The Poet X
Fifteen-year-old Xiomara Batista lives in Harlem with her devout Dominican mother, her absent father, and her brother Xavier, the family's quiet golden boy. Curvy, big, and tired of being whistled at by men twice her age, Xiomara has learned to let her fists answer for her. The poems she fills her notebook with after school stay private, until her English teacher hears her once and invites her to join the high school's spoken word club. Her mother believes that Xiomara should be preparing for confirmation, not a slam. As she falls quietly into a first relationship with her lab partner Aman, Xiomara begins choosing between the silence she has been raised in and the voice that, on a stage, she finds she has. Elizabeth Acevedo's 2018 verse novel, the first young adult book to win the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, is a breakout debut by a champion slam poet.
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The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Fifteen-year-old Xiomara Batista lives in Harlem with her devout Dominican mother and her quiet twin brother. Tired of being looked at on the street and silenced at her mother's church, she fills a leather notebook with poems and joins her high school spoken-word club without telling her family.
Yes. The Poet X won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Printz Award, and the Pura Belpre Award in 2018. Elizabeth Acevedo became one of the most-decorated YA debut authors of the decade.
Yes. The Poet X is written in free verse, structured as the slam poetry of the protagonist Xiomara. Elizabeth Acevedo is also a slam poet, and the form is central to the book's voice.
The Poet X was written by Elizabeth Acevedo, published in 2018 by Puck.
The Poet X is 361 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Poet X takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
The Poet X is a standalone novel by Elizabeth Acevedo, not part of a series.
The Poet X is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.