This is an invitation to the severest moments of the speaker's journey; as well as an invitation to everything she has extracted from them.