Para las duras / For the Hard Ones

Para las duras: Una fenomonologia lesbiana / For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology, originally published in 2002, is a collection of poetry existing from and beyond the boundaries of language, sexuality, and genre. Each memory, meditation, analysis, and erotic snapshot—featured side-by-side in both English and Spanish—is overlaid with the sexual character, experimental prose, and levity signature to the work of de la tierra. As a bilingual book, For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / Para las duras: Una fenomonologia lesbiana centers, explores, and reimagines queer Latina sexuality, opening up space for multiple interpretations and transformations. This new edition, published as the sixth Sapphic Classic from Sinister Wisdom and A Midsummer Night’s Press, features an introduction by scholars Olga García Echeverría and Maylei Blackwell, a foreword by Myriam Gurba, an essay on de la tierra’s periodicals by Sara Gregory, and a tribute to de la tierra by her mother, proving a vibrant context for contemporary engagements with de la tierra’s powerful and important work.