It explores the journey toward self-actualization as each poem breaks open themes of abandonment and abuse, homelessness, coming out, surviving poverty, finding joy, and discovering the self despite the circumstances. At once, the poems are glimpses into one of many New York-born immigrants making sense out of family generational traumas, traversing language barriers, and creating a second skin of island folk tales in new lands. Using vivid place and space as characters, BELONGING, ON SELF walks with a delicate evolution of self through community with infinite compassion and intimacy. The collection spans across communities in remembrance of the past, its pains, and passes the baton for others to explore healing fuelled by joy and radical self-love.

Cynthia J. Roman Cabrera is a Dominican and Puerto Rican native of Brooklyn, New York who grew up in the Bronx and Washington Heights. She is a storyteller, essayist, and poet exploring culture and identity, cityscape, familismo, and the healing of her inner child. Her work often uses Spanglish as a literary tool to tell stories on the diasporic challenges of first-generation U.S.-born people. In her free time, she nurtures her love of learning and reading in cute bookstores and chases down any opportunity to satisfy her inner comelona. A trained researcher and evaluator in Public Health, she is energized by tackling complex, systemic social and civic justice issues. She is also a femme person in love. By sharing who she is as a human, she hopes to invite others to break open the writing field with their stories. She has been published in Brooklyn Poets, changing womxn collective, HerStry, Breadcrumbs, Moko Magazine, Spanglish Voces, and the Bronx Magazine. During the Spring of 2021, Cynthia was named a Brooklyn Poets Fellow.