Talk Louder
by Janelle Cordero
Chicken and Jell-O for open-heart surgery. Saxophones and lip gloss for lifelong friendship. Upside-down dominoes for a marriage shift. Janelle Cordero writes the ordinary as path to the extraordinary. These collected vignettes, from small town and city, sketch portrait after portrait of eager life. Here are the workers, the neighbors, the best friends, the beloveds without whom we become new people entirely. This book challenges its reader to look outward and inward—to find the communities contained within the self. Papeachu Press is so proud to present Cordero’s fifth book, Talk Louder, and we hope you’ll be just as changed by reading it as we were. Welcome to Colville. This must be the place.
Janelle’s voice has a rolling lyric and conversational tone that welcomes the reader. When I first read Talk Louder, I immediately knew that I wanted to engage with the collection because it’s simultaneously vulnerable and wise. Originally acquired and published during my time as co-editor at Papeachu Press, Talk Louder is a book of love poems. I was thrilled when Janelle agreed to sign with Tulipwood as our first author. Each one of her poems displays something new and beautiful, in service of a philosophical moral, or a lesson in how to wake up in the morning and choose kindness.